WORLDWARTWO

Churchill’s regard for the rules of war, and how he defined those rules. Because warfare was so important a part of his personality – though Best successfully refutes the notion that he was a warmonger – we are given numerous insights into Churchill’s psyche. Best is especially good on the bombing of Dresden, which he feels was justifiable, and on the agonies that Churchill went through after it. A distinct picture of a hero emerges, and also of the nature of heroism: the massive ego, the single-mindedness, the buccaneering humour, the patriotism, the utter determination and physical courage. Best is strong, too, on Churchill at peace, notably in his prescience in fathoming the threat from Hitler in the wilderness years of the 1930s but also in

E VAN M AWDSLEY From the Kremlin’s Archives

T HE H ITLER B OOK : T HE S ECRET D OSSIER P REPAREDFOR S TALIN

★

Edited by Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl (John Murray 370pp £20)

I NTERESTIN H ITLER , and particularly the last days of the Third Reich, seems inexhaustible, and the flow of publications endless. The latest offering in the genre is The Hitler Book, which promises two levels of novelty – as a ‘new’ inside view of the Führer’s everyday life, and as one formerly hidden away in ‘Stalin’s archives’. The core of The Hitler Bookis a dossier produced within the Soviet secret police in the late 1940s. It was based on the testimony of unique insiders, two captured SS men who had served in the closest proximity to Hitler. Heinz Linge was Hitler’s manservant and Otto Günsche his personal adjutant. (Both characters lurked prominently in the background of the superb recent German film Downfall.) Both were interrogated in Moscow between 1946 and 1949; the present account was produced in the last two years of their time in the Soviet capital. The dossier was evidently intended for consultation at the Kremlin’s highest level, and the final version was sent to Stalin’s office at the end of 1949. A copy made in the late 1950s was recently discovered by the researcher Matthias Uhl in the former Communist Party archive, hidden by sloppy cataloguing. The original typescript, apparently with an identical text, survives in the Russian Presidential Archive but is unavailable for consultation by foreigners. A German edition of the dossier, edited also by Uhl and Henrik Eberle, appeared earlier this year. Even without this complex provenance The Hitler Book

his reaction to the invention of the atomic bomb and its place in the stand-off of the first years of the Cold War. Together with a superb analysis of Churchill as a strategist, and insights into his subject’s own often partial account in his memoirs of the conduct of the war, Best presents us with a most thought-provoking and original consideration of the role of one of the greatest of the world’s great men. More to the point, his book is an object lesson to others in the matter of how Churchill studies should be conducted at this point in historiography, and it is to be hoped – probably in vain – that others will not embark down this well-worn track without following his example. To order these books, see order form on page 78

is a peculiar artefact. It was written as a complete and fluent narrative, rather than a simple ‘report’ or indictment. The first sentence gives a sense of the style: ‘Summer 1933 – the sun was shining in Wilhelmsplatz, the location of the Reich Chancellery’. And yet it was evidently never intended for publication. It attempted to give an overall view of Hitler’s time in power, but over a third of the text is taken up by the last fifteen weeks in Berlin. The real problem withThe Hitler Bookis that there are several levels of distortion. The first, and least necessary level, is that this 2005 edition is a second-hand translation. It is admirably readable, but it is an English translation of a German translation of a Russian text. The second level is in its imbalance, which makes the reader wonder what the Soviet police team were trying to do. The dossier attempts to be both a general account of Hitler’s activities and one based on what Linge and Günsche saw. The story goes back to 1933; Linge became Hitler’s manservant only in 1939, and Günsche’s main time with Hitler was from the beginning of 1943. Linge was only twentysix when the war started, and Günsche was twenty-two. Linge was a high-class orderly. Günsche had more substance – and was a nastier piece of work – but he was hardly a figure of any importance in terms of policy. Beyond the junior status of the two main sources, and their very tangential involvement in the ‘big’ story, are the circumstances of their involvement. This is the third level of distortion. Any interesting historical perceptions or even anecdotes must be immediately doubted, given that Linge and Günsche were motivated to minimise further punishment and their Soviet police ‘editors’ were bound to follow the party line. (Indeed, if the dossier has a special use it is for indicating that party line.) Perhaps, however, the fact that so little ‘new’ of a personally compromising nature is revealed about Hitler is in itself important. Had there been scandal at the ‘what the butler saw’ level, the Russians would surely have used it. The end result of all this, unfortunately, is that the dossier has limited value. It does take the reader through the history of Hitler’s main activities, especially on the foreign policy and military side. For Hitler ‘buffs’, however,

9

LITERARY REVIEW Dec 2005 / Jan 2006