ROTHFELS (Hans).
Die Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler. Eine Würdigung.
Binding slightly soiled and dusty and text rather browned. One of the few books in Cornwell’s library with the bookplate designed by him, but without a name, showing a slim young woman dozing on a desert island with a book before her. It is also unusual in being annotated, albeit only slightly with marginal emphases on several pages, and one significant five word note in the introduction where he adds the observation “!und nicht nur des Historikers!” (“And not only historians!”) beside a passage stating that the first obligation of the historian is to the memory of those who died opposing Hitler.
Rothfels was a complicated figure, a Jewish German nationalist historian whose application for status as “Honorary Aryan” was rejected, and left Germany for Britain and the US before returning after the war. This is usually described as his most important book, and is at pains to celebrate the conservative internal opposition to Hitler as opposed to left-wing internal opposition, as well as to draw parallels between the methods and status of the Soviet bloc and Hitler’s Germany. Indeed his description of the interrogation techniques used against anti-Hitler conspirators is very reminiscent of the worst of the Cold War.
From the library of David Cornwell aka John Le Carré.
Maggs Bros. Ltd., Catalogue 1526, John Le Carré: Books from The Library of Jane and David Cornwell at Tregiffian, Item 228.
