Zimbabwe: 'Hitler was the perfect boss'; maybe Mugabe is too

Rosa Mitterer, a former maid in the employ of the mass murderer and Nazi Fuehrer Adolf Hitler (1931 to 1935) has finally decided to break her silence and share some of her wonderful memories with us. The fact that it has taken this 91-year-old woman a mere 63 years after World War II to reach this conclusion must not detract from her fascinating account of the other side of Adolf.

“He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.”

While some of you may be literally gob smacked by Frau Mitterers’ misty water-coloured memories of the way they were (I know, I know), I am not in the least bit surprised. Everybody has someone out there who believes that they have been misunderstood by the rest of the world, irrespective of how disgusting the individual’s conduct has been shown to be.

One man’s delightfully charming and fluffy fuehrer is another man’s genocidal maniac.

Anyhow, the above article on Frau Mitterer in the Daily Mail (UK), which is a must read by the way, got me thinking about how Hitler-lite from Zimbabwe will be remembered around 63 years from now.

Will there be some young adoring maid or cook, currently in his employ, who despite everyone else’s horror at the mere mention of the worst murderer of black Africans in history, fondly recalls the way Mugabe used to make them all laugh with his Gordon Brown “little dot” impersonations?

Will she tell an astonished planet how Bob came to her sister’s wedding in his open-necked trousers and there reminded them of his trip to Italy to tell the world about his country’s plight and, later back in their hotel room, how they all roared with laughter when he let on that for a bit of fun he would be refusing aid agencies access to the starving masses for a few months?

Laughed? It nearly killed them!

Will she brush away a tear as she explains how Bob’s Adam’s apple used to bob up and down from sheer delight as his armed forces drove all dissidents into foreign countries and murdered those who refused to go? How his eyes misted over when his security chiefs explained how they had tortured and butchered political opponents?

How, despite the fact that at the date of his death, millions of his citizens had perished from murder, starvation and neglect that “He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.”

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, ‘They are dead.’ Then add thereto,
‘Yet many a better one has died before.’
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Charles Sorley (World War I)