Product Description

Hated and adored, trusted and feared, respected and scorned – public opinion has never been indifferent to Sir Oswald Mosley. A brilliant politician, Mosley turned his back on conventional party politics to found, in 1932, the British Union of Fascists.Over the intervening years until now, many have worked hard to guard Mosley’s reputation but Blackshirt casts new light on the man. The author reveals the true nature of Mosley's relationship with the Nazis, and challenges the prevailing view of Mosley’s descent into anti-Semitism. With ground-breaking research and extensive use of archive material Dorril uncovers a bizarre set of characters and behind-the-scenes friends and colleagues who supported Mosley – the crooks, swindlers, political and royal figures, secret agents, Nazi spies, lovers and ‘crackpots’. Blackshirt is an important and controversial new biography that overturns many of the accepted ideas about Oswald Mosley and British Fascism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186591 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Review
An exhaustively researched and provocative study (Sunday Times )

A deeply researched, scholarly and important book (Scotland on Sunday )

John Crosland, Sunday Times
‘An exhaustively researched and provocative study’

Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
'The authority of this book rests on thorough research’

Customer Reviews

Blackshirt
Sometime ago I read Nicolas Mosleys biographies on his father and was seeking a more indepth life of 'Tom' Mosley. I found it in Dorrils Blackshirt. A brilliant read and probably one of my favourite biographies. For a real insight of Mosley,his politics and those that surrounded him; this is the book. A cracking read.

Extensive but sullen
I was expecting a lot from this book because of the universally ravishing reviews that accompanied it but after the starting chapters that I found exhaustive and thought provoking, my interest started to wane as I realized that the author was engaged in a systematic and ruthless demolishing of the man Mosley and its ideas. I guess that a balanced biography should first of all try to take a detached stance from the person it tries to describe and not to judge it with the eyes of a XXI century political writer, devoid of even a minimum empathy with the man he purports to describe. I found that the modern aspects of dictatorships and their effort, totally failed as they proved, to review the basis of social and class relationships in the 30es were too quickly dismissed by the author that did not even admit that Jewish influence in the British policy was a major force in the shaping of Anglo German relationships and their tragic downfall. Since more than 60 years elapsed from those events I was led to believe that a more balanced and open approach to facts was desirable and formularic antifascism was at least partly overcome. Unfortunately this was not the case with this biography.

Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
In order to understand the Fascist phenomenom which Sir Oswald Mosley represented during the 1920/30's; it is first necessary to understand the historic circumstances into which he and his generation were born.

From the chaos of the Dark Ages, several 'Dynastic Families' had arisen in Europe. Like Rome's Patrician Families before them, these Great Houses had established themselves as hereditary rulers in various European regions which over time, became the nation states we recognise today; which they ruled/led with the assistance of a large and vigorous aristocracy. Although frequently at war with one another, these Great Houses were in fact very closely linked by religion, culture, and blood-ties resulting from centuries of inter-marriage.

With the discovery of the Americas in 1492, these Dynastic rulers immediately realized that compared to Europe's narrow boundries; Asia, Africa and the Americas are both vast and rich, possessing fertile land, massive mineral reserves and other treasures in abundance. Europe's kingdoms were soon raising armies, closely modelled on the Legions of Rome. As the Brutii, Jullii and Scipios had divided Europe between them, so their descendants divided the world. The Hapsburgs and Romanoffs marched East, while the Boubons and Hannoverians looked West across the Atlantic to the Americas, and South round Africa to the lands conquered by the fabled Alexander!

Equipped with the most modern gunpowder weapons, and officered by an aristocracy schooled from birth in the heroic deeds of Achilles, Leonidas, Caesar and Scipio; those European armies with their blackpowder muskets outfought even the hero's of legend! Mere handfuls of Spaniards shattered the stone-age Aztecs, and took South America for King Phillip. The Tsar's troops didn't stop until they reached the Pacific Ocean 6,000miles from Moscow, smashing all opposition on the way; while Great Britain's red coated legions took both the North American continent in the West, and the Indian sub-continent in the East, driving the French from both regions; an action which contributed to the fall of the House of Bourbon.

Therein lay the problem. European civilization had come to rule the world, but her system of government carried within it the same flaw that had destroyed her Roman mentor. The cost, savagery and duration of Napoleon's wars first exposed the deadly potential of that division, entrenched at the apex of the 'European World Order'. The sheer carnage of WWI; compounded by the loss of an entire generation of Europe's young aristocratic officer class, made clear to any who wished to see; that another industrially fuelled fracticidal war in Europe would so weaken even the victors, that Europe's world domination would be irretrevably destroyed.

This is the situation to which Sir Oswald Mosley returned in 1918. Along with huge numbers of those fortunate enough to survive WWI; he was determined to prevent that repetition. As he looked at the sadly inept crop of 'political leaders' the new 'democratic' elections had produced; he also knew these were men of straw compared to the patriotic young heros who had died in their thousands around him, in the killing fields of Flanders.

Ironically; at that time the answer was deceptively simple. To survive, European civilization had to unite; rather than fight once again. The unsurmountable question however, which eventually unleashed the armies once more, was equally simple:- Around which doctrine/leader should this unification take place?

There were three rival options:-
1. Marxist/Communism. A fiercely totalitarian, egalitarian ideology advocating the massacre of the previous aristocratic leadership, transfer of all property to the state, and the systematic stimulation of revolution worldwide; which would inevitably lead to the rebellion and loss of the Empires on which Europe's industrial/military power rested.
2. Nazism/Fascism. A totalitarian, elitist/Darwinist ideology, advocating militarism, rapid expansion of Europe's population and industrial/military strength, the preservation of private property/empires and expulsion of Europe's highly influencial Jewish minority.
3. Capitalist/Democracy. A pluralistic, materialistic non-totalitarian ideology, in which Europe's industrial production would be used to raise living standards, not in Europe; but throughout the woefully poverty stricken/exploited empires. These would eventually be given self-rule, but continue in reality to be controlled by financial leverage and puppet governments.

Considering the social background from which he came, can anyone really blame Sir Oswald for the choice he made? A choice which the majority of Europe's aristocracy, including the English heir to the throne, strongly approved at that time. Churchill himself, also an aristocrat; was virtually ostracised by his peers for championing the anti-Nazi Capitalist ideology, advocated mainly by America's highly influential Jewish business community. This is made clear in:- Churchill: The Wilderness Years DVD.

I purchased this book expecting to gain a deeper understanding of Sir Oswald, his Blackshirt movement, and even perhaps how his personal dislike of 'Der Fuhrer' caused Hitler to cut/end his clandestine funding of the British Union of Fascists. What I got was subtle but systematic character assasination, reminicent of Russian/Stalinist authors writing about Trotsky; with whom Sir Oswald holds a comparably controversial position in British history. It also failed to explain clearly that Churchill's Government had him jailed, largely from fear of the popularity of his anti-war message even in 1940.Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism