Tonight’s featured weekend book review is a historical nonfiction.
Robert K Wittman. The Devil’s Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich. London, UK: William Collins, March 29th, 2016. 416 pp.
A few years ago I read a really good book titled Hitler’s Philosophers by Yvonne Sherratt. The book mentioned Alfred Rosenberg as one of the Nazi’s influential ideologue and so when I found this book in the library I felt I had to pick it up to know more about this Rosenberg. The book is about the diary of Rosenberg and I was expecting it to focus mainly on the contents within Rosenberg’s diary. To be frank I was disappointed with my expectations but I couldn’t totally dismissed the entirety of the book either because it was an interesting subject.
The beginning portion of the book gives us an interesting tale of the history of Rosenberg’s diary after the war was over. It was in the Allies hands and then handed to a prosecutor who kept it as a personal possession among other important documents. After the individual died there is a tale of legal battles for the materials to be handed to scholars for studies but unfortunately the diary was stolen by an eccentric liberal theologian and publishers of odd books. It’s the story of how a holocaust archivist and a former FBI detective specializing in stolen historical artifacts and relics pursued the case of getting the diary back. Because the story was so interesting one can readily forgive the author for writing at such lengths of the account of what happened. However since I was expecting the second portion of the book to be an analysis of the diary I did felt disappointed that this wasn’t going to be a book on the diary. Instead the rest of the book was a thriller of sorts that covered two men during the rise of the Nazis and afterwards: First is of course the story of Rosenberg and the second is the story of German Jew named Robert Kempner. In a way Kempner was a foil in the book for Rosenberg for while Rosenberg was part of the Nazis’ in-crowd and involved with the Nazi’s internal politics, Kempner was ostracized and eventually he fled Nazi Germany, came to America and after the war was involved with the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. The book provided a fascinating look at the personalities of both individuals and those around them (other Nazis, the wife of Kempner and his mistresses, etc). Although I was disappointed that the book wasn’t about the contents of the diary as its main focus I did appreciate this for the stories that’s told and personally for me to understand a little bit more about Rosenberg. One take away point I got from the book is the fact that Rosenberg’s political battles with other Nazis reveal that every organization no matter how ideological has its politics. Without downplaying Rosenberg’s evil I think I also learned from the book also his limitations of merely being an idealist in the world of Nazi politics and petty jealousies. Rosenberg was definitely an evil man and his attempt to shore up pseudo-intellectual support makes it all the more wicked.
Purchase: Amazon
This book sounds fascinating! I’ll have to add it to my list.
Thanks Sarah for reading this! Thanks also for commenting and finding this post!
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Thanks for sharing this post brother on your blog. Always appreciate it brother Vincent
You’re very welcome Brother Jim!