I think that Hitler is a very bad person. I don't care which music he listened to or what his favorite brand of soup was.

Ferd Burfel, barcelona, Spain

I thought "Fuehrer" was one of the few German words practically every Englishman knew how to spell, but no...

Henrik Nielsen, Copenhagen, Denmark

I can say without a doubt that I am absolutely tired of hearing about Hitler. No one is trotted out into the convenient selective memory than Adolf Shick-. The point of this article is not musical at all. Now we're supposed to psychologize about a dictator 62 years gone and his musical tastes? Don't we have more immediate concerns? What's next, a discussion on how he ruined that mustache style forever?

Rich Hill, Prospect Park, PA / USA

Hitler sat listening to his records while millions died. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley listened to "The Little Drummer Boy" while they brutally tortured and murdered a little girl. That is why it has never been played on the wireless since. The Police, Press and others heard the tape they made. The SS liked to listen to classical music by the gas chambers. It is strange how all the early film of Adolf Hitler holding a whip, until he was advised to dispense with it, as it might give the wrong impression, has been airbrushed out of all the war series on televison . Hindley loved her dog. So did Hitler, but note how Blondie cringes in fear as the great dog-lover bends to pat his pet. Yet another programme on TV, where lip-readers interpret the banalities of Heydrich, Himmler and Hitler, appears to be attempting to show that these monsters were just ordinary folk who loved nature, their pet dogs and music. If music be the food of death, play on....
Peter Kinsley
London

peter kinsley (www.peterkinsley.com), london, en gland

While I prefer the "oldies" once in awhile I do enjoy a rap tune. I imagine Hitler was no different.

Murph, Madisonville, USA/KY

The right spelling is "Führer" (=leader).

Yours sinecerely

Gerhard Schmidt, Hambiurg, Germany

Hitler's interest in the classics is hardly newsworthy. Had he been a closeted fetish of pop music then that would have been interesting. As someone once said, dog bites man ain't news, but man bites dog is!

Maxadolf, Epsom, UK

Are you sure, that the discs are labelled Föhrerhqs instead of Führerhqs, which would make more sense, actu***y.
In Germany Föhrer is used to imitate Hitler's ridiculous accent.

Ansgar Hüls, Trier, Germany

Lately many fake and pure fantasy Nazi “relics” have been showing up out of Russia and it’s become quite an industry. Many are actually digging up Soldiers Graves searching for Nazi Items.There’s a lot of Money involved in WW2 relics so …I’m sure we’ll be hearing of many more unbelievable Russian “finds” in the future.

MP, NY, USA

One thing left unmentioned here is the revelation that Hitler had excellent taste in music.

One can scarcely avoid Jewish musicians in a serious collection from the early half of the 20th Century. Like the old joke headline "Man Bites Dog," this story of Hitler's listening to precisely two Jewish musicians (Huberman and Schnabel) in a rather large collection indicates nothing, except perhaps that Hitler especially valued the works played.

Also interesting how very, very interested the Times and presumably its readers are in "Der Fuhrer." Has it occurred to anyone else that if Hitler were magically to come back from the dead, all Europe and everyone north and south of the Thames (save a few Labor cranks and the Jewish Union) would worship him as the biggest celebrity ever? Even bigger than Beckham, perhaps.

Jonathan L. Seagull, Johnson City, USA/TN

Surely hitler would have at least one Bruckner piece in his top 5.

Kevin foy, Dublin, Ireland

The German word for leader is Führer and not Föhrer as written many times in Roger Boyes' article.

Barry McGarty, Thun, Switzerland

Hi

Who says the documentary about reading Hitler's lips was a spoof? Channel 5 showed it twice. Even they aren't that daft.

k Carton, birmingham, uk

Hitler's favourite composer was actually Anton Bruckner.
As befits an Austrian.

L.Stewart, Cranbrook, Kent

Note that is's Führer - not Föhrer. The later term discribes inhabitants of the Island Föhr.

Nit Pick, København, Denmark

On the basis of what information a list of "Fuhrer’s favourites Five discs that Hitler wanted to take with him" is compiled?

k, Stanford , usa

To gain a good perspective on Hitler's artistic outlook, see "Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics" by British author Frederick Spotts. To my knowledge this is the only trustworthy account of Hitler from an artistic point of view, a subject that is rarely discussed. The book analyzes Hitler's taste in music and also the "leniency" he afforded Jews who were artistic. It's all quite surprising.

Robert Griffin, Thomasville, GA

Surely people didn't think he sat around listening to the Horst Wessel Marching song in his spare time.

...well maybe.

jame dibiasio, hong kong,

Heinz Tietjen was a director, e.g. in Bayreuth and Berlin, but not the conducter of the Flying Dutchman overture. And,I'm sorry, its not "The Föhrer", its "The Führer".

john, berlin,

Beautiful irony! How often we learn that those who would restrict the freedom of others are hypocrites in their private life. Hitler obviously had a great capacity for duplicity in all things, including what music to listen to.

Stephen, Montreal, Canada

Quite an interesting story.
It shows that, contrary to what a lot of people in the world and especially in Europe and Euro-America seem to think about the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, they were more just evil and vicious (Which of course they were also), namely the also people living the paradoex of every humans life.

By the way: The word "Föhrer" does not exist in german - apart from jokes about Hitlers pronunciation of his own title, which of course was "Führer", with "ü" / "ue".

Jan-Matthis Weng, Luetjenburg,

Oh yeah. The likelihood of this being true is very small, and anyway it could never be properly proved. On the other hand, there will be plenty of people who knew Hitler’s taste in music and this at least should have been recorded. The problem is believing what is true from the numerous lies put out by British propaganda.

Henry Percy, London, UK

So Hitler was a liar too. Who would have guessed?

tomasz, Sydney, Australia

The hole story I think it's quite normal, since every body knows what Adolf Hitler was: a Mad Man. I mean readers and the hole worlds needs no more facts to accept this. What he has done is enough. But even great German composers sufferd in a certain way from this enormeous adoration. We know that the music of Wagner for instance was not performed in many communist countrys.

Dorian, Tirana, Albania

"Wenn das der Föhrer wüsste!" The "Gröfaz" was always
out of tune with music (and politics), but it is still very
"schröcklich" to see this apparent inability to master German.

Stephen Back, Monte Carlo, Monaco

Hitler never considered the Russians 'subhuman' as a whole. This vicious language was used as propaganda to motivate German soldiers to be more hateful and aggressive towards the Communist giant. Hitler's view was that the Russians were basically Aryans, but racially 'contaminated' by Mongol invasions. Russian intellectuals like Tchaikovsky were considered by Hitler to be part of the 'pure Aryan' racial aristocracy in Russia. Hitler even recognised talent in Jews, and had strongly praised Mahler's conducting of Wagner operas when he lived in Vienna.

Mark La Vardera, Reading, Berkshire

The "Föhrer" eh. I wonder who he was.

Dave, Washington D.C., USA

I'm surprised by the Beethoven choices: op. 78 is an unusually subdued, lyrical piece with a jocular finale; whilst op. 90 is all Sturm und Drang with a long Schubertian final movement. I would have guessed "Appasionata" and "Symphony no. 5."

Paul Kelley, Columbia, SC, USA

It's typical of dictators like Herr Schicklgruber aka Hitler, that they kind of deny to others what they furtively enjoy and derive benefit from. The music world is indebted to those great Jewish virtuoso musicians who were bearers of the classical musical tradition and it would be all the poorer without names like Rubinstein, Scnabel, Horszowski, Gilels, Milstein, Haskill, Oistrakh, Hess, Heifetz, Kreisler, Cherkassky, Horowitz, Serkin, Starker, Tureck, Mahler, Schoenberg, Horenstein, Solti,
Menuhin,Bernstein, Koussevitzky, Reiner, Klemperer, Walter, Ormandy, Szell, Dorati, de Sabata, Tintner.....to name but a few. Even Hitler's favourite, Wagner, the anti-semite was thought to have Jewish blood. In the book 'Mendelssohn is on the Roof', a Nazi officer in occupied Prague was instructed to remove only the statue of Mendelssohn from the concert hall and not the others. He ordered his workers to pull down the one with the biggest nose. They duly removed the statue of Richard Wagner!

SD Goh, PJ, Malaysia

Hardly suprising:
1. The Nazis - with Hitler's full knowledge - assisted with the departure to Palestine of between 10-20,000 German Jews - whose money in German was converted into goods which were sent to Palestine. Approximately $20 million (in 1930's value) was moved from Germany to Israel which assisted in the construction of some factories etc. This departure of the Jews was in large measure stopped by the British who stopped all immigration to Palestine in 1938 - nevertheless apparently continued up until 1940. Therefore Hitler would have been perfectly aware that Huberman had created the orchestra. It is well known that most Jews did not want to leave either Germany or Poland for the wilds of Palestine where they would be lodged in tents. They refused the offers of the Nazis to resettle elsewhere. They paid the price as is well known.

George, Paris,

"Föhrer"? Goodness, this is living proof of the horrible state of foreign languages in the UK...

mel, London, UK

Well, it's less than a year since that spoof documentary (treated as genuine by at least Channel 5) about Hitler's home movies and the "lip-reading computer". Producing surprising "revelations" about Hitler is evidently still such a profitable industry that we should apply a healthy suspicion to any of them that don't fit what we already know....

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

This is once again the portrait of an individual mainly,
absolutely selfish because he was in any way respectless
of anyone else. Jews' and Russians' life and dignity? No matter, their music was however something he could enjoy.
Let's be aware, this kind of events and people might be not
yet over.

Antonio Sinigaglia, Padova, Italy