The most serious book about the Napoleon obsession was born in a German concentration camp. Early in 1940, the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl wrote an essay on how Bonaparte had been seen by successive generations of French historians and sent it off to a journal for publication. After the German invasion in May, although he had “not written a single word about Hitler”, the piece was returned to him by an editor nervous at implied parallels.
關(guān)于對(duì)拿破侖的癡迷最嚴(yán)肅的一本書(shū)誕生于一個(gè)德國(guó)集中營(yíng)。1940年初,荷蘭歷史學(xué)家皮特?蓋爾(Pieter Geyl)寫(xiě)了一篇關(guān)于波拿巴如何被法國(guó)歷史學(xué)家的后續(xù)世代所看待的文章,并將其投稿給一家期刊發(fā)表。在5月的德國(guó)入侵后,盡管他“沒(méi)有寫(xiě)過(guò)一句關(guān)于希特勒的字”,這篇文章被一位擔(dān)心春秋筆法的編輯退回給了他。