Hitler's Secret Diaries

The theme of this simplistic and sensationalist novel was undoubtedly spawned by the purported discoveryand subsequent repudiation thereofof Hitler's actual diaries several years ago. The novel begins in 1899 when Hitler is 10; at school he learns that Austria, his home, is ``not a true German state . . . . The mongrel races contaminate the state. We German Austrians are the superior race . . . .'' Entries continue through Hitler's young adulthood in Vienna, as he dodges the Austrian army's draft because ``I will never serve this crumbling empire.'' After proudly fighting in his beloved Germany's army during World War I, Hitler begins organizing the Nazi party in Munich and tells of his rise to power, his satisfaction at the advent of another world war and his eventual failure and plans for suicide. Nearly all the imagined diary entries are filled with repetitive and cliched examples of Nazi doctrine: endless laudations of Wagner's music and the ``German folk,'' and calls for purification of the Aryan race. This novel is not a neo-Nazi propaganda tool, however, and these passages, as well as sections describing murder methods, give the book a sense of insidious evil. Unfortunately, the awkward, bumbling writing is surpassed only by a complete lack of insight or subtlety. (September)