The True German

Editor: Benjamin Carter Hett
Genre: Historical Biography
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013
Pages: 240
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Werner Otto Müller-Hill served as a military judge in the Werhmacht during World War II. From March 1944 to the summer of 1945, he kept a diary, recording his impressions of what transpired around him as Germany hurtled into destruction—what he thought about the fate of the Jewish people, the danger from the Bolshevik East once an Allied victory was imminent, his longing for his home and family and, throughout it, a relentless disdain and hatred for the man who dragged his beloved Germany into this cataclysm, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Müller-Hill calls himself a German nationalist, the true Prussian idealist who was there before Hitler and would be there after. Published in Germany and France, Müller-Hill's diary has been hailed as a unique document, praised for its singular candor and uncommon insight into what the German army was like on the inside. It is an extraordinary testament to a part of Germany's people that historians are only now starting to acknowledge and fills a gap in our knowledge of WWII.

Review: It's tough to assign a rating to this. Without a lot of prior knowledge about World War II, a reader would be lost. Obviously, it's in diary format and not written as a narrative. If you don't know what was going on in World War II at any given time, you won't find an explanation here.

What I did like about The True German was Muller-Hill's insights into the end of the war and his opinions of Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials. 

When I think of World War II, I think of concentrations camps, and specific battles. Muller-Hill attacks the war as a whole, not as individual atrocities. In fact, concentration camps and the attempted extermination of Jews is barely mentioned. The German people themselves were just trying to survive. That was the most striking point that I noticed.

If you want to read and gain a sense of the flavor of the times, this book isn't it. If you want to read one man's thoughts and musings from day to day, week to week, this might be just the thing.