"It is stunning to read, for it is not often that invective achieves the level of art, and rarer still that hatred assumes a tragic grandeur." --The New York Times

"Observations set down with passion, outrage, and almost unbearable sadness. . . astonishing, compelling, and unnerving." --The New Yorker

"In his visceral loathing of the Nazis, Reck was not, of course, unique. From our perspective, however, he had one great advantage over most of his like-minded friends: he possessed the makings of a great diarist. True, he was not at the centre of things, but he knew the world and had contacts in it. He was something of a connoisseur of rumours, collecting and savouring stories about the latest Nazi scandal or atrocity and adding to them his own trenchant reflections. And if he was a slightly gullible listener, he was a very acute observer.' --The Financial Times

"Unlike many memoirs of the Nazi period, this one is not a totally gloomy account of persecution, brutality and horrors. The dominating quality is its tough exuberance and (often black) satirical humor. From a great height of aristocratic disrelish Fritz Reck-Malleczewen looks down on the Nazis as lower middle class scum, vengefully greedy for power, with Hitler as their avatar, at once sinister and ridiculous' --The Wall Street Journal