Reviews of the Week
Hitler's Last Days
ON May 1st, 1945, the news of Hitler's death was broadcast to a doubting world. No proof immediately followed, and speculation throve in its absence. To Mr. Michael A: Musmanno, then an American naval officer in Italy, this uncertainty seemed " a void which history could not tolerate." History demanded, he thought, " a definite pronouncement, unequivocal and factually unassail- able. . . . Posterity would never forgive the present generation for leaving this subject wrapped in mystery." Conscientiously he resolved to fill the void, to solve the enigma. Now, after several years of research, he has produced his answer. It is an account of Hitler's last ten days of life, " the authoritative and dramatic story " now at last revealed (he incorrectly tells us) by " all " the surviving eye-witnesses.
The first, almost insurmountable, difficulty in assessing Mr. Musmanno's contribution to history is his style. He writes in a kind of housemaid-Carlylese which must be read to be believed: " Rising and dropping on his uneven legs, .he moves around the room in ape-like glide, a hint of foam on his underlip " ; " Like a battleship approaching land-batteries belching steel-splitting fire, the Fiihrer's bunker advances from day to day towards its culminating rendezvous " ; " Springtime fell through the latticework of the pro- jectiles, working its entrancing pattern of hope and promise. Even Goebbels, who had grandiloquently proclaimed that, with Hitler's demise, he would board the next thunderbolt into eternity, hesitated when it came to turning in his ticket." This " powerful writing," as his publishers call it, is continuous—sustained, with astonishing energy, for three hundred-pages. Mr. Musmanno must be con- gratulated on his energy. So must any reader who can follow him to the end of his story.
The temptation to follow him through his style must, of course, be supplied by his matter. Mr. Musmanno has worked hard to collect his matter. He claims to have travelled over Europe for three years, interrogated numerous witnesses (not all of them relevant), and filled twenty volumes with their evidence. He has also taken the precaution of having himself regularly photographed with his interlocutors as evidence of his veracity. Further, he is (we learn), in the intervals of such travel, a judge in Pittsburgh—though the example of his judicial style which he complacently records on page 136 will hardly impress the reader by its objectivity. He would, therefore, seem qualified both to obtain and to evaluate evidence. What new relevant facts, what new or instructive con- clusions, has he discovered and presented about " Hitler's mad finale " Alas, none. Probing with difficulty behind his defensive smoke- screen (he writes in the present tense and deliberately omits foot- notes " so that nothing may distract from the interest and excitement of the narrative "), we find that, in spite of all his claims, Mr. Musmanno has, in fact, for the last ten days of Hitler's life found only one witness who had not been cross-examined on all material points five years ago—a casual waiter credited only with two redundant remarks. All the others were squeezed dry long ago, and although they may have .retained or recovered a certain content for a second squeezing, that operation, energetically rather than scientifically performed by Mr. Musmanno, yields little to enrich and nothing to alter the positiye result of the first. Besides these witnesses, and other unavowed but recognisable sources, Mr. Musmanno appears to possess a mysterious and enviable familiarity with certain intimate events for which it is difficult to deduce his authority. His narrative, "the whtde and absolute truth," includes the text of a long private telephone-conversation between Eva Braun and Fegelein, both of whom are dead. There are private conversations between Fegelein and Hitler and between Hitler and Stumpfegger (all dead) and between Burgdorf and Krebs (both missing). The alleged drunken suicide of Burgdorf, though solitary and unobserved, is described by Mr. Musmanno in minute detail. Similarly the nursery conversations of the Goebbels family (all dead) and the trial of Fegelein (conducted behind closed doors before no living witness) are recorded verbatim over several pages. Possibly the judge will account for his knowledge of these and numerous other such details in his narrative. Otherwise we must assume that the omission of footnotes confgs greater advantages than mere unimpeded dramatic effect.
But once one begins to test Mr. Musmanno's scholarship, there is really no end. He interprets politics in the most random manner, ascribes motives without either evidence or probability, and mis- quotes and misinterprets official documents. (The names of Hitler's parents are not blank in the marriage certificate—though they are only partially legible—and psychological generalisations based on that assumption are void.) His characters are not historical persons but the monsters of sixpenny sex-thrillers or babu melodrama. The few real problems which he might have considered he either totally ignores or unwarrantably dismisses. He assumes Bormann's death as certain, though the evidence is that of only one uncorroboratcd witness ; and asserting that the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were totally vaporised, he refuses to allow any problem of their disposal. If one is to commend this book perhaps it is best not to regard it as history at all. History is an exact science, depending on technical distinctions between evidence and invention, conjecture and assertion. It also requires some human understanding, some political sense. Perhaps it is better to treat this book as a work of art. Style, after all, is a matter of taste. Perhaps there are some readers who like " powerful writing." H. R. TREVOR-ROPER.
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