A disturbing study of the inner life of a leading Nazi official and ‘hero’ of the Eastern Front.
Wiesbaden, March 6, 1927. A truck careens through the city streets. On board are twenty-one young Nazis on their way to a street battle. Among them is district leader Theodor Habicht. Habicht rose quickly through the ranks, becoming NSDAP leader in Austria and then a diplomat. In 1939, he became an officer in the Wehrmacht, and died a ‘hero’s death’ on the Eastern Front in 1944, leaving behind a unique war diary, which the historian Felix Römer has used as source material for his book. Römer plunges us into the intellectual world of a staunch National Socialist, uncovering his immense egocentricity and exposing a fundamental contradiction in Nazi ideology. For although the individual was supposed to melt into the Volksgemeinschaft – the national ethnic community – the Nazis simultaneously promoted a cult of ‘personalities’. This is a sometimes startling examination of the narcissism of Nazi society and its leaders.
