Germany: Jekyll and Hyde

by Sebastian Haffner

ISBN: 9781870352765

Published: 2005

"Immediately after Hitler's Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, a young emigre German lawyer in London set aside his autobiography in order to write - as his then publisher put it - something less private and more political. The result was Germany: Jekyll and Hyde - a book which, in the words of its Foreword, aimed to provide 'the propaganda ministries of the Western Powers with certain essential data, which they seem to lack, concerning the German public'." "The author had completed his legal qualifications in Germany after the Nazi take-over but had mainly earned his living by writing articles for the few remaining independent-minded editors. In autumn 1938 he had to leave Germany clandestinely because he was engaged to a Jewish woman (a criminal offence under the Nazi racial laws)." "Such background and experience gave Haffner, who settled in England, an ideal vantage point from which to enlighten the British on what had happened in Germany since 1933, why it had...