JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The design of the cover of this pamphlet attracted my attention straight-away--the back story to it makes this something else, entirely. It turns out that Le Chemin de la Mort was the death train of Communism, and their author, A(ndre) Chaumet, turns out to be a vicious racist and anti-Semite, and was a member/leader of a acronymic-potpourri of French nationalist/fascist groups. What is particularly eyebrow-raising is that among other things Chaumet was vice-president of the Association of Anti-Jewish Journalists (!); he was also the leader of the National Socialist People's Party which joined in 1936 with Francisme fascist league, and was a Petainist and collaborator, and accepted money from the Nazis to better his work in France; he was the editor of Petit catechisme anti-Juif and on and on, a very busy man. I can't find out what happened to Chaumet after the war, but I imagine whatever it was, it wasn't so great. So the "interesting" part of the design of the pamphlet falls away for me in the layers of discovery about the author, whose well of darkness seems to have no bottom.
One thing is for sure, though--Germany created an insatiably-wide path of death when it invaded the U.S.S.R. in June 1941 (Unternehmen Barbarossa)--and then that turned around, and the death path of Communism worked its way to Berlin, though Chaumet at this time had no idea about any of that.
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