People Under Hitler
By $3.50 HARCOURT, BRACE
THIS belongs in the category of first-rate books about Hitler’s Third Reich. The author, who draws on a long background of experience as a correspondent in Germany until 1941, is evidently the thoughtful type of newspaper man who does not throw away his notes and clippings after he has got off his daily cable. The strongest points in the book are the documentation of Nazi cultural ‘howlers’ and the positively appalling picture of the disappearance of the most elementary personal liberties. We learn, for instance, that the Grimm Brothers, long-deceased authors of delightful fairy tales, were solemnly cited for registration with the official Nazi authors’ organization; that a gathering of scientists devoted much time to an investigation of how commands can be bellowed most effectively; that for the Nazi philosophy there is no such thing as objective truth. There are sketches of the personalities and feuds ot the leaders and there is a good deal of information on living conditions and Nazi methods of economic administration and of nursing along the proletariat with circuses, in the shape of the Kraft durch Freude movement. There is more personal drama in Shirer, and Otto Tolischus wrote a crisper survey of the causes of Nazi military and economic achievements. Mr. Deuel sometimes displays a slight tendency to miss the forest for the individual trees. But he provides a mine of valuable information, not so much about Germany at war as about the everyday life of the German under the Nazi order — or disorder. W. H. C.