Blood & Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary

8vo, br.ed. pp.338. The true story of a Jewish reporter who became an intimate witness to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Fromm wrote a social column for a liberal Berlin newspaper. Attending luncheons, teas & dinners during the 1930s, she met everybody of importance, including von Hindenberg, Franz von Papen, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Leni Riefenstahl, & other political & social figures. In this secret journal, smuggled out piecemeal before she left Germany, Fromm describes her experiences & conversations with this cast of characters that would soon play shocking roles in Hitler's Third Reich. Her diary is a classic social & historical testament. Review: As a Berlin social reporter in the years leading up to WWII, Bella Fromm mingled with some of the most important and influential members of Hitler's rising Third Reich. Given the Nazis' appreciation for propaganda, this fact alone would be unremarkable, but her writings take on special interest when coupled with the knowledge that she received such access while openly proclaiming her own Jewish background and anti-Nazi sympathies. As she dutifully reported on the countless dinners, galas, and cultural events attended by German high society, Fromm also kept a secret diary that chronicled the seemingly inexplicable growth and horrifying consequences of National Socialism: "It's not curious that all this is beginning to make me feel like a stranger in my own country, that I am beginning to be aware of a feeling of hostility." Fearing for her life, Fromm fled Germany in 1938, smuggling her incriminating diary out in separate parcels before she left. First published in 1943, these recollections wear the patina of an Allied effort at public relations, but the prescient accuracy of her dire predictions is intriguing nonetheless. And, while invariably placing herself in the shining glow of absolute moral and ethical integrity, her insightful observations offer an interesting record of the many actions--both heroic and cowardly--she witnessed during this particularly ugly period of mass hysteria. --George Laney