THE HEART OF NAZISM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 12

THE HEART OF NAZISM

THE SCHELLENBERG MEMOIRS, _ by Walter Schellenberg; Andre Deutsch, English price 25/-. VALTER SCHELLENBERG was the youngest S.S. general; the protégé of Himmler, the mystical and ruthless Reichsfuhrer S.S., and of Heydrich, the cold intelligence which built the S.S. organisation. From the beginning of the war he was close to the centre of power Sn Germany. Among the universally parochial intellects of the S.S. he passed for subtle, and in the end he stood beside Himmler urging the elimination of Hitler, Himmler’s succession, and peace with the Western Powers. His memoirs should be fascinating. In a sense they are. Unlike most high ranking German officers Schellenberg does not seek to excuse nor to justify himself; but to describe. He rarely talks of matters outside his own experiences. Both are qualities which

make his book a very useful insight into the heart af Nazism. Its failings are Schellenberg’s own. He was not, as he believed, subtle, nor so important. His politics were in the over-populated realms of German cloud-cuckoo land, and his professional work as head of S.S. Intelligence was too much coloured by the penny dreadfuls with which the reference library of the. Gestapo was filled. Some at least of his memories are hindsight. Schellenberg’s evidence at Nuremberg contained a number of erroneous beliefs: he was convinced, for example, that Himmler had murdered Hitler because this was the advice he had himself given. The error is silently corrected in the Memoirs, and Schellenberg appears as more intelligent and acute then he actually was. Yet in spite of Schellenberg’s failings, this book deserves to be read. It is the work of a man who had no strong political convictions, who tasted power, who regretted its loss; and who in his ailing exile, tried to recapture the glamour and excitement of his brief

career.

Francis

West