Book launch: -"The Genesis of National Socialism"

national | history and heritage | event notice Tuesday October 16, 2012 21:20 by Jack Lane - Athol Books

Book Launch of: The Genesis of National Socialism By T. Desmond Williams

The Genesis Of National Socialism is the magnum opus of Thomas Desmond Williams. He wrote it as a student at University College Dublin. A few years later he was made Professor of Modern History at UCD. But he never as Professor issued a work comparable for substance and quality with what he had written as a student

The present work covers the formation, under the guidance of Prussia, of a single German state, by bringing together the scores of German petty states into a voluntary union. Unfortunately, however, it does not deal at all with what is said to be its subject—the formation of the Nazi Party. Nevertheless it was awarded an Honours MA Degree. As something produced within Irish academia, it is beyond comparison. It stands alone as a giant fragment that came from nowhere. Williams served in British Intelligence before being appointed Professor of History at UCD. In a comment on Williams' work, Brendan Clifford describes the libel action brought against Williams by the wartime Irish Ambassador to Spain, Leopold Kerney, over allegations of collaboration with the Nazis made by Williams, apparently on the basis of what he thought he knew from his work as a British Intelligence operative.

Clifford also contrasts the way Germany united itself with the way England constructed and maintained the United Kingdom.