Hailed as one of the most important works on the Hitler period, "Diary of a Man in Despair" (Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten) is an “astonishing, compelling, and unnerving” portrait of life in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1944 — from a man who nearly shot Hitler himself.
Reck’s impression of Hitler was that he is basically stupid, a petty bureaucrat who hated himself: “a raw vegetable Genghis Khan, a teetotalling Alexander, a womanless Napoleon.”
"Diary of a Man in Despair" offers a fresh (yes, and tragic) look at a horrific time. Reck saw the Nazis as monstrous, murderous thugs whose actions would bring an inevitable destruction to the country he loved. The book’s brilliantly unique qualities are based in the timing of the entries; these were not written in retrospective with an outcome safely secured. Instead the diary is written with a sense of horror fused with the disturbing knowledge that while the very worst aspects of human nature were running amuck in Germany, payday was not far off, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Tomorrow never belonged to them!
