Diary of a man in despair: a non-fiction masterpiece about the comprehension of evil

Diary of a Man in Despair is Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s prophetic insight into the turmoil caused by the destruction of the ancient Prussian soul. Lingering on after the deposing of the Kaiser, it was inexorably demolished by the carnal frenzy of the Nazi ideology which gave power to the German middle classes. In this heady cocktail of sexual lust, greed and idealism, the Volk or ‘mass-man’ was relentlessly driven to its suicidal cause. Not even today has the terror of totalitarianism been described in such powerful writing. Reck’s diary opens in 1936 with a spellbinding vision of Spengler, whose Decline of the West was appropriated as official Nazi dogma. The legendary academic is depicted dining in his English tweeds as he solemnly demolishes a whole goose without offering so much as a bone to his guests. On Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s visit in 1936, it transpires that Spengler has been bribed by the Nazis with cash and fine burgundies, and his library is full of pornography. Following this bloated and grotesque image, the author on several occasions encounters Hitler himself in Munich. Once he has the chance to shoot him. He lets the moment pass, realising too late the Nazi stranglehold on Germany.