Words of Waldman

At home with Hitler: fall-out and feeback

Was slightly deluged with mails following the Hitler piece in yesterday's Guardian. If you're interested in what I found out and where things stand, read on...

Victory over Hitler....

IPC have finally admitted that they can't claim copyright over the scans of Homes and Gardens' November 1938 edition - so I'm delighted to restore the album to its full glory.
I can't claim any credit for this. It goes down to The Wyman Institute who presented IPC with this petition.
They then press released it, and IPC then released this statement.
Life's too short to go over the whole incident in detail. But, bearing in mind what we now know to be the true position on rights, I'm less than delighted about how IPC reacted to my initial request to them.

As featured in Word magazine

At the peak of all the furore over the At Home with Hitler scans, (but before I found out the truth about the photos) the very nice people at Word magazine asked me to write about the whole thing. Which I did (frankly, it was a bit like being asked to dance by someone you'd always fancied). Anywa, they've very kindly let me scan the article in and put it on here without threatening to sue me/ clap me in irons/ send the boys round/ cancel my subscription. So here it is. I suggest you subscribe in appreciation of their generosity.

Official: Homes and Gardens has no copyright over this photo

Like to know why? Read on..

Five minutes of fame

Both the New York Times, and Wired News have written about the Hitler scans. All rather surprising really.
I think it's rather unlikely that I'll be hearing back from IPC...although I keep thinking that one day Isobel and I will meet up somewhere and we'll get along famously.
I don't know...for a couple of years I blog away in a quiet little backwater of the blogsphere, barely registering among the Technorati, writing my all matter of things to a daily audience barely big enough to fill a minibus. Then all I do is scan in a few old magazine pages and put them up...and before you know it...global media exposure.
Anyway, I'll enjoy my five minutes of (sort of) fame while it lasts. Normal service will be resumed shortly.
Update
-Interesting debate on Plastic.com (including some rather unfair criticism of me, and a reminder that Time magazine made Hitler 'Man of the Year' in 1938).
- Metafilter on the whole affair
- Thread on Joi Ito's blog, including this quote from a Peter Gruits.

History has many shades and colors, we should want to shine as much light as possible on all elements of history, good and evil. How will we ever be able to develop any true sense of judgement when we are afraid to face or discuss the past.

- Free republic mirror, including some information on the author Ignatius Phayre
- Israeli mirror site
- Post and comments on Samizdata.net
- I don't know who Jeff Rense is, but he's sending me a lot of traffic

Hitler...my part in his download

I've taken the scans down. But I think they need an official online home. Here's the mail I sent to Isobel McKenzie Price

Dear Isobel.

Many thanks for your note. Apologies for not replying sooner, I've been away for a long weekend.
I've taken the scans down this morning. I understand your issues and the principles of copyright, but I believe that as:

- I'm not making any money out of this

- I'm not depriving you of any money

- no-one can make any money from the scans (too poor quality), and

- no-one has said or inferred anything damaging about Homes and Gardens

...you're being slightly over the top.

These are interesting and important historical documents. As you are clearly aware. They should be widely available for as many people as possible to learn from them. That they can be, instantly, is one of the great beauties of the internet.

I'm afraid as well, that simply getting them taken off my site is unlikely to be the end of it. These are digital files. They have been seen by thousands of people. It is incredibly easy for people to copy them and put them up on their site anywhere in the world. As of now, I have no idea how many versions there might be on the web.

My suggestion to you is this: you should either find or provide an official online home for these scans, where they can be made available with all the copyright information made clear. If not your own site, there might be other online publishers interested.

I will be happy to provide you with a much clearer set of scans for you to use.

That way will satisfy both our requirements, namely: to keep them within the public view, and within the law.
You will also seem like a very benign and enlightened media owner. And there can be no harm in that.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Simon

At home with Hitler...the end is nigh

3 OCT UPDATE It turns out Homes and Gardens don't have copyright over the photos.

The editor Homes and Gardens, Isobel McKenzie-Price, asked me to take down the At Home with Hitler spread.

Dear Mr Waldman

Thank you for your email of 2nd September and for the link to your website. While I personally do appreciate the spirit in which you sent it to me, as a representative of IPC Media I am concerned to prevent the unauthorised reproduction of IPC's material, whenever it was originally published. This piece, text and photographs is still in copyright and any unauthorised reproduction is an infringement of copyright. In the circumstances I must request you to remove this article from your website. Sorry that I had to take this stance, but am sure you will appreciate the legal situation.

Yours Sincerely

Isobel McKenzie-Price

Unfortunately, I am away at the moment, and can't get proper web access, I can't remove it from the site...it will be going down soon. I hope no-one mirrors it in the meantime.

Hitler and I

At home with Hitler, the scans I made of the 1938 Homes and Gardens feature on Hitlers lovely new mountain home, has gone ballistic.
Following links from WhatReallyHappened, and MilkandCookies, it is now doing about 10 times as many page impressions as my weblog..and, frankly, I'm going to have to mirror it on some other servers to save myself from busting the Typepad bandwidth allowance.
The magazine actually belongs to my father-in-law. He has kept it for fifty years because it has a photo story of a house that his father designed. He never realised that the Hitler article was in it. In fact, he was rather shocked when I flicked through the magazine and found it.
I'm slightly nervous about putting out there...as you never know what fans Hitler related content might find online. I was particularly nervous to find out that revisionist historian David Irving (yeugh) has put a copy of it up on his site (without asking my permission of course).
When I have time, I'm also going to get in touch with Homes and Gardens...to see whether they have any record of it.
As a historical document though, it is fascinating. We hear a lot about how the British upper and upper middle classes felt that 'that Hitler chap had some very good ideas'...but it's only when you see it in this almost comically fawning form that you realise how someone who can seem utterly abhorrent with hindsight can appeal to people at the time.
Hence, at various times we have supported Saddam and Apartheid and Ceaucescu to name but a few.