Douglas Dietrich Plagiarizes Military Historian Dr. Mark Felton

Douglas Dietrich continues to claim there are prominent historians and others who are "stealing" his work.  Of course, this is not true.  It is nothing more than his vain attempts to somehow manufacture credibility for himself.

In this case, Dietrich has chosen to accuse well known Military Historian, educator, and YouTube creator Dr. Mark Felton.

Mark Felton (born 1974) is a British author and historian of the Second World War.

Felton was born in Colchester, Essex, and received his education at the Philip Morant School. After completing a bachelor's degree and an MA, Felton gained a Ph.D. in history from the University of Essex in 2005.

Felton lectured in Shanghai, China between 2005 and 2014, latterly at Fudan University. He also worked as a volunteer for the Royal British Legion, organizing the annual Poppy Appeal in Eastern China, 2010–2014.^[3] Following a request from Prime Minister David Cameron, he assisted the British Consulate Shanghai in the rediscovery of the graves of four British soldiers killed by the Japanese in 1937,^[4][5][6] and was awarded a Royal British Legion Certificate of Appreciation.^[7][8]

Felton has appeared on television as a military history expert, including in the series Combat Trains (The History Channel),^[9] Top Tens of Warfare (Quest TV),^[10], and Evolution of Evil (American Heroes Channel).^[11] His book Zero Night, about an escape from a German prison camp, received much critical attention,^[12][13][14] and was the subject of the BBC Radio documentary Three Minutes of Mayhem.^[15] Zero Night has been highlighted to Essential Media for feature film development.^[16][17]

In 2016, Felton's book, Castle of the Eagles: Escape from Mussolini's Colditz, which concerns the escape of British generals from Vincigliata Castle near Florence in 1943, was identified for feature film development by Entertainment One.^[18] In 2017 Felton started his own YouTube channel, Mark Felton Productions, which explores numerous historic subjects.

Specifically, on August 6, 2020, Dietrich literally takes information from a video Felton had published earlier on the previous day (August 5) and presents the information as if it were his own.

Subsequently, in every following show, Dietrich alleges that Felton stole the information by listening to his Aug 6 Live stream and transcribing the information in order to quickly produce and publish a video the same day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XX9ptCNpik&t=22s

But Dietrich's lie doesn't make any sense. Because Felton had already published his work to YouTube during the day on August 5, more than 12 hours before Dietrich makes mention of the material in question at about 2 AM EST on August 6.  

Stupid Dietrich.

 

Dear Mr. Felton:

I am a former US Marine and amateur historian. I am writing to inform you that Douglas Duane Dietrich is publicly claiming you are plagiarizing his work.

Dietrich claims that your recent video "Hiroshima 1945 - The British Atomic Attack" was largely based on information he presented during a YouTube Livestream on August 5, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHDG1K1_9n8  Dietrich began making these allegations on August 12 and again on August 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11673&v=yb1hxdo26z8 (2:50:00 - 3:40:00).

Dietrich claims that during the night of August 5 at approximately 2 AM EST (7 AM GMT) you were listening to and transcribing the information he presented and then hastily created the video which you uploaded to YouTube on August 5.  

You had clearly already created and uploaded the YouTube video on August 5.  Given the time necessary for creating this type of video, you probably had been in the writing and production stages for a few days prior to it being published. But there are two details that Dietrich and his bunch of brainless buttholes did not consider or discuss.  The first is that Dietrich first makes mention of the Lancaster bombers approximately 7 hours into his show at around 2 am EST,  August 6th.  (Timestamp: 6:40:00 - 7:10:00)

This means it was 7 am in the UK on August 6 and you had already published your work the previous day. Therefore, Dietrich stole your information for his show sometime during the day of Aug 5 (since there were no other researchable sources of it at the time, as you have stated).

I have investigated Dietrich for nearly 4 years. First for his false claims of military service and subsequently for others involving his revisions of history. You can review that research on my little blog: https://rkcolejr.blogspot.com

Dietrich is a pathological liar and will defame or slander anyone who publicly challenges or exposes him.  It is my belief that Dietrich may further perpetuate this latest claim involving yourself and also include your research in a soon to be published book, claiming it to be his own. He intends to publish a series of books with Peter Moon (Vince Barbarcick) of "Sky Books". The first of which involves a Japanese victory in WW2. It will likely be published as fiction within the next month.

I am a subscriber and greatly appreciate your work. I have cited you on several occasions during my own research and was careful to provide you proper attribution. What Dietrich is doing is very wrong and I seek to bring it to your attention because I believe it requires a public response.

Respectfully,

Richard K Cole Jr
LCPL USMC 1984-90 (ret)