It wasn’t wholly unexpected, but actually seeing it was rather surreal.

Yes, the Daily Mail’s “Nazi story of the week”, and my parody of their morbid obsession with the Second World War in general and the Nazis in particular, has come full circle. In a classic hatchet job, the hack Peter Allen has engaged in that typically tabloid tactic of employing the lurid headline and churning out a load of tosh laced with inaccuracies, misspellings, quotes twisted out of context and – dare I say it – a healthy dollop of sweet-smelling bullshit.

It’s like Jon Sweeney’s hysterical propaganda show at the War and Peace show all over again; it goes without saying that there is sensationalist journalism and objective military history, and never the twain shall meet. After all, one is concerned with twisting the facts, while the other is simply concerned with the facts.

Given the overly dramatic title Nazi souvenirs on sale in London ahead of D-Day anniversary – yeah right, given that they have been selling for more than four years – there is too much rubbish to cover here. Instead, I’ll direct you to my rebuttal on the Panzer Ace site.

I have to admit that notoriety is not my bag; I’d rather be known as that fellow who has helped people learn more about this interesting subject.

For what it’s worth, I posted a comment to the article; I dare them to publish it.

A totally scurrilous article with small statements from what is a large historical resource taken and twisted out of context.

I have long believed that objective military history and tabloid journalism of this sort are not happy bedfellows: one deals with the truth, and the other serves to manipulate the truth in search of a lurid headline. And given the Mail’s rather bizarre obsession with the Nazis, I would have to admit that this non-story is something of a gifthorse.

I just hope that Mr Allen didn’t spoil that French police spokesman’s lunch to let him in on the secret that an army of military enthuiasts from around the world – as far afield as the US, Australia, India, China and Malaysia – are planning on hitting the beaches on June 6th.

If you have any journalistic integrity, you will publish this response, as well as a link to my rebuttal which can be found at http://www.panzerace.net/english/pz_dmr.asp

Though I am not holding my breath.

I think a few words need to be said on the creator of this ridiculous piece of drivel, Peter Allen. Frankly, the man cannot write for toffee and has research methods that would make Shaggy from Scooby Doo look like Columbo. One even has to wonder if Allen, the Mail’s “man in Paris”, can even speak French – in a recent article covering the story of a burglary at the house of the Italian actress Monica Bellucci and her husband Vincent Cassel, Allen wrote that the thieves had “got away with £80,000 in cash” – something that was immediately picked up on by Mail Online readers who naturally went on to ask why anyone would be so stupid as to leave such a large amount lying around.

Caroline, however – who is an even better bullshit detector than me – smelled something a little funny and decided to have a glance at what the French media had to say. Needless to say she discovered that Bellucci had not been burgled of £80,000 in cash, but various items of jewellery with an estimated value of 80,000 Euros -”Les voleurs ont fait main basse sur des bijoux estimés à 80.000 euros”. (Source: Le Parisien)

Rather unsurprisingly, Allen’s other obsession apart from scribbling pointless non-stories about Nazis has been the churning out of what can only be described as childish gossip surrounding French President Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Looking through Allen’s portfolio of articles, there are at least half a dozen stories about the poor woman, most of which I’d wager have nothing to do with the truth and everything to do with salacious gossip-mongering. OK, I’d agree that Carla should give up on her career as a chanteuse, but is it news?

The man is not just a hack, but a hack of the worst sort.