I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945

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The second volume of Victor Klemperer's searing diary, kept in secret during the 12 years he suffered under the Nazi regime, covers the period from 1942 to 1945. The humiliations visited on even such "privileged" Jews as Klemperer (whose wife was Aryan) grew increasingly severe, with house searches, arbitrary arrests, and brutal beatings becoming virtually routine. The 60-year-old historian is forced to shovel snow despite his heart condition; hunger gnaws at him as rations are mercilessly cut. Yet he clings to an intellectual life, continuing his reading and making notes on the lies and obfuscations of official Nazi discourse that would become his postwar masterpiece, Lingua Tertii Imperii. "The Russians, who have only just been annihilated, are tremendous and quite inexhaustible opponents," he notes sardonically after reading a mendacious fascist article in 1942. His lengthy account of his escape with his wife from Dresden after the Allied bombings of 1945 unforgettably captures the chaos of World War II's final days and the mixed feelings of a Jew who could never wholeheartedly gloat over the defeat of the nation that had persecuted him. Above all, his unflinching depiction of human nature and society in extremis amply justifies his cherished belief that even the Nazis "cannot prevent language from testifying to the truth." --Wendy Smith

Book Description

"The best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich."
-Amos Elon, The New York Times

Victor Klemperer risked his life to preserve these diaries so that he could, as he wrote, "bear witness" to the gathering hor-ror of the Nazi regime. The son of a Berlin rabbi, Klemperer was a German patriot who served with honor during the First World War, married a gentile, and converted to Protestantism. He was a professor of Romance languages at the Dresden Technical Institute, a fine scholar and writer, and an intellectual of a somewhat conservative disposition.

Unlike many of his Jewish friends and academic colleagues, he feared Hitler from the start, and though he felt little allegiance to any religion, under Nazi law he was a Jew. In the years 1933 to 1941, covered in the first volume of these diaries, Klemperer's life is not yet in danger, but he loses his professorship, his house, even his typewriter; he is not allowed to drive, and since Jews are forbidden to own pets, he must put his cat to death. Because of his military record and marriage to a "full-blooded Aryan," he is spared deportation, but nevertheless, Klemperer has to wear the yellow Jewish star, and he and his wife, Eva, are subjected to the ever-increasing escalation of Nazi tyranny. The distinguished historian Peter Gay, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote that Klemperer's "personal history of how the Third Reich month by month, sometimes week by week, accelerated its crusade against the Jews gives as accurate a picture of Nazi trickery and brutality as we are likely to have...a report from the interior that tells the horrifying story of the evolving Nazi persecution...with a concrete, vivid power that is, and I think will remain, unsurpassed."

This volume begins in 1942, the year of the Final Solution, and ends in 1945, with the devastation of Hitler's Germany. Rumors of the death camps soon reach the Jews of Dresden, now jammed into their so-called Jews' houses, starved, humiliated, subject day and night to Gestapo raids, and terrified as, one by one, their neighbors are taken away. Klemperer is made to shovel snow, is assigned to do forced labor in a factory, is taunted on the streets by gangs of boys, but his life is spared, thanks to the privileged status of Jews married to Aryans. In the final days of the war, however, even Jews in mixed marriages are summoned to report for transport to "labor camps," which Klemperer now knows means death, and that his turn will soon come. He is saved by the great Dresden air raid of February 13, 1945; he and his wife survive the fiery destruction of their city and make their way to the Allied lines. "In the enthralling and appalling final pages of this miraculous work," wrote Niall Ferguson in the London Sunday Telegraph, "Klemperer all too soon encounters the deliberate amnesia of the defeated Germany: 'What is "Gestapo"?' declares a Breslau woman he encounters in May 1945. 'I've never heard the word. I've never been interested in politics, I don't know anything about the persecution of the Jews.'" Says Ferguson, "Of all the books I have read on this subject, I find it hard to think of one which has taught me more."

Customer Reviews:

Final Journey to freedom.......2007-09-03

One should read this book only after the first volume covering the years 1933-41. The story of Victor & Eva's survival of detention in the Jews' house, the Dresden bombing and subsequent wanderings stunned me. But Victor's courage in continuing his secret diary for 12 years comes through - as does his humanity ad personal growth.

The diary jotting sryle means you pick it up and read a section at a time, but you will most likely be drawn into finishing it within a short time.

Great Book.......2007-02-09

And I will get the other years of this author's diary. This is not a fast paced WWII battle book; this is the diary of a poor soul who had to live through every moment of a terrible regime, to endure even more when he thought he'd reached his limit. If you're interested in what it was like to live day to day in Hitler's Germany (as a Jew or a gentile)--to understand what it was like to watch it begin and grow and eventually implode--this is an excellent read. I would say it is for those deeply interested in the psychology of the times; not a passing interest. I'll get the other books and read them in order of the years they cover. I really want to understand how the Third Reich could ever BE.

A Courageous, One-of-a-Kind View Inside Nazi Germany.......2006-07-04

This is actually the second volume of Klemperer's diaries, published in two volumes. I highly recommend that you buy both volumes as a set and read from the beginning how a bureaucratic mindset advanced towards ultimate evil.

In the end, Klemperer's diary doesn't fully answer the haunting question, "How could it have happened?" But you will find some definitive answers here to questions that Holocaust scholars have debated over the years.

For example, Klemperer's experience answers the charge that virtually all Aryan Germans knew from the beginning exactly what the Third Reich's intentions were towards the Jews. Klemperer's actual interactions stand as refutation of this blanket indictment. Often when he visited Aryan acquaintances to conduct business - he would then jovially be invited to come back that evening for schnapps. Klemperer had to explain that he couldn't come back later for schnapps - that as a Jew, he was prohibited from boarding any vehicle of public transportation after 6:00 PM, that he had a general curfew, and that of course, he had long since been banned from owning his own car.

Klemperer was always circumspect in recounting these laws he labored under to his "Semitophile" acquaintances. (That's an awkward translation of the German phrase Klemperer probably used to refer to Aryans who were sympathetic to Jews. But it is perhaps the only word that was available to Martin Chalmers, who otherwise has produced a generally fluid translation of Klemperer's journals.) At any rate, Klemperer was careful never to appear too whining or too critical of the restrictions placed on him. He didn't want to alienate these Aryan allies. Nevertheless, he repeatedly found himself in the position of having to enlighten them about the government's latest round of restrictions. And his listeners were almost always genuinely surprised to hear about these laws. Their ignorance in the face of all the anti-Semitic propaganda blared daily from radios, blazoned from the newspapers, seemed to be more a function of people's tendency towards plodding self-preoccupation than an indication of any active complicity with the advancing evil.

I think you'll find that Klemperer's account also carries a very relevant warning to us in our current pursuit of terrorists at all costs. Klemperer survived the early rounds of call-ups for the concentration camps because he was a decorated World War I hero, and because he was married to an Aryan. For these reasons, he was given some initial grudging dispensation from the worst Nazi reprisals. However as the War progressed, his past service to Germany and his Aryan affiliation came to count for less and less. Finally his number was up and he, along with the last handful of Jews remaining around Dresden, were scheduled for transport. The only thing that saved him was the Allied bombing of Dresden. Most local Nazi records were destroyed in this notorious bombardment. So Klemperer and his wife, having survived the bombing, were also able to survive those last most brutal months of the Nazi regime by assuming new identities and wandering through the German countryside from town to town, passing themselves off as a typical displaced Aryan couple. If the Nazis' meticulous records (documenting family lineages and confirming who was where) had remained intact, Klemperer would certainly have been deported to the gas chambers.

So if you don't already have doubts about the increasing surveillance measures being taken in the U.S., presumably to guard against terrorists and other "evildoers" - reading these journals will give you pause. One of the lessons of Klemperer's journal is how tyranny proceeds by little increments of paperwork. Its power is in keeping tabs.

Klemperer risked his life to write the entries in these journals, because it eventually became a capital crime for a Jew to possess paper or any pen/pencil. So it feels almost sacrilegious to make any criticism of this supremely brave and literate account. However I do have one small criticism. And that is Klemperer's common masculine tendency to put his wife in the background of his life. Eva Klemperer comes off in the diary as a shadowy adjunct to the importance of Victor's work producing these pages.

She is mentioned, more frequently in the first volume of the diaries, but this mention is usually limited to reports of the fact that she had another hysterical fit that day, or that she engaged Victor in another round of angry lamentation, or that she suffered some physical malady. He does acknowledge her collaborative bravery. She also risked her life every time she smuggled the pages of his work out of their small assigned apartment into the hands of friends for safekeeping. But we never directly hear Eva's voice in all this. The reader is only left to guess at the actual substance of her outbursts.

You will probably feel impelled to read between the lines to flesh her out. Perhaps Eva wasn't the prettiest girl in school, so she took the one marriage proposal that came her way. She married the intellectually accomplished Victor. Victor was available because Aryan prejudice, even in those early years, already limited him socially. We can imagine her outbursts of recrimination as the Nazi noose grew tighter around their yoked necks. Why did you have to be Jewish? Why have you dragged me down with you? I could have led such a happy life. And instead, look at me - scrounging for rotten potatoes, under constant threat of beatings and death - and all because of you!

If only Eva had written her own diary, we might have had some additional fascinating insights into why and how a couple stays together under such trying circumstances. We might have gained a greater understanding of the ties of love and the chains of having nowhere else to go. As it is, we have only Victor's side of the story. But that is a powerful, must-read insight into how tyranny grows, brick-by-brick, petty edict by petty edict.

The most compelling book I have ever read.......2006-03-22

Because my friends all know what a book-hound I am, people often ask me what my all-time favorite book is. Admittedly the answer to this would change over time, but, at present, "I Will Bear Witness" is the one that first pops into my mind.

I found this very personal account of the days and nights of a German Jewish man--an inoffensive and formerly rather conservative German nationalist academic married to a Gentile--during the Nazi terror regime to be absolutely breathtaking. Indeed, I was so caught up in his account that I took an unexpected day of vacation from work just to not interrupt my reading once I had started.

Further, I found myself sprawled on my bed, as is sometimes customary with me, surrounded by ancillary books, atlases, and maps --a behavior that signifies I'm reading a book that has utterly gripped me and a book that is expanding my horizons.

Klemperer was (just barely) saved from being sent to a concentration camp due to his marriage to a non-Jew. However, he lived every day under the threat of torture and deportation to a camp and his journal tells of the years of grinding anxiety over his fate and the fate of his wife, friends, and relatives-many of whom were taken. It also speaks to the minutiae of life under the Nazi's--such things as their penchant for legalisms to justify their treatment of the Jews embodied in his incessant embroilment in Nazi demands that he take part in the legalisms of their confiscation of his property. Moreover, as the war draws to a close, he draws a stunning portrait of life as a war refugee--a picture that applies to war refugees the world over throughout time.

Kudos to those who elevated this book to number one among the history choices-it deserves it and in my mind deserves even more.

Life-Affirming, Edge-of-your-seat, Nonstop Reading.......2006-01-30

Victor Klemperer's diary of the years of the Hitler dictatorship and his recording of the day-to-day lives of the Jews of Dresden, his thoughtful and insightful commentary on the methods (particularly the language of the propaganda) of the Third Reich, the heart-wrenching stories of those who were taken away never to be seen again, his experience in the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 and his miraculous journey home should be required reading for everyone about the horrors of tyranny and war. It is also a tribute to the true human spirit and the power of the intellect. Klemperer never lost his determination to live, despite all the blows of terror that were aimed at him, his family, and his friends. That he believed there was something to live for--in the midst of utter barbarity--should inspire all of us to work for a better world. It did me.

A remarkable record of a dark time. Reading it gives one the courage to carry on in the dark times that have come again.

At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl

Average customer rating:

Footnotes are valuable

At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl
Hans Scholl , and Sophie Scholl
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060157054

Customer Reviews:

Footnotes are valuable.......2000-12-25

Inge Jens has done a masterful job with the material she was given. A careful read notes the many gaps -- it's not that Hans and Sophie Scholl did not write anything during the gaps, it is more a matter that Dr. Jens was not allowed access to everything in the Scholl archives.

The book is worthwhile for the tiny glimpse it provides into the reality of the Scholl world, though the Aicher-Scholl censorship fairly obscures the remaining members of the White Rose.

Customer Reviews:

Read this book and you'll have a small idea of Iraq........2003-04-22

Even though I found this book very interesting and finished reading it in a short amount of time, at its completion I found myself disappointed because the book was not the book I thought it was going to be.

This is the kind of statement that I hate others to make-damn the object: book, movie, play, painting etc. because its not what you would like it to be. In this case, however, I feel more than normally justified because the author focuses her writing skills on painting a picture, not so much of her life in a war ravaged city but of how humans regained control over that city.

The difference is important because in her diary entries starting in '46 the author deals almost exclusively with discussions of currency manipulations and political maneuvering-these topics are of extraordinary weight in post war Berlin but I had hoped that she would give me more information about Berlin's physical face.

I wanted to know more about living in a city that was a complete mess-what were the jobs and wages for those jobs and apartments and the resurrection of essential services and a myriad collection of other day to day themes. A reader can't, however, damn a writer for failing to write the book the reader would have liked.
Having said all of this, I believe that Ruth Andreas-Friedrich has written a wonderful book-a book I would recommend to any person with a passing interest in those over-looked pieces of history that are left in the air at the end of a book or a professor's lecture. You read a general history or listen to a lecture series and you're left with questions about the details of what happened, in Berlin's case, when the boombs stopped falling and the Russian troops left. In this case the writer completes much of the picture.

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Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer

good observer

good introduction to world war 2

Eye witness to evil

I read this book here in Brazil.

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941
William L. Shirer
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (P)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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This Is Berlin: Reporting from Nazi Germany, 1938-40

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ASIN: 0316787043

Book Description

By the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is now available in a new paperback edition.

CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s -- specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany.

Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the passion, the electricity in it were palpable. The book was an instant success, and it became the frame of reference against which thoughtful Americans judged the rush of events in Europe. It exactly matched journalist to event: the right reporter at the right place at the right time. It stood, and still stands, as so few books have ever done -- a pure act of journalistic witness.

Customer Reviews:

Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer.......2007-05-07

A well-written contemporaneous account of a correspondent's life in Nazi Germany up to 1940. Shirer is almost prescient in his assessment of Hitler's actions and their consequences. It is unfortunate that he could not continue his reporting after 1940, because an account of this caliber of the years when Germany was at war with America, made from inside Germany, would have been a valuable historical record. Shirer is a true journalist; while he offers opinions, they are clearly labeled as such, and do not get in the way of dispassionate reporting of the events he witnesses.

good observer.......2007-01-29

The author makes a large number of observations about what is happening and how it is done. This is along with the historical recording of events. These observations have stood the test of time. They explain the German's rapid success in the early years.

good introduction to world war 2.......2006-12-07

This book is an excellent account of the early years of WWII from the perspective of Mr. Shirer who was stationed in Germany as a print and radio journalist. There is quite a bit of history in this book and I found that it functions as a good introduction to the early history of WWII. It is also enlivened by some of Mr Shirer's personal anecdotes regarding broadcasting. Mr Shirer's close access to many of the leading figures in Germany and his observations of some of the war torn areas of the early German invasions gives a very realistic and graphic portrayal of how the war evolved in Europe. It is also fascinating to hear the speculation about which path the war would take. This is one factor that makes Mr Shirer's book much more interesting than a standard history text which has the benefit of hindsight. In the Berlin Diary, the reader sees history literally being created and develops a better understanding for the difficult choices the allies faced at that time.

Eye witness to evil.......2006-07-29

This is a great book on a number of levels. You know how WW2 came out, the author does not. This book was completed months before Pearl Harbor (last entries were December 1940). So it is a great page turner watching mediocre politicians blunder their way to war.
Also the inside story of the founding of broadcast journalism.

The only type liberal most Americans know is a "Make love, not war" stereotype. Shirer was a different type. The type that was willing to fight facism in any form straight up, blow for blow, shot for shot. (Yet, he also personally knew Ghandi and was a great admirer. I guess Shirer could recognize the limits of non-violence.)

Some other reviewers were upset by Shirer's opinions of Nazis and Germans. I recently read "My Four Years in Germany" by ???? Giraud who was the USA ambassador to Germany from 1913 to 1917. His observations dovetail and add validity to Shirer's observations about the mindset of Germans and their ambitions to dominate Europe, if not the world. He also had chapters on the German education system and Prussiaism which explains the Kaiser Cult. Nazism was a direct descendant of Kaiserism and Pan-Germanism. I spent ten days in Germany and Austria in 2004. While at the Dachau concentration camp I observed 100s of 16 year old German students. One of them told me all German students are required to go to a concentration camp. My son's school field trips are to Disneyworld or Busch Gardens, theirs is to walk through gas chambers. I doubt those bright, active German children regard Slavs as subhumans to be treated like cattle, but that does not mean their grand parents and great grand parents did not.

Another reviewer slammed Shirer for describing with relish the food he ate on short trips outside of Germany before the War in contrast with the rationed poor food in Berlin he had to live on. Obviously that reviewer has never missed a meal in his life.

This is going to turn some people off, but I was also struck by similarties between Nazi propaganda and Fox news. (Techniques, not Jew baiting.) Keep up a particular slant for years and that perception becomes people's realities.

This is a great book which drives home Jefferson's observation, "The natural manure (fertilizer) of the Tree of Liberty is the blood of patriots." This book diary entries shows how Austrians, Checks, Dutch, Danes, Belgiums, French, and (except for the English Channel) the British one by one all refused to fight for freedom and lost all.

I read this book here in Brazil........2006-02-26

I read this book, translated to the portuguese, here in Brazil.It was writen in nazi Germany(some little parts were writen in Portugal).
How an american thought about III Reich, living in that times?If you read this book, you can see.The best in this book are the parts about daily live in nazi Germany and in France defeated in 1940.

I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1: A Diary of the Nazi Years (I Will Bear Witness)

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A must read memoir
Fascinating Account of pre-WWII life in Germany
Excellent Source for insight on Nazi Germany
Harrowing reading
A powerful and uplifting account of life under the Nazis

I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1: A Diary of the Nazi Years (I Will Bear Witness)
Victor Klemperer
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0679456961
Release Date: 1998-11-03

Amazon.com

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), honored as a frontline veteran of World War I, was a distinguished professor at the University of Dresden. A scant few months later he was merely a Jew, protected from deportation to a death camp only by his marriage to an Aryan. He suffered every other indignity to which German Jews were subjected, from losing his job to having his driver's license revoked to being denied permission to own a pet, and all are recorded with bitter clarity in his diary entries, which cover the years 1933 to 1941. (A second volume continuing through 1945 will be published in English in 1999.) The German edition of this book caused a sensation when it was published in 1995, and it's easy to see why: the relentless, quotidian nature of Nazi racism comes through forcefully in Klemperer's litany of daily humiliations and insults, a painful chronicle of situations in which readers can readily imagine themselves. Like Anne Frank, but with a more adult understanding of political fanaticism and human weakness, he makes the abstract horror of genocidal persecution very intimate, very personal, and very real. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

The publication of Victor Klemperer's secret diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. "In its cool, lucid style and power of observation," said The New York Times, "it is the best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." I Will Bear Witness is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day horror of the Nazi years.

A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.

What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?

This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.

Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end." When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."

This book covers the years from 1933 to 1941. Volume Two, from 1941 to 1945, will be published in 1999.

Customer Reviews:

A must read memoir.......2007-07-08

This is a great memoir that any history buff or historian or anyone should read. It ranks right up there with Anne Frank's diary. It offers a unique view since Mr. Klemperer was married to a German woman during the Holocaust. It is this unique view on the Holocaust that makes this memoir so good.

Fascinating Account of pre-WWII life in Germany.......2007-02-01

Victor Klemperer's diary of pre war Germany provides fascinating insight into what life was like for ordinary citizens in Germany. Interspersed with the mundane aspects of life, e.g., shopping, driving, going to the dentist, etc. are ever increasing examples of the insanity that was Nazi Germany. It was a little difficult to get into, but it soon became a page tuner. The later years are particularly interesting. I couldn't put it down.

Excellent Source for insight on Nazi Germany.......2007-01-10

This Diary was an excellent read for many reasons. It was a good primary source for information on Nazi Germany and at the same time was compelling and extremely interesting. The keeper of this diary was also a great author which makes this diary very easy to read as if it were a memoir. His story is great and it was extremely fun to see historical events through his eyes. Through his diary the reader has the ability to get a feel of what everyday people thought of the Nazis and what their true feelings were toward the National Socialist party. If you do not know a lot about German/Nazi history I would reccomend a refresher course somehow. I read this diary while taking a class on the topic of Nazi Germany and it was extremely interesting for me.

Harrowing reading.......2006-10-28

Anybody who wants to know what it was like to be a Jew under the Nazi regime should read this book and the second volume of Klemperer's diaries.
First the bestiality and the stupidity of the Nazis are shown with a simplicity and an absence of hatred that make them more disgusting. Then the courage, the resilience and the determination of this humble Professor are a lesson of courage, modesty and survival for all. One of the books that left upon me the most lasting impression, hesitating between the joy of the "happy end" and the depression about what I read. These two books should be made compulsory reading in any serious history studies...And no serious historian should avoid to read those two books.

A powerful and uplifting account of life under the Nazis.......2006-10-10

I have read many books on the history of Europe and World War 2, but for the most part they cover the big picture - the major events and key participants. Victor Klemperer's diaries ("I Will Bear Witness") describe how people like himself were tossed about by the arbitrary power of the Nazis. This record of his personal experiences from 1933 to 1945 makes the history come vividly alive in all its horror and sadness.

Through the diaries we see the inexorable erosion of his rights (and the rights of all Jews) and the tyrannies of arbitrary power. Klemperer was forced to give up his car, he was forbidden to use the library, he could not have a phone, his typewriter was confiscated, and Jews had to hand in keys to their trunks.

Each day seemed to bring another "small" persecution, another wearing down of the spirit - except that Klemperer did not succumb, although he often despairs of surviving. He read almost every day and made notes on literary works he planned to write some day - if he survived. He bore witness by recording his actual experiences of tyranny.

Klemperer describes the exercise of raw power, cloaked in the trappings of Nazi law. Any official could do pretty much as he pleased with any Jew. It is almost impossible for those of us living in countries that respect the rule of law, and in which we can assert our rights, to truly feel the powerlessness, fear and humiliation that Klemperer felt almost every day under the Nazis. The Gestapo seem to select victims almost at random, but every persecution is handled with legal punctiliousness.

Reading the diaries today and knowing the history of Germany and the Jews, we are struck by the fact that Klemperer did not flee the country in good time like so many other Jews - and other members of his own family. But at the time, the future was unknown and there were always reasons for him to stay: Lack of money. He was almost 60 and would have felt reluctant, if not unable, to start a new life and earn money in another country. His wife was often sick and clung desperately to her new house. Our lives bind us to place. "Blut and Boden" (blood and soil) as the Nazis put it.

He was a reflective academic, unused until the war started to the rough and tumble of survival. Although the final entries in his diary after the bombing of Dresden show a remarkable feat of endurance in his and Eva's homeless wanderings to seek sanctuary.

The early part of the diary tells of his struggle to get a loan and to build a house. "Don't do it!" I cry silently. Don't you know a terrible war is coming and that the Jews will be rounded up? Don't you know you will be herded into a ghetto? Don't you know that Dresden will be fire-bombed (his new house is made of wood)?

But how could he know? We see the future as a continuation of the past. We cannot know for certain what events of today will have catastrophic consequences in the future. For Klemperer, things got slowly worse over time, each change bearable (if only just) - like boiling a frog. There was no sudden cataclysm that would have prompted even the most timid to flee - until too late.

Today we see small erosions of liberty, justified by the War on Terrorism: secret monitoring of the phone calls of "suspects" is OK, the Geneva Convention does not apply to Guantanamo Bay and "coercion" of prisoners is not torture. The end justifies the means, we are told - although not in such truthful terms. We think that none of these arbitrary exercises of power apply to us. But where will they lead? We do not know. But the experiences of Klemperer under the Nazis show where they have led in the past.

The diary is essentially as Klemperer wrote it - there has been no post facto editing to make it more literary or historically apt. The result is powerful and horrifying to the reader who is like some Olympian God watching Klemperer struggle, knowing the trials to come and the futility of his struggles.

His hopes, fears and vulnerabilities are laid before us, without any editing to remove the embarrassing entries - or other entries that lesser writers would have preferred not to see the light of day, such as his furtive theft of a spoonful of jam in the Jews House in Dresden. This honesty makes the diaries such a powerful and compelling statement.

But despite the ever-present threat of arrest and "evacuation" to Poland, from which no one ever returns and about which only the sketchiest rumours are known, Klemperer finds courage to enjoy the new flowers of spring, the beauty of fresh snow on tree branches, and the pleasures of visiting his friends and fellow victims.

One of the most poignant entries in the diary is for August 1, 1943. He had received an order to come to Gestapo HQ for "questioning". By that stage of the war, virtually no Jew returned from such questioning. Their families were notified that the person was deported and "shot while trying to escape". Some "committed suicide" in the cells before then. With the words "Perhaps this is my last entry", Klemperer records his feelings and his love for his wife Eva.

Every thinking person who is worried about the state of the world today should read this book. In the struggle against terrorism we see governments in liberal democracies encroaching on our liberties, condoning torture, telling lies - all in the name of a greater good, the War on Terror. This is no different in principle to the way Nazis, and all other totalitarian regimes, justified their actions and sought to hide the truth. The propaganda is exactly the same.

Of course the liberal democracies are unlikely to round up people suspected as enemies, put them in concentration camps and torture them - or are they?

We must never take our liberties for granted, nor accept that the end (in the war on terror) justifies the means. Klemperer's diaries are a powerful reminder of where that can lead.

Selling Hitler the Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century the Faking of Hitler Diaries

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Great reading & useful lessons
Euro-Bonfire of the Vanities
The Scoop that Wasn't
Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH
Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH

Selling Hitler the Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century the Faking of Hitler Diaries
Robert Harris
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0394553365
Release Date: 1986-03-12

Book Description

Written with the pace and verve of a thriller, this is the story of the biggest fraud in publishing history. In 1983, it seemed that one of the most startling discoveries of the century had been made, and that one of the world’s most sought-after documents had finally come to light – the private diaries of Adolf Hitler. What followed was a fiasco of fakery, greed, the duping of experts, and the exchange of enormous sums of money for world-wide publishing rights.

Customer Reviews:

Great reading & useful lessons.......2005-08-24

This is a great book! It read like a detective story combined with farce. Harris who later became a succesful novelist has done a terrific job of investigative reporting in uncovering this ridiculous scandal which should never have happened. And there's plenty of blame to go around. We meet gullible Nazi wannabes, greedy businessmen, & pompous academics. the story is so entertaining but also contains important lessons in human nature. Beware of what you want to believe!

Euro-Bonfire of the Vanities.......2002-02-08

Robert Harris's non-fiction work "Selling Hitler," the tale of petty swindle and media corruption in the 1980s, is Europe's answer to "Bonfire of the Vanities," and, like Wolfe's novel, it has an absurd mix of characters. Leading the pack is the amazing forger and con-artist who forged the diaries, closely followed by the gullible German reporter whose willing ignorance led to their publication. On the other side of the channel, British academics, newspapaper editors and press barons were all drawn into the controversy, as the Sunday Times decided the Diaries were fit to print. A comedy of errors on a grand scale.

The Scoop that Wasn't.......2001-12-08

A terrific expose of the greatest journalistic hoax of the 20th century, the "unearthing" of the long-lost Hitler Diaries. Harris turns the case inside out and presents us with a series of well-drawn character profiles. It's impossible to decide what's most appalling, the shabbiness of the hoaxers (the soon-to-be-legendary forger Konrad Kujau, aided by a deeply-closet-fascist German journalist), the gullibility of the British academics or journalists who accepted them at face value, or the cynicism of those who should have known better, i.e. the Sunday Times' publisher as well as the professional controversialists who kept the diaries in the headlines. Farcical and deeply disturbing at the same time.

Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH.......2001-08-15

A well-told and detailed account on the biggest publishing mess in the whole of history, Harris' "Selling Hitler" is hilarious, but has serious lessons to impart. Behind his account of how some of the biggest names in international publishing were conned into making the most enormous fools of themselves are some very chilling scenarios which we witness -- the callousness of the "primitive" Kujau, as well as the publishing world where money is above everything and the pursuit of profit is considered above journalistic integrity, the dishonesty and readiness of one such as Heidemann to believe in the authenticity of the diaries and the unrepentance of the reminiscing Nazis on the "good old days". Most importantly, we see the prevalence of and influence of Hitler and the Nazis on the world so many decades after the demise of the Third Reich, and have to imagine what would have happened had the 'diaries' been used to rewrite history if proof that they were forgeries was not conclusive. Harris' book explains the hold Hitler continues to have on the generation which had undergone the war as well as those after it, and serves as a warning on how memory or delusion can be harmful. A fantastic read, this book should be brought back into publication and made accessible to more people. Highly recommended if you're interested in seeing how people make monkeys of themselves on the world stage.

Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH.......2001-08-15

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Insights into Nazi anti-Semitic, anti-Polish, and anti-Christian Attitudes (1939-1941)
The man behind the myth?
JEKYLL AND HYDE - THE WAR YEARS - VOL 1
An excellent book
The reality was worse than the legends of the war

Goebbels Diaries
Fred Taylor
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0399127631

Customer Reviews:

Insights into Nazi anti-Semitic, anti-Polish, and anti-Christian Attitudes (1939-1941).......2006-09-29

This review can only briefly address a little of the wealth of information herein. Shortly after the German-Soviet conquest of Poland (Fall 1939), Goebbels paid the Poles a backhanded compliment for their continued resistance (October 19, 1939): "The Poles are becoming insolent and rebellious once more. We shall have to take a hard line with them; above all, they must be made to work. Our military authorities are too lackadaisical in their approach." (p. 25). Considering the fact that the Wehrmacht (German Army) had just murdered tens of thousands of Polish civilians and captured POWs in cold blood, Goebbel's latter comment is rather ironic!

Some recent authors have advanced the fallacious argument that there was no Polish Quisling only because the Germans never wanted one. In actuality, the Germans did try unsuccessfully to find a suitable Polish Quisling. For example, on February 9, 1940, Goebbels alluded to a "Polish leader Studnitzki", about whom translator Fred Taylor comments: "Possibly Professor Wladyslaw Studnicki, one of a handful of Polish politicians who were reckoned as potential collaborators at this time." (p. 118).

The constant emphasis on the murder of 5-6 million Jews has caused not only the forgetting of the 2-3 million murdered Polish gentiles (including half of Poland's intelligentsia), but also the considerable similarities in Nazi attitudes towards Jews and Poles. For example, the Nazis' obsession with the inferiority of Jews extended to Poles. In the entry for October 31, 1939, Goebbels quipped: "The right thing is to leave the Poles to their own devices and to encourage their weakness and corruption. This is the best way to rule inferior races." (p. 36).

It is well known that the Nazis thought of Jews as the bearers of dirt, lice, filth, and everything else that is vile. A comparable attitude existed towards Poles (October 10, 1939): "The Fuhrer's verdict on the Poles is damning. More like animals than human beings, completely primitive, stupid, and amorphous. And a ruling class that is an unsatisfactory result of a mingling between the lower orders and an Aryan master race. The Poles' dirtiness is unimaginable. Their capacity for intelligent judgment is absolutely nil." (p. 16). Ironically, for all their presumed dangerous cleverness, Jews, no less than Poles, were considered stupid. In an entry of June 30, 1941, shortly after the initiation of Operation Barbarossa, Goebbels wrote: "The Russian military communiqués are becoming more stupid by the day. They must be drafted by Jews. Trivial, moronic, and simple-minded..." (p. 438).

In some cases, Goebbels directly juxtaposes Poles and Jews with each other in his contemptuous statements about both (e. g., November 8, 1939): "I am also not much enamoured of the proposal to turn Lodz into a German city. The place is no more than a rubbish-heap, inhabited by the dregs of the Poles and the Jews." (pp. 42-43).

It is not only Jews that the Nazis thought of as devoid of redeeming values. In his entry for October 14, 1939, Goebbels elaborates on his racist contempt for Poles, and also gives a veiled threat of genocide: "And the Poles understand only force. Moroever, they are so stupid that no rational argument has any effect on them. The fact is, quite simply, that Asia starts in Poland. This nation's civilization is not worth consideration. Only the aristocracy has a thin veneer of culture. It is therefore the driving-force of the resistance against us. For this reason, it must be expropriated. German farmers will take its place." (p. 20).

There are allusions to the planned genocide of both Jews and Poles, partial in extent at this stage of Nazi thinking (December 5, 1939): "With the Fuhrer. He looks wonderful and is in the best of moods. I tell him about my trip. He listens to everything very carefully and totally shares my opinion on the Jewish and Polish questions. We must liquidate the Jewish Danger. But it will return in a few generations. There is no panacea against it. The Polish aristocracy deserves to be destroyed. It has no links with the people, which it regards as existing purely for its own convenience." (p. 60). For now, both peoples are to be ruthlessly exploited. In his entry for November 5, 1940, Goebbels comments: "So far as we are concerned, the Fuhrer states, Poland will be an enormous reservoir of labour...And we shall shove the Jews out as well, later." (p. 165).

The virulent anti-Christian character of Nazism has been obscured by both the customary emphasis on Nazi anti-Semitism and the constant attempts to blame the Holocaust on prior Christian teachings about Jews. The Nazis did, to be sure, tolerate Christianity for political purposes (April 29, 1941): "Afterwards, long discussions about the Vatican and Christianity. The Fuhrer is a fierce opponent of all that humbug, but he forbids me to leave the church. For tactical reasons. And so for a decade now I have paid my church taxes to support such rubbish. That is what hurts most." (p. 340). Also (December 29, 1939): "The Fuhrer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symbol of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race." (p. 77). Finally (April 8, 1941): "The Fuhrer is a man totally attuned to antiquity. He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity. According to Schopenhauer, Christianity and syphilis have made humanity unhappy and unfree." (p. 304).

The notion that vegetarianism is something enlightened is hardly new. On January 24, 1939, Joseph Goebbels wrote: "At table the Fuhrer makes another strong plea for vegetarianism. I consider his views correct. Meat-eating is a perversion of our human nature. When we reach a higher level of civilization, we shall doubtless overcome it." (p. 6).

The man behind the myth?.......2004-06-20

By now, Nazism and the Second World War have taken on the magnitude of myth, where everything was pre-ordained, so it is fascinating to read a fresh opinion from the other side.

Goebbels was a contradictory man. He believed in the Fuhrer and Nazi ideology above personal experience. For example, he felt sympathy for negro POWs, describing them as "poor devils", and crashed English pilots, and seemed to have a deep love for his children, while having a one-dimensional hatred for the "Jews" and "bolsheviks" that supposedly were the cause of the world's problems. He also went on about American and English hypocrisy and war-mongering, while celebrating Hitler's real-politiking and deceit towards nearly everyone in Europe. He writes "the Ends always justify the means", while admitting if they don't win, they are doomed (lots of prophetic ideas and dramatic irony in this book!).

Hitler appears as a rather more insightful fellow than we would like to admit. Goebbels writes that he has great respect for classical Greek and Roman culture, and explains his belief in authoritarian regimes: when they become unpopular, the people will overthrow them anyway. Suprisingly, Goebbels and Hitler seem neutral towards 'negros'. They discuss whether the working classes are better off than the American slaves of yore, and Goebbels uses American lynchings (which I assume to be in the South) in Nazi propaganda against America.
Ironically, Goebbels as a film buff seemed to love "Mr Deeds goes to Washington" and "Gone with the Wind", while believing reports of America as a cultural desert (a cringeingly amusing paragraph for non-Americans) and stating that the Reich's contribution to history would be getting rid of democracy.
Also, Goebbel's analysis of the media, and his sophisticated plans to mask the invasion of Russia as an invasion of England, even at the cost of personal loss of "prestige", will make you think twice about what you hear from the press even today.

Was Churchill really a war-monger? Were France and others really content to be ruled by Nazi Germany? Disturbing ideas in a self-portrait of a professional, cunning, dilettante-hating master of propaganda.

JEKYLL AND HYDE - THE WAR YEARS - VOL 1.......2004-04-11

I have just completed this book and will soon start on his diary covering 1942 - 1943.

The book took a little getting use to with its style and content. The book itself was not written for publication. He wrote on 30 March 1941 "I have my diaries, twenty fat volumnes, deposited in the underground vault of the Reichsbank. They are too valuable to be allowed to fall victim to some air raid. They provide a picture of my entire life and our times. If fate allows me a few years for the task, I intend to edit them for the sake of future generations. They may well be of some interest to the world at large."

There were, regrettably, some interesting events that were not in this book for whatever reasons. The book opens in early 1939 with a few entries and then jumps all the way to October 1939. During this time the Nazis negotiated a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union and the war started with the German successful invasion of Poland. Other notable missing events include the Scandinavia campaign of April 1940 and the defeat of France.

However other events are not missing. The propaganda minister's view of the "phony war" of 1939 - 1940 is recorded here along with the Nazis' impression of the Soviet war with Finland. Goebbels writes about their Italians allies in an insulting manner -- deservedly so -- because of their bumbling military adventures in the Balkans. The book covers the Nazis' invasion of the Balkans and Greece -- mainly to rescue the Italians and the early days of the north African campaign. He almost daily records the war with England and is convinced that with all the ships being sunk and the Luftwaffe constantly pounding England it is only a matter of time before the Germans will win. Another interesting event was when Rudolf Hess, a man he had great respect and admiration for, flew to England and almost instantly became persona non grata. Even more importantly, the book covers the preparation for Adolf Hitler's greatest gamble -- the war with the Soviet Union. The book covers the first few weeks of that adventure before ending in early July 1941.

The book gives an almost daily insight to the German government in the first two years of the war. Goebbels had to walk a tightrope in managing public morale. The Germans wanted peace but also victory. Goebbels had to keep morale high even when times were hard but also had to keep expectations of victory contained when victory seemed so close after the fall of France. The book also shows petty squabbles within the German government -- especially with the Foreign Ministry in general and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop specifically.

I call this Jekyll and Hyde because Goebbels also presents a very human and loving side in this diary. Despite some marital difficulties with his wife, Magda, he shows great affection and respect for her and all but worshipped his children. It is hard to see a man who loves his family so much being such a hateful man when it came to Jews. Most anti-Semites may hate Jews but not to the same level that Goebbels and the rest of Hitler's henchmen would.

The biggest problem I had with the book was the book itself. The seller described the book as being in acceptable condition. If so the seller had a low standard of acceptability. When I unpacked the book parts of the book was already loose and threatening to fall apart. The act of reading the book such as turning pages was almost too much for the book to handle.

An excellent book.......2003-07-04

Joseph Goebbels was the Propoganda Minister for the Third Reich. Propoganda has a very different meaning today than it did in 1940, but his role was to communicate the ideals of the Reich. Being a very gifted writer, this proved an excellent task.

You will find no "plotting" in this book, other than general discussion of the ideals of National Socialism. There is no discussion of mass exterminations of any people or religion. What you will find is insight into a man intent on keeping a nation together in the face of tremendous adversity, namely the threat of Bolshevism. In many ways, the book is inspirational.

The reality was worse than the legends of the war.......2000-07-30

The most vile aspects of man running a continent. This book will be one of the scariest you will ever read, and the sad part is that it all really happened. In true diary form, Goebbels recounts every decision and horrible "fun" the Nazi administration had during the early years of the war. Discover little-known facts, such as how many other religions Hitler planned to eradicate after the Jews. Experience the executions in blunt, diary form. Learn about war strategies and propaganda programs.

This is challenging reading. I could take only a few pages at a setting. It makes you think. It makes you understand the baser realities of life.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent read.......2004-04-12

The title claims this is "Secret Diary of Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Morell." However, it's actually just David Irving's book which he published in the late 1970's. The book has definite merit and remains an essential read for anyone with an interest in Hitler's health and addiction to uppers and downers. The book is almost eerily intimate, with some rather gross personal details about Hitler which will make you either want to laugh or turn away, red-faced.

The book focuses primarily on the years 1941-44, when Hitler's health deteriorates through a lack of exercise, fresh air and a complete dependence upon Morell's hypodermic needle. Fascinating stuff for the student of Hitler.

Hard to Evaluate.......1999-12-20

This is the purported diary of an immigrant German Jew living in New York during the war who recalls treating Hitler himself. Some of it rings true, other parts not. I do not know what to make of it regarding its authenticity. The book made a fascinating and sometimes disturbing read about the mysterious personality of this very evil person.

Berlin Diary. The Rise of the Third Reich. Illustrated Edition . The journal of a foreign correspondent 1934-1941

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Berlin Diary. The Rise of the Third Reich. Illustrated Edition . The journal of a foreign correspondent 1934-1941
William Shirer
Manufacturer: PRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OECDVQ

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