Venturing into Podcast land

Over the past six months, along with my amazing producer Sam Loy, I have been recording a podcast.

It tells, in truncated form, the story of the German resistance to Hitler, and calls on the research I have done for my book TREASON.

The process has been fascinating for someone like me, who did not know what was involved. 

First, the scripts had to be written, edited, debated, settled.

Then, we recorded. We did this for a morning a week over about 3 months.

With the words recorded, Sam would work on the sound edit, which included writing music, sourcing sound effects and music, mixing – and a lot more that I don’t understand. 

He would send a first draft, and I would provide feedback, and then a final draft would emerge.

I had to select a podcast platform, and after research I chose Buzzsprout. I’ve been very happy with their service. With their help, I am now on all the hosting platforms.

As well as sound, a podcast needs graphics, and I engaged my friend and design guru Mike Vernon – known for his MakeBooks Australia business – to produce artwork for the podcast. He has done a great job, producing generic artwork as well as artwork for each episode.

Selling a podcast is pretty hard. I had great help from my daughter Georgia, who researched an approach to this, and filmed and edited a number of film clips for promotion.

We released a trailer in late June, and then on 6 July dropped the first three episodes – 1, 2 and 3. The fourth went out on 13 July, and they’ll be once a week from now on.

The 80^th anniversary of the July plot is upon us, and this seems a fitting tribute to mark the occasion.

launch of Treason

Thanks to Georgia for this clip of the recent launch of Treason.

 

The great people at Northern Books are organising a launch for Treason.

It will be at the Taproom, Shedshaker Brewing, at the Mill in Castlemaine, on Tuesday 10 January at 6 pm.

I will be in conversation with the wonderful Helen Symon KC.

You will need to book your attendance here.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Treason is now available around the world

Last year, during the pandemic, the hard copy of Treason was published here in Australia. 

However, postage costs made it awkward to distribute this internationally. 

This has now been sorted, and Treason is now available internationally through Blurb.

If you live in Australia, the Blurb version will not be cheaper, but anywhere else, it is.

Incidentally, I was very pleased with the endorsements given on the back cover!

I was banned by Facebook

 

On 20 August 1944, Count Schwerin von Schwanenberg was brought before the Nazi ‘People’s Court’, charged with treason. He was unshaven and wore no tie. Prominent in the July plot against the Nazi regime, he knew he was about to hang. 

When Nazi judge Roland Freisler angled for an apology, Schwerin would not be cowed, but spoke out about the ‘many murders’ of the Nazi regime ‘at home and abroad’ – drawing Freisler’s apoplectic ire. Hoping they would obtain useful propaganda footage, the Nazis filmed this exchange, and the film has survived – a powerful example of a person speaking truth to power.

 

I posted this clip on Facebook, with some background information, as part of a regular series of posts promoting my book Treason, which recounts the German resistance to Hitler.

 

I have posted the clip a few times before. 

 

This time I received a notification from Facebook that my post was blocked, because it violated Facebook’s community standards. 

 

I was plunged into the Kafkaesque realm of Facebook’s processes.

 

The notification stated ‘this is because you previously posted material that violated Facebook’s community standards’. The previous week, Facebook had notified me of such a breach, but when I asked for a review, they overturned this and apologised for getting it wrong. According to Facebook’s retraction, there was no previous breach. But there was no way for me to point out this mistake to Facebook.

 

The notification set out Facebook’s standards – all laudable – but did not say which standard was breached, nor how. 

 

Despite failing to specify what was wrong, Facebook required me to select from a menu my reason for saying that the post should not be blocked. This is like someone on trial being told to defend themselves when they are not told the charge.

 

Despite this absurdity, I asked for a review and marked the option ‘The post does not violate Facebook’s community standards’.

 

Facebook then advised that they try to have a person review the decision, but could not guarantee this, because of staff shortages due to Covid. 

 

Really? There are plenty of people they could hire to do this task, even during Covid. It’s a task that could readily be performed online. The excuse was specious.

 

Having asked for a review, I received a prompt response. Facebook had reviewed the post (evidently by its algorithms, not by a person, who would scarcely have had time to watch the video clip and read the post). Facebook stated that they had reviewed the post and confirmed that the post violated Facebook’s community standards. Again, they did not say why.

 

One thing is clear: Facebook’s algorithms are incapable of distinguishing an anti-Nazi post from a Nazi post.

 

Facebook then asked me whether the communication from them had been helpful. When I marked that it had not, they thanked me and said they used responses to improve their service.

 

Facebook notified me that there was a right of appeal to Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’. 

 

This ‘right’ of appeal is illusory. According to Facebook’s own figures, in 2021, the Oversight Board received over a million appeals, but the Board published just 17 decisions, overturning Facebook 11 times. Opting for an appeal was like buying a lottery ticket.

 

Even though a waste of time in terms of reversing the decision, I decided to lodge an appeal anyway. When I tried to click on the link, nothing happened – just the wheel of death as the attempt to log in timed out. I did this several times. Even getting to the Oversight Board was blocked.

 

This was not the first time I’ve had trouble with Facebook’s ‘standards’, with the same opaque processes.

 

Over several years I built up an earlier page promoting my book. I paid Facebook money to promote it, and the page grew to have over 11,000 followers. Then Facebook closed it down (and the linked Instagram feed), without any recourse, saying it violated their community standards, and again failing to say which standards, or how it breached them. Just before publication of my book, I lost all the investment of time and money made in building up this following.

 

As I emailed Facebook (of course, there was no reply) the page 

 

did not violate Facebook’s published community standards. Nor does it violate community standards as any reasonable person would understand them. The content, dealing with the bravery of those who stood up to the Nazi regime, usually at the cost of their lives, is entirely in accordance with the highest community standards.

 

It is important that the events of the Nazi regime, the mass murders which have given us the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’, are widely discussed and known. The efforts of those who struggled against that regime should also be part of our shared discourse.

 

I can’t speak truth to Facebook, because they are not listening. Bizarrely, the business takes a perverse pride in its refusal to support its customers. Who knows how Facebook’s processes are intended to work – but it is clear that this platform is not a safe place to invest. It is only capable of dumbing down our shared discourse and, as a result, diminishing our community.

The Best Books on the Plot to Kill Hitler

 I was asked to compile this list on Shepherd.

See what you think.

Reoccupation of the Rhineland

On the morning of 7 March 1936, Hitler’s foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, convened a meeting of the French, British, Italian and Belgian ambassadors. He proposed a twenty-five-year non-aggression pact, including demilitarisation on both banks of the Rhine and limitations on air forces of all parties.

At noon that day, Hitler announced that Germany would reoccupy the Rhineland – the area west of the Rhine and bordering France and the low countries which had been demilitarised since the Versailles Treaty. By then, German columns were already streaming across the border of the zone. Hitler bamboozled the western leaders by announcing that the occupation was purely symbolic.

German troops march into the Rhineland

Hitler’s generals knew Germany was not ready for military confrontation with the major powers. Had there been the slightest show of force from Britain or France, they would have forced Hitler to withdraw. In the end, apart from solemn hand wringing and protests from the Western Powers, nothing was done.

Hitler commenced fortifying this area, leaving him free to pursue other adventures to the east – and providing him a focal point for attack more than 150 kilometres closer to Paris. It was from the Rhineland that the German attack on France would develop most powerfully in 1940.

Hitler had shown that the western powers would not stand against determined action. He greatly enhanced his prestige and that of the Nazi regime. To the world he proclaimed: ‘All Germany’s territorial ambitions have now been satisfied.’

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler

Melitta von Stauffenberg

Melitta von Stauffenberg: 9 January 1903 — 8 April 1945

In 1937, Melitta Schiller, who was of Jewish descent, married Claus von Stauffenberg’s older brother Alexander.

A highly regarded test pilot, Melitta’s ability saved her and her family from the Holocaust.

Aware of Claus’s proposed coup, she was asked to fly Claus to and from the Wolf’s Lair – but she did not have access to a suitable aircraft.

Following the Plot’s collapse she was arrested under Sippenhaft (kin vengeance), but released in September 1944 to continue her test flight duties. The Nazis thereafter required her to be referred to as Gräfin (Countess) ‘Schenk’.

Melitta played a key role flying between Claus’s wife Nina (pregnant in hospital and in custody) and the various camps where members of the Stauffenberg family were held, keeping them in touch with each other and bringing them food and other necessities. She found the children in the orphanage in Bad Sachsa, but also brought Nina the ominous news that they were being transferred to Buchenwald.

Unknown to either, the children were unable to make the journey to the concentration camp due to bomb damage to the transport infrastructure.

Her husband Alexander was in Athens when the July plot took place. The two were able to speak by telephone before they were arrested, but Alexander was not released until the end of the war - narrowly surviving Himmler's instructions that he be shot.

On 8 April 1945, Melitta’s slow moving unarmed trainer aircraft was attacked by a US fighter. She was able to land the aircraft but died soon after from her wounds.

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler

Hans von Herwarth

Captain Hans-Heinrich (‘Johann’ or ‘Johnny’) Herwarth von Bittenfeld

14 July 1904 – 21 August 1999

Herwarth was a lawyer and economist who entered the German Foreign Office in 1927, and served in several important foreign posts, including the German embassies in Paris and, from 1931 to 1939, Moscow.

He worked actively against the Nazis, and in particular, along with Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg (the German ambassador to Moscow - and not to be confused with conspirator Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg), urged foreign powers in the late 1930s not to give in to Hitler’s territorial demands. He gave important information to foreign diplomats:

• He kept the British informed on the progress of negotiations between the Germans and Soviets in 1939
• On 24 August 1939, the day after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, he gave the full text of its secret protocol, concerning, amongst other things, the division of Poland, to US diplomats
• He warned the Allies of the impending launch of Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union).

He married his wife Elisabeth in 1935 and they had one daughter.

After the war began, he joined the army where he served in staff posts, mostly in the east. He helped convey explosives for the resistance.

His grandmother was Jewish. He was a cousin by marriage of Claus von Stauffenberg, and worked with him compiling reports of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the occupied east.

He survived the war, and was the first West German ambassador to London. He was later ambassador to Rome. He served in a number of prominent positions, including as president of the Goethe Institute from 1971 – 1977.

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler