 "A different WWII perspective" | 2008-09-19 |
| - Reviewed By markofcain |
(4.5 stars)
This book is quite unlike the typical WWII-era memoir which most folks are used to. The most obvious difference is that Missie is an exiled Russian princess, and not some ordinary citizen or refugee in Germany and Austria. She also wrote her diaries in English instead of in German or Russian, so she's really not a full part of the society she's living in. In spite of the differing perspective, the story is very riveting and well-told. Gaps in the narrative are filled in by editorial comments by Missie's brother George, letters she wrote and sent during the missing periods, and reminiscences from Missie, friends, and relatives years later. For someone who isn't well-versed in WWII history, the editorial comments will be very helpful, such as details of the infamous massacre at Katyn, or more information about some battle or event that's only alluded to.
Though she is immune to the suffering and deprivations of the ordinary people around her in the beginning, by 1943 Missie and her circle of friends and relatives start to feel the heat. The Allied bombings raids on Berlin didn't make a distinction between commoners and nobility, and food and fuel shortages affected everyone. Because of her association with a few people involved in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler, Missie eventually has to get out of Berlin, eventually making her way into Vienna, where she works as a nurse for most of the duration of the war. Deprivations and bombing raids continue in Vienna, though, and as the war nears its final days, she once again is faced with the necessity of escaping to a safer locale. Not only is it imperative that she get out of the way of the fighting, but she also doesn't want to be discovered by the Red Army, as she is a White Russian.
While it's always difficult to make value judgments on someone's journal, since we can't put ourselves in that person's footsteps, and because this person probably never dreamt it would be published, I did get the sense that a few other reviewers did, that there's a seeming indifference to the fate of the ordinary people around her. While Europe is going up in flames, Missie, her friends, and her family are still going to parties, hob-nobbing with royalty and nobility, driving around in cars, drinking champagne, using perfume, having strings pulled for them so they can have nice jobs, saving ridiculous luxury items, and staying in castles and manors. Even when the war finally catches up to even the nobility, she still has all of these powerful connections who can get her exit passes, travel permits, castles and estates to escape to, jobs to be accepted at, and cars and trains to flee in.
Ordinary Europeans often had to escape on foot and drag their necessary possessions in carts, were left homeless, couldn't turn their noses up at horse meat if that were their only food available, didn't have powerful connections to save them from harm and grant them safe passage through dangerous territory, and cared more about escaping with their lives, the clothes on their backs, and a few needed items, instead of rejoicing that some Count friend of theirs managed to save something stupid like fur coats and artwork in his automobile. And while the selling point of the book is that Missie was intimately involved in the July 20 plot, I didn't see more than superficial circumstantial evidence for that. She was friends with some of the plotters and tried to get some of them out of jail, but other than that, there isn't any compelling proof that she knew way more than she was telling. That isn't even the main focus of the book. And since there are so many people moving in Missie's circle, it's sometimes hard to remember who's who.
Overall, though, it is a very interesting book for anyone who's interested in a different perspective of WWII, or who's interested in the White Russian experience abroad. Obviously it's not Missie's fault that she was born into nobility and could have all of these wartime luxuries and safety nets that ordinary people could only dream of. |
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 "Good on the devastation caused by Allied bombings, not so good on the plot against Hitler" | 2008-07-26 |
| - Reviewed By ljunggren |
| It feels cruel to be overly critical about this book because I can't imagine the author wrote entries in her diary with the thought that they would one day be published. She finds herself in Berlin at the time the Allied bombing raids are really picking up and describes very well how hard daily life was at a time when whole sections of the city were being pulverised. She also happens to be working for a part of the government alongside some of those who plotted against Hitler and tried to assassinate him in 1944. Her involvement in this is never more than casual and it's a sign of her lack of importance that she is never arrested or interrogated. Unlike most of the people around her she is also able to flee Berlin to stay in various friends' castles and country estates when life in the capital becomes too tough. She also attends many, many parties hosted by diplomats and other members of the gilded set. This is an interesting book, but not rivetting. |
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| ""I CANNOT LISTEN TO THIS ANYMORE"" | 2008-05-31 |
| - Reviewed By richardbcook |
Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945 by Marie Vassilchikov (New York: Knopf, 1987)
This review has been published in a collection of reviews and articles, That's What I'm Talking About (Nativa 2008).THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT
"29 January, 1940 . . . My office does not seem to know who its Top Boss is, as everybody is giving orders at the same time, although the Reich's Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, is said to have the last word" (page 5).
Diaries can be a valuable antidote to the treacheries of memory and the self-interest of hindsight. But the trouble is, many such journals are boring. Plus, many important events unfold without the benefit of the keen-eyed and conscientious diarist. One such compulsive diarist was Marie Vassilehikov (1917-1978), daughter of a minor Russian nobleman, whose family was evicted from Russia in 1919 and who found herself trapped in Hitler's Europe at the outbreak of the Second World War. Her journal has recently been published as Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945. This document, edited after her death by her brother George, is of great importance.
Brilliant, multilingual, independent, and with an eye for the telling detail, "Missie" worked for several German propaganda and information offices throughout the war. She typed many of her observations in English during office hours and concealed the pages first in file cabinets and later in various spots in and around Berlin.
Missie's diary provides an eyewitness account of the Allied bombing of Berlin, which was undertaken in retaliation for an accidental German bombing of London on August 24, 1940. From the diary: "10 October, 1940 . . . This evening I was at a party when the alarm sounded. The shooting was very loud and poor Maxchen Kieckebusch, whose nerves have gone to pieces since he was injured in the spine in France, rolled on the floor moaning, Ich kann das nicht mehr Horen [I cannot listen to this anymore] over and over again" (p. 32).
We read of the disintegration of the matrix of ordinary life: an elderly postman dies and is laid out for a week on the kitchen table before being taken away. At one end of the table near the feet of the corpse, sandwiches are prepared and given to a rescue party looking for persons alive under the rubble of the latest Allied bombing. Before the end of the war all the gravediggers had been called into the army. Relatives had to bury their dead in cardboard coffins.
How important is this book? From it we learn much about aristocratic Germans who detested Hitler and who conspired to kill him. Successive plots were discussed and planned, and at least one was bravely and naively attempted; a suitcase fined with explosives was planted in Hitler's underground headquarters. With the failure of this attempt, the most active conspirators were rounded up, together with their families, associates, and acquaintances.
Unbelievably, the conspirators had made long lists of those who would be invited to join the post-Hitler German government. The discovery of these lists led to the arrest and execution of more than eleven thousand persons in 1944 and the first five months of 1945. The theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was among these last. Several conspirators escaped Nazi detection only to be captured by the advancing Red Army. They disappeared forever in the Russian Gulag.
Missie was informed of the conspiracy to execute Hitler and may have given more to the various plots than just her sympathy. Her diary of these events is the only firsthand account known to exist. It astonishes that a Russian woman living in Berlin and identified with anti-Hitler conspirators, somehow avoided suspicion, arrest, and execution. Her diary is a rare and remarkable document.
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| "An Excellent , Varied Perspective" | 2008-05-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1WQ82PTVDKJFA |
| Having read countless histories and memoirs from this period, I found this book helped color yet another perspective. I was engrossed. I have done much reading on both the Kreisau Circle and the 20th July Plot, and was fascinated at how Missy's memoirs tied up some loose ends on the subject. This is a wonderful addition to the library of anyone who is a student of this particular era. |
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| "An Elegant Scrounger" | 2007-10-25 |
| - Reviewed By lanes59034 |
Following the collapse of the Romanov Empire (Russia), the Hapsburg Empire (Austria) and the Hohenzollern Empire (Germany) in the wake of World War I, Europe was overrun by aristocratic refugees. Some of them had family fortunes commensurate with their impressive titles, others did not.
One of these impoverished, but well-educated young aristocrats was Princess Marie Vassiltchikov, who was in her early 20s when she and her sister moved to Germany hunting for jobs. Both found employment despite their non-German status, but it was tenuous for young anti-Communist Russians, especially when Stalin agreed to a non-agression pact with Hitler and happily carved up Poland and the Baltic states, including Lithuania in which Marie and her family had taken refuge from the Bolsheviks.
Yes, she is aristocratic. Yes, she is beautiful and yes, she is generally broke, cold and hungry. Her looks and her family connections provide a safety net of sorts, and as food supplies shrink Marie's diary begins to resemble an extended food quest, typical of anybody who's hungry. She manages to acquire a modest, but apparently elegant wardrobe and admits to gorging herself at parties when the opportunity arises.
Like any beautiful, young woman, she comments on the young men (many of whom are also aristocrats) and how attractive they are (or aren't.) Sometimes her blueblood works for her. Sometimes it works against her. During 1944, for example, the official SS journal (DAS SCHWARZE KORPS/THE BLACK CORPS) rails against "blaublutige Schweinehunde and Verrater"/ "blue-blooded piggish-dogs and traitors" who'd conspired to assassinate Hitler. Yet, the leader of the dreaded SS, Heinrich Himmler, continued to revel in his tenuous connection with the royal family of Bavaria, one of whom was his god-father.
These were dangerous times for bluebloods like Marie and she survived. Not only that, she left some great descriptions of the inner workings of the Third Reich, the July 20th plot and impact of strategic bombing by the Allies.
She doesn't moralize or engage in self pity. She copes, eats when she can, and finds shelter wherever its available. She uses the connections she has and she survives.
Her diaries are straightforward accounts of a critical period in world history. She is not a model 21st century progressive, but neither were most of those who conspired to murder Hitler at his East Prussian headquarters in 1944. Some were unregenerate Monarchists and Prussian Junkers intent on regaining lost status and privileges.
Her diaries and her situation are difficult for a lot of contemporary American readers to fully understand. A Princess, after all, should be wealthy as well as beautiful. The "People's Princess" (HRH Diana Spencer)is the archetypical blueblood for most Americans. While Princess Marie had the requisite elegant good looks, she lacked the money and power most of us expect royals to have.
We forget, or never realized, that Europe during the 1920s and 1930s included lots of people with very impressive titles, good educations and aristocratic bearing, but little or no money. Being a Princess from an empire which no longer existed might get you invited to parties, especially if you're beautiful, but it didn't pay rent or put schnitzel (even the schnitzel made from dead donkeys) on the table.
I liked Marie and her diaries and found a number of interesting insights and facts I didn't know about this period in history. If you keep in mind the totality of circumstances which formed her perceptions, her diaries can provide some interesting and unique insights into this tumultuous period of history.
I recommend the diaries and gave it five stars. |
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| "Good" | 2007-03-11 |
| - Reviewed By booknut_64 |
| This is a good book. Not like other diaries I've read. Had to hold your interest but it's a true diary. |
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| "An view from the fiery depths of Hitler's capital." | 2006-11-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A37FTN36O59QLO |
"The Berlin Diaries" by Marie Vassiltchikov is an account of wartime Germany from the vantage point of a young White Russian aristocrat. Although not a native German, Ms. Vassiltchikov and her sister penetrated the upper echelons of German society--the surnames of those who they socialize with read like a "Who's Who Among Central Europeon Royalty." Despite their privileged lifestyle, the Vassiltchikov sisters are not insulated from the trappings of the war raging around them: their acquaintances die in battle, they experience rationing, cold offices, nurse duty, and most memorable of all, the punishing bombings of Berlin.
If the suspense of who will live and perish around Ms. Vassiltchikov were not enough, many of her coworkers in the Abwehr are secret anti-Nazis and were thus implicated with varying roles in the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate der Fuehrer with a breifcase bomb. Her writings provide an excellent insider's glimpse of the German Resistance and will force any reader to sympathize with Vassiltchikov; even if they see her as "the enemy" as a result of her residence in Nazi Germany.
The book's readability is a final strength that I will mention. Ms. Vassiltchikov's diary entries are often interrupted by factual passages from the editors, one of which was her brother. These passages explain the course of the war at that particular entry and thus renders the diary easily understandable for those with even a limited knowledge on the Second World War. Even as a frequent reader of World War II, I thoroughly enjoyed "The Berlin Diaries," and so did my co-workers who care little for military history or the time-period. The fact that the book can appeal to such a wide audience is undoubtedly one of its most admirable qualities. |
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| "Berlin Diaries" | 2006-11-04 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1XL44GTQIGMOB |
| The best and most insightful book I have read about what life must have been like in Berlin during WW II. The writer, through his sister's diary, gives a vivid description of the top Nazi party members, and how the plot to kill Hitler was hatched and then failed. It is amazing the hero - Missie - survived the war. I could not put it down. |
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| "The princess can tell a story" | 2006-09-29 |
| - Reviewed By writerrad |
Princess Marie Vassiltchikov, a member of some minor branch of the Russian nobility who ended up in Lithuania and then in Germany for World War II, can sure tell a story. Her diary is a good page turner. You always know what is going on. You're always want to find out what is going to happen next. I finished this book in a day or two and took it everywhere I went, because I had to find out what happened.
She is direct and never gets too intwined in her personal musings (although the curious would want to know more about personal/romantic and other dirt in a private diary).
Her story is intensified by the big events she is involved in.
She begins with Germany's descent into World War. Then, a number of her associates and probably herself (the editor says she is circumspect about this in her diary lest the diary be found)are involved in the aristocratic attempt to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi government in the fall of 1944. Finally, the Princess, as a Russian aristocrat emirge who spent World War II working for Germany, flees first Berlin and then Austria in fear of the advancing Soviet Army.
While the princess lives modestly on jobs translating and clipping English periodicals for various German foreign policy enterprises, her world is one of the titled wealthy in Germany and Austria. She's continually mixing it up with the descendants of the Royal Houses of Prussia, Russia, Austria and of Germany principalities like Bavaria and Hanover. Her friends are descendants of Bismark and Metternick. Most of her friends are also princesses, counts, countesses, princes, and even lowly barons.
For all the ravages of the War she faces, there is always a great estate or castle to stay in if her home is bombed out. Influential friends are able to send a car to fetch her even when she is stranded in the most remote Alpine villages. There is always a friend in high places to sign a special pass, get her an impossible-to-get ticket, offer her a new job, or pull strings for a transfer out of harm's way once she becomes a nurse. While sometimes there is a shortage of meat, there is always champagne. When there is no oil to heat lamps and cooking burners, there is always enough perfume to use for these purposes. While Germans are starving and millions are being murdered by the Nazis, there are often fine meals on provisions sent from friends in the embassies, from a friend's baronial estate, or from their diplomatic posts in Rumania or Hungary.
The marketing of the book attempts to paint Princess Marie Vassiltchikov
as a progressive fighter given her association with the Von Stauffenberg attempt to kill Hitler and take over the government. Alas, her aristocratic friends were not against the real setup in Germany. They were attempting to bail out of the war now that Germany was being beaten. They had not opposed Hitler when he outlawed Germany's working class political parties and unions and sent their leaders to concentration camps in the early 1930s. In fact, their party, the German National Party, a party more right wing in social policy than the Nazis, merged with the Nazis in the early 1930s. Most of her mail associates had held important posts in the German government for much of Hitler's regime: ambassadors, provincial governors, police chiefs, staff generals, and other officials. None of them were known for sticking up for human rights, democracy, or workers and farmers.
Indeed, what's shocking is the apparent indifference that Princess Marie Vassiltchikov and her pals show to the total suffering that ordinary Germans and Austrians faced, ordinary folk who didnt have castles to repair to when they needed housing, retainers to shoot or harvest food from estates when the food system broke down, who struggled to find bread and milk and never touched champagne. If the Princess and her ilk do face such genuine suffering during these years, what became of German factory workers, small farmers, family shop keepers?
This does not mean the good Princess doesn't suffer. At the end she suffers from starvation and its complications. Between the lines you can read in fears and anxiety that must have continued for the rest of her life, no matter how successful it may have been.
Above all, whether you like her or love her or not, the Princess knows how to tell a story you will follow through to the end. |
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| "Best and most original book on WWII ever written" | 2006-07-29 |
| - Reviewed By veit2 |
| Don't pay any attention to the one or two negative views in this section. This is a terrific book written from the weird persepective of the Blue Bloods, the European royalty the Nazis hated as much as they hated Jews. The fact that these people, all opposed to Hitler, could land on their feet over and over again in spite of everything is as funny as anything can be. I would have been a Top Ten TV Series had somebody had the sense to pick it up. Risk the few dollars cost, you won't be sorryl |
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