Rarely have I known one book suggest another as The
Bitter End, which is published his week, does Kravchenko's well-known I Chose Freedom, which appeared here last year. Gisevius' book tells, on the whole convincingly, the inner history of the abortive movements against Hitler within Germany between 1938 and 1944, when Stauffenberg's bomb exploded harmlessly. All that is interesting enough, but the abiding impression the book leaves is of the terror, the suspicion, the espionage, and the menace by which Germany under the Nazi oligarchy and the Gestapo was pervaded through the war years. How does this differ from the terror, the suspicion, the espionage in Russia under the N.V.D.K., as revealed in Kravchenko's arresting pages? It differs not at all. The identity of the methods of different schools of totalitarianism has never been more strikingly
demonstrated.
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