One usually begins to write memoirs when one realizes that the greater part of one’s life has been lived, and what one intended to do has been achieved more or less well. Instinctively, one looks back at the ground covered: one is startled at how much has sunk into obscurity or has disappeared into the past as dead time. One would like to capture what is more important or save it for memory, even as it is fading into oblivion.
At the same time one comes face-to-face with the effort required in calling up the past. What was it my father said when my mother reproached him for his pessimistic moods, when she tried to coax him into a degree of flexibility toward those in power? What was the name of the German teacher at Leibniz Gymnasium, who, in front of my classmates, regretted that I was leaving his class? What were the remarks Dr. Meyer made as he accompanied me to the door on my last visit—were they somber or merely ironically resigned? Experiences, words, names: all lost or in the process of disappearing. Only some faces remain, to which, if one kept poking around long enough, a remark, an image, or a situation could be linked. Other information was provided by family tradition. But quite often the thread was simply broken. That also had something to do with the fact that when my family was expelled from our home in Karlshorst all keepsakes, notes, and letters were lost. Likewise the family photos. The pictures in this book were mostly given back to us after the war by friends who had asked for them at some point and were able to save their possessions through the upheavals of the times.
I would have been unable to record my earliest memories if in the early 1950s I had not had a radio commission to write an account of recent German history. Wherever possible I supplemented the published historical studies—which at that time were far from abundant—with conversations with older contemporaries like Johann Baptist Gradl, Heinrich Krone, and Ernst Niekisch.1 Most frequently, however, and also at greatest length, I consulted my father, who, as a politically committed citizen, had experienced the struggles and suffering of the time as more than a mere observer. Naturally, these conversations soon extended to more personal matters and drew attention to the family’s troubles, which I had lived through but hardly noticed.
On the whole I noted down my father’s observations only as headings. That caused me some difficulties when I came to write this book, because if I could not reconstruct the context of a remark it inevitably remained sketchy and often had to be left out. Some of his opinions did not stand up in the face of the knowledge I had meanwhile acquired. In the initial draft, however, I reproduced rather than corrected them, because they seemed important as the opinions of someone present at the time; in part they reflect not today’s historical view, but the perceptions, worries, and disappointed hopes of someone who lived through those times.
To make the book more readable I have also taken the liberty of reproducing some of my notes as direct speech. A historian could not possibly proceed in such a way, but it may be permitted the memoirist. Wherever possible these dialogues maintain the tone as well as the content of what was said. When individual remarks are placed in quotation marks they faithfully reproduce a comment, as far as memory allows.
Like all biographical notes, my observations make no claim to be indisputably valid. What I write about the friends of my parents, about teachers and superiors, remains my view alone. I present Hans Hausdorf and Father Wittenbrink, the Ganses, Kiefers, Donners, and others only as I remember them. That may not be accurate or even fair in every respect. Nevertheless, I was not prompted by any prejudice.
In several historical accounts I have dealt more analytically with the years covered in the following pages.2 For that reason in the present book I could largely dispense with abstract reflections. They are left to the reader. At any rate I have not written a history of the Hitler years, but only how they were reflected in a family setting. That means actual living experiences, sometimes even the merely casual and occasionally the anecdotal, will predominate here, as they do in real life. When, as a teenager in the early 1940s, I described the grimaces of a friend of my parents who had a nervous disorder, my father admonished me, “Don’t look too closely!” I responded that I neither could nor would close my eyes. Thanks to the generally nurturing environment in which I grew up that has never been difficult for me, nor was it used against me. It was actually a necessary prerequisite for writing this book. The temptation was much greater either to repress the grimaces of my youthful years or, even worse, to view them through a glorifying lens.
In writing this book I have accumulated many debts of gratitude. Here I would like to mention only Frau Ursel Hanschmann, Irmgard Sandmayr, my friend Christian Herrendoerfer, and my fellow prisoners of war Wolfgang Münkel and Klaus Jürgen Meise. The latter successfully escaped from the POW camp some time before my failed attempt. I owe particular thanks to my editor Barbara Hoffmeister for her numerous important comments. Finally, the many friends of my youth who helped me with the order of events, dates, and names should be acknowledged.
Joachim Fest
Kronberg, May 2006
1 J. B. Gradl (1904–88) and H. Krone (1895–1989) were both prominent members of the conservative, Catholic Zentrum party during the Weimar Republic and became founding members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party in the Bonn republic. E. Niekisch (1889–1967) was an antifascist National Bolshevik imprisoned by the Nazis; he later taught in the German Democratic Republic. A tellingly odd collection of witnesses.
2 Fest is referring to the books which established him as one of Germany’s foremost experts on the Nazi period. These books range from The Face of the Third Reich (1970) and Hitler (1974) to Plotting Hitler’s Death (1996), Speer: The Final Verdict (2002), and Inside Hitler’s Bunker (2005), to name some of the titles available in English translations.