BBC reports that a book entitled ‘Too Naked for the Nazis’ has won an award as the oddest titled book of the year.

 

The title evokes imagery of the Third Reich’s ‘yes, no, yes’ approach to the free body movement, freikoerperkultur, or FKK as we know it on beach signs today. Sadly, it’s not, and we’ll come to its contents in a moment. I think, before I do that, you should be made aware that trailing in second place to this tome was…Reading from Behind, A cultural history of the anus.

 

This isn’t an April Fool joke, incidentally, these books exist and are available from Amazon.

‘Too Naked for the Nazis’ is the story of British vaudeville act Wilson, Keppel and Betty.

And the title of the book comes from, in the author’s words, the point when “a trio of comedy Egyptian sand dancers incurred the wrath of the Nazi high command by a blatant exposure of hairy legs.”

In reality, it was the dancing, in general, that outraged Joseph Goebbels, on the basis that it would undermine the moral fibre of Nazi youth, through the suggestiveness of Betty and the close proximity of Wilson and Keppel.

If nothing else, it shows the difficulties the Nazis were having with the body, with sexuality, with ‘moral fibre’ pre-war, a time when many Germans (including senior Nazis) were naturists.

Trine