Pattern Ok Conquest

THE essential outlines of life in wartime Germany are here sketched faithfully and authoritatively by an American newspaper man who left Germany early in 1941 after seeing more than a year of the Nazi war effort. Mr. Harsch is a careful and thoughtful observer. His narrative is notably free from exaggerations both of optimism and of pessimism about the course of the war. He emphasizes the contrast between military and civilian Germany. The latter leads a bare gray life on a subsistence standard of living. It is without enthusiasm and is inclined to make sour jokes about the régime when the Gestapo is not listening too closely at the keyholes. But it has neither the power nor the will to rebel. Military Germany, on the other hand, is well fed, well taken care of; and the Army, according to Mr. Harsch, is a refuge for some Germans who are disgusted with the brutality and chicanery of the Nazi Party régime and yet cannot bring themselves to turn against their country. Hitler himself, in the author’s opinion, is the sole directing genius of the Third Reich; his five most prominent lieutenants are Göring, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Ley. Hess is not even mentioned in this category, and the book probably went to press too early to permit discussion of the mysterious descent of Hess in England or the German attack against the Soviet Union. Mr. Harsch believes that Germany can be beaten, but only at the price of an American effort that will be really ‘all out.’

W. H. C.