Book description
Few other historians have shaped our understanding of the Third
Reich as Joachim Fest. Fierce and intransigent, German-born Fest was a
relentless interrogator of his nation's modern history. His analysis,
The Face of the Third Reich, his biographies of Adolf Hitler and
Albert Speer and his descriptions of the last days in the Fuhrer's
bunker have all reached a worldwide audience of millions. But how did
the young Fest, born in 1926, personally experience National
Socialism, the Second World War and a catastrophically defeated
Germany? In Not Me, the memoir of his childhood and youth, Joachim
Fest chronicles his own extraordinary early life, providing an
intimate portrait of those dark years of conflict. Whether describing
his Catholic home in a Berlin suburb, his father's resistance of the
regime and subsequent teaching ban, his own expulsion from school, or
Aunt Dolly's introductions to the operatic world, these are the
long-awaited personal reflections of a born observer the exactitude of
whose prose is as sharp as the memories he describes.
'Exceptional... it tells in a modest, believable, quietly bitter and
totally proud way of a family's extraordinary decency... Strong and
unique. Without it, the English language these days is short a very good
book.' New York Times Born in Berlin in 1926, Joachim Fest was a
historian, journalist, critic and Publisher of the renowned newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Best known for his writings and public
commentary on Nazi Germany, he authored renowned biographys on both
Hitler and Albert Speer. A leading figure in the debate among German
historians about the Nazi period, Fest died in 2006.
