The Unknown Hitler reveals curious details about Fuhrer's life

The book The Unknown Hitler based on recollections of Heinz Linge and  Otto Günsche is published in Russia

Pravda.Ru has already reported that this year in spring the book about Hitler (Das Buch Hitler) was published in Germany. The book was written for one reader only. For Stalin. Translation into English is expected in the beginning of November. This summer thу book under the title The Unknown Hitler was published in Russia by the publishing house Olma-Press. 

It is worth reminding that the book is based on the statements by two SS officers from that were close to Hitler and who were watching his life closely during many years. Theses are Heinz Linge, Fuhrer's valet, and Otto Günsche, Hitler's personal adjutant.

Pravda.Ru interviewed Dr. Matthias Uhl, one of the authors of unclassified materials from Stalin’s personal archive, which have been kept for 50 years under top-secret stamp. At the moment Dr. Uhl is working in the recently opened German Historical Institute in Moscow (Deutsches Historisches Institut Moscau).

Question: What is in your opinion the main difference between the new book and other biographies of Fuhrer? I mean classical works of Joachim Fest, Ian Kershaw or Sebastian Haffner.

Answer: This is an original historical document. When the reader opens the book, he understands that these reminiscences differ from other documents on similar topic by extraordinary conditions, in which they were written. They were in solitary prison cells and could not coordinate their testimonies. Investigators of the special services were constantly looking for inaccuracy in their testimonies. Both prisoners are precise in reproducing Hitler's statements if we compare them with the published or stenographic records of Hitler’s speeches. Only minor uncertainties.

Q: If I understood correctly, you translated the book, as there were no originals of the interrogations written in Germans that remained.

A: Unfortunately, only some of the fragments of interrogations remained. Another variants of this book are only in Russian. We had a very good translator Helmut Ettinger. He worked for Honneker before and was an interpreter of Gorbachev with his famous phrase that became a German aphorism: “The one who is late is punished by life” (Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben). So we may say that a really good German publication came out. 

Q: Did the book become a bestseller in Germany?

A: Yes. More than 20 thousand copies have been sold. Great reader's interest. The most important is that the book presents a new view on the Third Reich. When Linge came back to Germany he published his memoirs that differ greatly from what he wrote in the Soviet Union. He simply forgot some of the events and presented others in a different way. 

Q: Matthias, don't you think that the book is rather tendentious?
 
A: Of course, it is. However, it is a unique and very interesting document for a historian. It has three different levels, three different layers so to say: the recollections of Linge and Günsche, Soviet view on the subject represented by Fyodor Parparov (who directed and controlled the work of translators) in corrections and commentary and, finally, the beginning of the cold war. For example, the way they think of English and Americans.
 
Q: Yes, the passages about the too much of appraisal of American industry are especially good. They say there are no special achievements there, only mediocrity and huge promotion. American officers are businessmen dressed in military uniforms and concerned for their own skins. The British left their French allies to the mercy of fate in Dunkirk. This was certainly written under the influence of Churchill's Fulton speech.

A: Actually the reader can easily guess what belongs to Linge and Günsche and what has to do with the commentary by Parparov and his colleagues from the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). 

Q: Did serious experts on the Third Reich's history who had already read the book find anything new there?

A: The fact that was absolutely new is that Hitler personally issued an edict for using gas chambers. He obtained the projects from Himmler. That is very important for historians.

Q: As a person, who is interested in this period of history, I got the impression that I had already read about this somewhere.

A: Of course. After all, the book was written three years after the war, and it's been 60 years since then. 

Q: Could it be that some episodes of this book were published before? I mean was it fully classified?

A: Probably, this could have happened. In the end of the 1960s Soviet historians and their colleagues from the Federal Republic of Germany were discussing whether Hitler had shot himself or had only taken poison. Lev Bezymensky partly published some documents to show that has the original information at his disposal.  

Q: Even just this single book convinced you that Hitler had shot himself, didn't it?