The Devil’s Diary
by Robert K Wittman and David Kinney
William Collins, £20
The story of The Devil’s Diary opens in God’s Garden. In 1945, as General Patton’s army closed in, Nazi aristocrat Kurt von Behr was anxious to cut a deal with American military intelligence. His palace, a former Benedictine monastery, overlooked a stretch of Bavarian countryside so lovely it was called Gottesgarten. Inside the palace was a mother lode of confidential Nazi documents.
No deal was offered. Von Behr and his wife toasted the end with cyanide-laced champagne. Among the papers was the personal diary, covering the years 1934 to 1944, of Alfred Rosenberg, who would be hanged in October 1946 in Nuremberg.
