By Order of the Gestapo. By Peter Wallner. (John Murray.
7s. 6d.) LORD DAVIES, who writes the foreword, may be right in saying that " we cannot read too many books of this kind, horrible though they are." In any case, it seems essential to read one in order to understand the horrors of which furor teutonicus is capable when it rejects the moral bridles of civilisation whilst using its machines. Those who have read Heilig's Men Crucified will know what to expect. The two writers must have been companions in torture : each describes in exactly the same way his experiences in the train from Vienna in which the systematic devilment began. It was almost inconceivably in- genious in its variety-there were " human cock-fights," the murder of a prisoner locked with another in a revolving cement- mixer, and a thousand more subtle kinds of torment. Yet the book, which deals essentially '-with the psychopathic mind that responds most readily to the doctrines of hatred, achieves flashes of beauty when the author describes some relatively good men whose integrity broke fitfully through the ever-present cloak of fear. The story, excellently translated, rings fully true, and many of the incidents have been corroborated more than once.
Previous page
