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The Nazi Fox

Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Dec. 22, 1998, at 2:03 PM ET

Peter Hoffmann, professor of history at McGill University and an expert on German resistance to the Third Reich, tells Chatterbox that it's a complete non sequitur that Rommel never joined the Nazi party, because during the Nazi period "no soldier was allowed to join any party, by law." (Soldiers weren't allowed to vote, either.) So let's hear no more about how brave it was for the Desert Fox not to become a "Nazi."

(Thanks to Ron Rosenbaum, whose book Explaining Hitler is one of Chatterbox's Picks for 1998, for referring Chatterbox to Hoffmann.)

--Timothy Noah

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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