An old newspaper clipping with a photo of the County Hotel in Nottingham, England was found recently in the police archive in Stuttgart, Germany. The photo is from 1936 and shows the upper part of the building, where two flags stand out: on the left the Union Jack, which has represented the United Kingdom for more than two centuries, and on the right the black swastika on a red background, which at the time represented Nazi Germany. BBC born he told the story: it seems to be the only time these two flags flew together over a UK building.
The photo published in a Nazi propaganda newspaper (Stuttgart police archive)
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In the years preceding the Second World War there were also other occasions – more or less official – in which the two flags found themselves close together. In 1938, for example, then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited Germany to discuss the delicate situation in Czechoslovakia with Adolf Hitler. The meeting was held in a large hotel near Bonn, on which the Nazi flag and the Union Jack were hoisted for the occasion.
Another example was a ceremony attended by former German and British soldiers, who in 1936 paraded together through the streets of London to the Whitehall Cenotaph, the war memorial of the First World War. During the parade two former soldiers respectively held the Union Jack and the swastika flag.
(H. Allen/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
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Unlike Chamberlain, Hitler did not visit countries with which he did not have good relations, or over which he could not extend his influence. Therefore he never went to the United Kingdom as Chancellor of Nazi Germany, an eventuality that would probably have led the place appointed to raise the Nazi banner, as is customary in diplomatic occasions of this type.
In fact, the newly discovered photo does not portray a moment of an official political visit, but of a meeting between the boxing club of the Stuttgart police and the equivalent of the Nottingham police. In those years there was a certain tension between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany, partly because the memory of the First World War was still alive, partly because of Hitler’s deemed dangerous attitude, which threatened to expand beyond its borders. and jeopardize peace in Europe. Despite this, however, relations between the two countries continued in various spheres of society and were often even more than cordial.
Sport was one of these: in 1935 the German football team met with the English one in London, at the White Hart Lane stadium, where the Nazi banner was raised for the occasion.
England v Germany 4th Dec 1935 notice the swaztika flag flying.
England won 3-0 #WHLThanks @Gmpips pic.twitter.com/68111gTkQw
— Spurs Nostalgia (@thfcnostalgia) May 26, 2014
In 1938 it was the England national team who went to play in Berlin, at the Olympiastadion. Before the game all the English players made the Nazi salute.
The visit of the Stuttgart boxer policemen was arranged to reciprocate an earlier visit from the Nottingham club. “We often forget how friendly relations between the UK and Germany were,” he told BBC Julie Gottlieb, professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield. “There was a real Anglo-German friendship. The two countries were trading partners until 1939. Having said that, I can’t think of another example where their flags were waved side by side in England. ‘
It was Tom Andrews, a local history researcher and Nottingham police, who recognized which building was in the photo. He knew about the history of the meeting between the two clubs, and asked a contact of his to do research in the Stuttgart archive. When he found the photo he sent it to Andrews, who recognized the County Hotel, demolished in 1975.
“I had heard tales of the two flags nearby, but I didn’t think there were any photos,” Andrews said. “It’s really creepy to see them side by side just three years before the war started.”
The photo was published in a Nazi propaganda newspaper, which did not miss the opportunity to tell the tributes of the English to Nazism. The article accompanying the photo described how local authorities openly praised Hitler and gave the Nazi salute when the German national anthem was played.
However, as Gottlieb pointed out, these behaviors weren’t all that strange at the time. Moreover, even in the United Kingdom there was a fascist party (BUF, British Union of Fascists), which however remained a minority political force even if noisy. Furthermore, the Nazi and Fascist symbology did not yet have the meanings attributed to it later: «The swastika did not have the same shocking value that we give it today. The establishment was inclined to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt, which goes by the name of appeasement. But after the “Crystal night” in November 1938, however, there began to be fewer and fewer people defending the Nazi regime ”.
– Read also: The man who had Adolf Eichmann captured
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have a good day mr diego gardaslik
Have a good day,good job sir.