Gareth Jones: On Assignment in Nazi Germany 1933-34

978-1-86057-1480
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  • Description

Ray Gamache dispenses with some of the myths that surround the biography of the enigmatic writer Gareth Jones, and adds substantially to the historical record of his life and times.'
Anne Applebaum

'The courageous and indefatigable Welsh journalist Gareth Jones reported on the famine that decimated Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. The question of whether the Holodomor had occurred and whether it was caused by Soviet policies soon became a controversy with worldwide implications. Ray Gamache, author of, Gareth Jones - Eyewitness to the Holodomor, uses voluminous archival evidence in this new study to show how these intricate politics shaped the recognition of the Ukrainian famine. His book will be essential reading for every student of the history of the 1930s.'
Marco Carynnyk

CONTENTS

1. So Sincere, Fair and Sympathetic

2. A Real Menace

3. Primitive Worship

4. Deathblow to Democracy

5. Riding the Nazi Tiger

6. Obstinately Unraised

7. Denial, Distortion and Intellectual Pathology

Index
Bibliography

Since Gareth Jones’s historic press conference in Berlin in 1933 when he became the first journalist to reveal the existence and extent of the Holodomor, a Soviet-induced famine in Ukraine in which over four million people died, Jones and his professional reputation have been the focus of a determined campaign by those who deny the famine ever happened.

Attempts to destroy Jones’s character, which would undermine the reliability of his reports of the Holodomor, have increased in recent years following global recognition and acclaim for the importance of his work.

  • Citing his professional connections with the Nazis, including:
  • Flying on Hitler’s plane on the day he became German Chancellor
  • Having a front row seat at a Nazi rally in Frankfurt
  • His noting that he enjoyed a private dinner with Goebbels
  • Having several acquaintances who later took key roles in the Third Reich
  • His 1935 obituary in a Nazi paper which stated Jones was ‘one of us’ 

and his self-confessed love of Germany, speaking fluent German, and making annual visits from 1923-34, there have been a number of accusations that Jones was, in fact, a Nazi sympathiser and fascist collaborator.

In this ground breaking new study, Ray Gamache, an acknowledged expert on Gareth Jones and the reporting of the Holodomor, thoroughly examines Jones’s extensive notebooks, letters, articles and speeches to investigate these claims.

In Gareth Jones - On Assignment in Nazi Germany 1933-34, Gamache provides a compelling narrative which refutes claims of Jones’s Nazi sympathies, stating: Based on available documentation, that Jones had a deep, abiding love of Germany is obvious. However, to twist events of his life into a narrative in which his reporting of mass starvation is represented as collusion with the Nazi propaganda ministry is ultimately to deny the suffering of those Ukrainians who needlessly perished.'