The Devil’s Diary: Hitler’s High Priest and the Hunt for the Lost Papers of the Third Reich
The Devil’s Diary is a densely written, triple-ply nonfiction book that reads like a novel. It begins with the primary story: the hunt for the papers of Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi who was a principal architect of the Party’s philosophy and creed, destruction of the Jews in Europe during WWII. Rosenberg kept a personal diary of the history of, and his reactions to, what had happened across the European landscape from the onset of Hitler’s political influence on Germany in 1923. The segments from the diary show Rosenberg to be egotistical, a slavish devotee of Hitler and the Nazi Reich, and a dangerously troubled man with too much power, like most of his fellows in the Party hierarchy.
The second story is of Robert Kempner, a German-Jewish refugee, lawyer and tireless Crusader against the Nazis and their collaborators. Kempner oversaw the last and longest prosecution of high-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg trials. It was he who kept Rosenberg’s diary, and much more Nazi paperwork, in his home after the war in order to write a book. The last covers the hunt for the lost Rosenberg diary which vanished after Kempner’s death, led by Robert K. Wittman, an investigative expert in the field of cultural property.
The stories, especially that of Rosenberg and Kempner, are twisted together, making a tale that is in parts enlightening and powerful, and in others tragic and full of pathos. Recommended.
