Hitler and the 'unmanly' game of cricket

Hilarious blog from Ben Macintyre at The Times on the discovery that the Fuhrer apparently played a game of cricket against British POWs.

"Adolf Hitler played cricket. He raised his own cricket team to play some British prisoners of war during the First World War, then declared the sport “unmanly” and tried to rewrite the laws of the game.

"The Führer’s First XI sounds like a Spike Milligan joke, but this small nugget of history is true. In all the millions of words written about Hitler, his telling brush with cricket seems to have escaped the attention of historians"

Hitler, presumably soundly thrashed by the POWs, then apparently proceeded to call the sport 'unmanly' and suggest the game be played without pads and with a larger, harder ball.

"Hitler, it seems clear, was simply unable to comprehend a game as subtle and nuanced as cricket. He wanted speed and violence. Not for him the gentle thwack of leather on willow, but rather the crunch of a harder, larger ball against unprotected shins. His rewritten rules for the game attempt to blend cricket and blitzkrieg: blitzkricket.

What would he have made of those pansy baseball players?