Downfall : A Play in Three Acts. By Douglas Reed. (Cape. 5s.)
Shorter Notices
MR. DOUGLAS REED has done well to put his latest prophecy on the future of Germany in dramatic form, for this means that he wastes no words and goes to the heart of his matter at once. There are three scenes. The first is a dinner party at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin given by Hitler to Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Ley and their wives. The time is " a period of the future which will soon be present." At this party there is a vacant place—it is Ribbentrop's —and Hitler makes the revelation, which is a bombshell for all present except Himmler, that Ribbentrop has been seen in Switzerland. The first rat has left. The second scene is at Hitler's H.Q. at Neudeck, the East Prussian estate of Colonel Oskar von Hindenburg. The Generals are already plotting to save Germany by throwing overboard Hitler, but Goering is loyal and the plan is seen through by Hitler. In the last scene, however, at Hitler's tea house on the Kehlstein, the conspiring Reichswehr Generals triumph and Hitler collapses. The dialogue is lively, the scenes well planned, the character drawing convincing, as we should expect from a man who knows practically all the persons, Germany, and its people, at first hand. It has a curious inevitability which springs from the sense it gives of all the people concerned being in the grip of circumstances that dictate their every action and from which they cannot escape. Apart from its great political interest the play has merits which make the reader wish to see it on the stage.
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