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Diary of a Man in Despair
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January 2, 2024
My goodness, what a find. Reck was a Prussian gentleman, wealthy, conservative and Christian, who despised the Nazis and keeps a fascinating journal spanning their reign. Yes, it's a rant, but if you are going to rant, Nazis are probably the best subject. He is erudite and makes allusions to German history and art/literature going back hundreds of years, which of course was like Greek to me, though he was making comparisons between the Nazis of course, so that was illuminating. I too saw parallels to America today, as we sit on the verge of electing an immoral criminal. Reck said the people of his time stopped caring what the truth was, stopped caring about the character of their leader, just wanted a strong man to punish their enemies-- never mind that who their enemies were had to be spoon fed to their eager mouths-- and stopped caring about the weak. The biggest surprise here is how funny he can be; he would be someone I'd follow on Twitter, let's just say that. He describes Unity Mitford as a cross between a Bavarian queen and a chick on an ivory soap commercial, in so many words. Goering, Goebbels and of course the Fuhrer get nicely roasted as well. He is high society, so gets interesting tidbits about each. The NewYork Review Of Books published this journal, which the author hid on his palatial grounds... he died at Dachau... and it is very newyork Review of Booksy, very verbose and dense. I would have like to meet the author and thank him for his important chronicle.
Displaying 1 of 1 review