Diary of a Man in Despair

"My friends have warned me about my writings. Driven as I am by internal necessity, I must ignore their warnings and I must continue these notes, which are intended as a contribution to the cultural history of the Nazi period. Night after night I hide this record deep in the woods on my land...constantly on the watch lest I am observed, constantly changing my hiding place." Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. A minor aristocrat who had made a career writing fiction for the masses, he was not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, who played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule. The book that resulted, published only after Reck's death in Dachau and after Germany was defeated, is less a...