Not I Read Free

write this book, because if I could not reconstruct the context of a remark it inevitably remained sketchy and often had to be left out. Some of his opinions did not stand up in the face of the knowledge I had meanwhile acquired. In the initial draft, however, I reproduced rather than corrected them, because they seemed important as the opinions of someone present at the time; in part they reflect not today’s historical view, but the perceptions, worries, and disappointed hopes of someone who lived through those times.
    To make the book more readable I have also taken the liberty of reproducing some of my notes as direct speech. A historian could not possibly proceed in such a way, but it may be permitted the memoirist. Wherever possible these dialogues maintain the tone as well as the content of what was said. When individual remarks are placed in quotation marks they faithfully reproduce a comment, as far as memory allows.
    Like all biographical notes, my observations make no claim to be indisputably valid. What I write about the friends of my parents, about teachers and superiors, remains my view alone. I present Hans Hausdorf and Father Wittenbrink, the Ganses, Kiefers, Donners, and others only as I remember them. That may not beaccurate or even fair in every respect. Nevertheless, I was not prompted by any prejudice.
    In several historical accounts I have dealt more analytically with the years covered in the following pages. 2 For that reason in the present book I could largely dispense with abstract reflections. They are left to the reader. At any rate I have not written a history of the Hitler years, but only how they were reflected in a family setting. That means actual living experiences, sometimes even the merely casual and occasionally the anecdotal, will predominate here, as they do in real life. When, as a teenager in the early 1940s, I described the grimaces of a friend of my parents who had a nervous disorder, my father admonished me, “Don’t look too closely!” I responded that I neither could nor would close my eyes. Thanks to the generally nurturing environment in which I grew up that has never been difficult for me, nor was it used against me. It was actually a necessary prerequisite for writing this book. The temptation was much greater either to repress the grimaces of my youthful years or, even worse, to view them through a glorifying lens.
    In writing this book I have accumulated many debts of gratitude. Here I would like to mention only Frau Ursel Hanschmann, Irmgard Sandmayr, my friend Christian Herrendoerfer, and my fellow prisoners of war WolfgangMünkel and Klaus Jürgen Meise. The latter successfully escaped from the POW camp some time before my failed attempt. I owe particular thanks to my editor Barbara Hoffmeister for her numerous important comments. Finally, the many friends of my youth who helped me with the order of events, dates, and names should be acknowledged.
    Joachim Fest
Kronberg, May 2006
    1 J. B. Gradl (1904–88) and H. Krone (1895–1989) were both prominent members of the conservative, Catholic Zentrum party during the Weimar Republic and became founding members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party in the Bonn republic. E. Niekisch (1889–1967) was an antifascist National Bolshevik imprisoned by the Nazis; he later taught in the German Democratic Republic. A tellingly odd collection of witnesses.
    2 Fest is referring to the books which established him as one of Germany’s foremost experts on the Nazi period. These books range from The Face of the Third Reich (1970) and Hitler (1974) to Plotting Hitler’s Death (1996), Speer: The Final Verdict (2002), and Inside Hitler’s Bunker (2005), to name some of the titles available in English translations.

EIGHT
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    Of the Soldier’s Life and of Dying
    At the beginning of April 1944 my father received an official letter. It came from a party office and informed him that on the nineteenth of the month he had to