Dark purpose
Sir: In spite of Alfred Sherman's cautious attempts to make it appear innocuous (Books, 11 July), Mark Mazower's book Dark Continent is a Marxist-Stalinist tract. It is also factually unsound. One instance from dozens is that the existence of fascism out- side Italy was an invention of the commu- nist agent Willy Munzenberg, whose name does not appear in the index. Stalin himself was a mass murderer on a scale that makes the infamous Hitler look like an amateur.
The undeclared purpose of this book is to intensify and continue fear and hatred of Germany into at least the next generation in England. Fortunately for all Europe, the European Union, for all its difficulties and failings, has achieved at least one success. It
LETTERS
has extended the regions of the world in which war is inconceivable; and that in the heart and centre of civilisation, Europe.
However, the teaching of hatred to the young is to be condemned by anyone with a spark of Christianity alive in them. Ought this man to be in such a position? It is true that the chance of influencing anyone towards Marxism at this moment, when the taxpayers of the advanced world are being pushed into the hopeless task of bailing Russia out of bankruptcy, is pretty remote, but I for one do not think Mr Mazower should be given even a remote chance of influence.
Sarah Gainham
Schlosspark, Four, Petrone11, Austria
Previous page
