SOCIAL SCIENCES

The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich

Wittman, Robert & . Harper. Mar. 2016. 528p. photos. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780062319012. $35; ebk. ISBN 9780062319036. HIST
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Best-selling author and former FBI agent Wittman, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kinney here team up to focus on the history and impact of the long-awaited recovery of the diary of Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946), a leading player of the Third Reich, whose anti-Semitic ideologies influenced Adolf Hitler himself. In 2013 the journal was discovered after decades of ambiguity concerning its location. Robert Kempner, a Nazi opponent and prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials, stole the diary and thousands of other original Nazi artifacts for his personal collection. Years later, Wittman and Henry Mayer, chief archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum managed to recover these items and analyze their content. Though marketed as "a game-changing World War II narrative wrapped in a riveting detective story," this work's modern crime content is slim. Furthermore, while the revelation of the diary contributes significant insight into the backdrop of World War II, the story appears to be contextualized with unrelated historical details.
VERDICT These faults aside, those with an interest in German history will find this narrative engaging. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/15.]
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