Auction of Hitler family portraits raises questions about Nazi memorabilia

by Sean McLachlan on

Family portraits of Hitler’s parents are going up for auction.

Craig Gottlieb Militaria, a leading auction house in California, will be auctioning off paintings of Alois and Klara Hitler via Gottlieb’s website from September 1 to 17. Gottlieb is also selling Hitler’s desk set. The shop is open to prospective buyers by appointment.

The subject of Hitler and Nazi memorabilia comes up regularly here on Gadling. An article about a Hitler tour around Germany started a flame war, and my discussion about the other meanings of the swastika got some interesting and somewhat more level-headed responses. More than sixty years after the fall of the Third Reich, these symbols still elicit strong reactions.

This raises all sorts of questions about how we portray the past, and what should and shouldn’t be included. In Germany and Austria, for example, it’s illegal to display the swastika expect in specific historical contexts. My article on swastikas probably couldn’t get published in a German magazine because it skirts the edge of the law. Other countries display these items freely. At the Imperial War Museum in London you can see a variety of Nazi items. An Orthodox Jewish friend commented that such a context is OK. It makes her wince to see it, but it’s part of history and needs to be discussed.

On the spectrum of what’s acceptable and what’s not, museum displays are on pretty safe ground, although it took many years before a Hitler exhibition was allowed in Germany. But what about selling Nazi memorabilia? Gottlieb’s store is full of SS items. He’s even written a book on SS Totenkopf (“Death’s Head”) rings and currently has 44 such rings up for auction. Some countries ban selling Nazi memorabilia, as does eBay, yet an article in Forbes estimates the sale of these items to be in the hundreds of millions.

%Gallery-129938%I’m a military historian and collector myself. I’m also a struggling writer with a kid to feed, so my collection is pretty small. We collectors buy these things because they give us an immediate connection to history. Yet the thrill I feel when reading a postcard from the Western Front or holding a Civil War bullet is far different than what I feel when I see a swastika flag covering a coffee table. Yes, that’s an example taken from experience. I don’t have any Nazi items in my collection and I’m not interested in buying any.

London is my favorite place to shop for militaria. Provincial Booksellers Fairs take place all over England and offer up lots of rare books on military and other subjects. Shops in places like Grays Antique Markets and Camden Passage Islington offer a huge variety of medals, weapons, and uniforms. One thing I’ve noticed is that there are two types of shops: those that sell Nazi memorabilia and those that don’t. Those that do often have a lot of it. In one shop I saw an entire set of instruments from an SS marching band.

I asked a shopkeeper who didn’t stock Nazi items why he made that decision.

“Because I don’t having those people in here,” he said.

“Perhaps they’re just interested in history?” I offered.

He shook his head and replied, “That’s not why they buy it.”

While I won’t go as far as to suspect anyone fascinated with the Third Reich as being a closet Nazi, I do have to wonder what they get from it, and shake my head in amazement at how much power Hitler and his goons still have over our emotions sixty years on.

Attached is a gallery of the kind of Nazi memorabilia prized by some collectors. What do you feel when you see them? Do you think they should be for sale? Would you accept one as a gift? Is it OK to have them in museums? Tell us what you think in the comments section!

[Photo of Klara Hitler courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Five ways you can screw with travel companies via social media

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The travel industry is interested in what you have to say. Everything. I know this seems crazy. I mean, when was the last time you felt an airline employee was actually listening to you? Well, that sector is among the travel businesses paying close attention to you.

I saw on PRNewser yesterday that travel and hospitality companies are using online monitoring tools to keep track of what you tweet and post while you’re on vacation. This should come as no surprise, of course: it’s standard practice in any business to monitor online customer behavior (how do think Amazon generates such awesome product recommendations for you?). What you may not realize is that this is an opportunity with endless potential for mischief.

So, you have the travel industry’s ear … what are you going to do with it? Here are five ideas for you:1. Take it seriously: you could always start from the belief that you should tweet and share responsibly. After all, the folks monitoring you will do a better job of meeting your needs if you tell them what exactly they are.

Of course, there’s no fun in this …

2. Livetweet the most boring details you can find: imagine being the public relations jockey stuck monitoring a hotel’s @ reply stream as it fills with such observations as “the carpet is still beige” and “yep, that’s a mighty fine shower curtain”.

3. Say a thousand words the easy way: pictures, pictures, pictures! I suggest taking snapshots of every piece of silverware at every meal and asking for the travel company’s social media slave guru to comment on each.

4. Ask mundane questions: imagine the person on the other side of the computer growing red with frustration as you ask how to get from the pool to the bar … and you gleefully offer thanks packed with emoticons.

5. Complain: it’s the American way!

Outdoor Retailer gear expo begins today

by Kraig Becker on

Today is the start of the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, held bi-annually in Salt Lake City, Utah. The OR show is a gathering of outdoor and travel gear manufacturers who come together to show off their latest tents, backpacks, clothing, and other products to industry buyers, as well as the media. Over the next four days, companies like The North Face and Patagonia will unveil new products that will be hitting stores over the next few months and eventually find their way into our suitcases and gear closets.

Two of Gadling’s intrepid reporters will be on hand at Outdoor Retailer, and they’ll be sharing updates from the show floor via Twitter. If you’re a gear junkie, you won’t want to miss their tweets from the event, which will offer a glimpse of where the gear industry is headed in the near future. Follow Pam Mandel at @nerdseyeview and Kraig Becker at @kungfujedi for the latest gear news directly from the show, and be sure to tweet back if you have questions or want more information on a product.

Both Pam and Kraig write gear reviews for Gadling as well, and much of what they see over the next few days will be appearing on the site in the months ahead. We’ll be letting you know which items deserve a place in your travel collection and which items are best left on the store shelf.

Shanghai Surprise: the Language of San Francisco and the Barbary Coast

by David Farley on
• 200: the population of San Francisco in 1846.
• 25,000: the population of San Francisco in 1849.
• 300: the number of women living in San Francisco in 1849.
• 200: the number of those women who were prostitutes.
• 1,400: the number of murders in San Francisco from 1850-1856
• 3: the number of murderers hanged during the same period.

One number that we’ll never know are the amount of people who were abducted, taken out to sea during this time period, and forced to, among other things, use words like “ahoy.” It happened so much that a particular word was invented for the practice and it has since entered the American lexicon: to shanghai someone.

The Barbary Coast was the physical hangover-a living, breathing collective gasp of desperation-of the Gold Rush. It created a lawless atmosphere that not even Moscow could compete with today.

As Simon Winchester wrote in A Crack in the Edge of the World: “During the 1850s, San Francisco’s notoriety was fully and widely established; it was a den of iniquity, a lawless town where men in unrestricted mobs drank, gambled, and whored their way from street to street, unchecked by family, by conscience, or by law.”

And the practice of shanghaiing went largely unchecked. Here’s how it would go:

A miner would go out for a night of drinking and carousing and when he couldn’t cough up enough money (or gold), he was given over to a crimp, a sort of loan shark, who would eventually knock the miner out and sell him to a sea captain. Eventually the minor would wake up, head aching from too much drink, and find himself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, his fate to working off his debt on the ship sealed, as the boat made what was called a “shanghai journey,” slang for a very long voyage.

It was a shanghai surprise: the language of San Francisco and the Barbary Coast.

A Whirlwind Tour of Walt Disney World

by Paul Brady on


I am not, as far as I can tell, in Walt Disney World’s target demographic. I’m not four. I’m not a family man. I’m not Brazilian. I’m not even a fan of animated movies. But to drive through Central Florida after seeing a shuttle launch and pass up the parks? To miss out on a quintessentially American summertime diversion? To skip a chance to meet the one and only Mickey Mouse? I’m not nuts.

Traveling the American Road – A Whirlwind Tour of Disney


My plan was a whirlwind tour of all four of Disney’s parks, trying my best to try what attractions had been added since my last visit, in 2007. Then, I was in town for the opening of Expedition Everest, a ride that challenged my poor tolerance for roller coasters and impressed me with its ability to make visitors feel like they were hiking the Himalayas, even in the heat of Central Florida.

This time, the big draw was the Wild Africa Trek, a new behind-the-scenes tour of the Animal Kingdom that takes visitors behind the fences, out to Disney’s “savanna” and ends with a killer lunch on an African safari-inspired wildlife watching pavilion far from the crowds. To amp up the excitement, trekkers cross a crocodile enclosure on rope bridges, distressed to look rickety even if they were reinforced by steel cables. Anyone who’s seen “Temple of Doom,” though, can’t get past their primal fear of a rope bridge collapse.

I survived, obviously, to see Epcot and its world pavilions. There’s something hilarious about visiting “France,” “Ireland,” “Italy” and “Mexico” when you’re a travel writer. In every one of the miniature countries, I was studying the architecture, comparing it to my memories, figuring out what it is we remember about the places we visit – and wondering why we forget the things we forget. Is that really what the Eiffel Tower looks like, I asked myself, cocking my head, as I couldn’t clearly remember the original’s shape.

At Disney’s Hollywood Studios, I tested the limits of my stomach with a ride on the Star Tours simulator, a 3-D ride set in the Star Wars universe, in which C-3PO is an accidental tour guide and passengers fly through the galaxy. A visit to the American Idol Experience impressed not just for its slick production values – from where I was sitting, it could’ve been the real TV show – but also for the talent of the contestants on stage.

I ended my tour at the Magic Kingdom, the park that to me, a person visiting without my kids, seemed the least interesting. But the polish here was the most fine, the smiles on singers the most gleaming, the lawn edging the most precise, the background music the most bubbly. The good news, thanks perhaps to some friends inside Disney: I did manage to meet Mickey. I even put on a set of ears.