Author Joachim Fest goes to Valhalla

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MP44
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Author Joachim Fest goes to Valhalla

Post by MP44 »

Reuters
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 18:16 IST

BERLIN: German historian and publisher Joachim Fest, author of a landmark biography of Adolf Hitler, has died aged 79, German media reported on Tuesday.

Fest, who was seen as one of Germany's leading authorities on National Socialism (Nazism), died at his home in Kronberg near Frankfurt on Monday, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the paper he co-published between 1973 and 1993.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung did not give the cause of his death.

Viewed as a conservative, Fest achieved widespread fame when his bestseller was published in Germany in 1973 as Hitler. Eine Biografie (A biography).

In his book, Fest argued Hitler's personality and political skills were central to the success of his party, thus distancing himself from historians who laid more emphasis on the inter-war circumstances in Germany when accounting for the Nazis' rise.

Fest's book Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, served as part of the basis for the 2004 Oscar-nominated German film Der Untergang (The Downfall), a claustrophobic depiction of the final days of Hitler.

Other celebrated books by Fest include a 1999 biography of Hitler's architect and armaments minister Albert Speer and a study of the attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

Fest, whose memoirs of his childhood are due to be published next week under the title Ich nicht (Not I), was born on December 8, 1926 in Berlin. He was married and had two sons.
Helmut Von Moltke

Post by Helmut Von Moltke »

I read he served in the Heer. Any information on that?

K
Hoffman Grink

Post by Hoffman Grink »

Fest
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 97,00.html
Joachim Fest was expelled from his Berlin school for caricaturing Hitler and sent with his brothers to a Catholic boarding school in Freiburg. From there, as he approached the age for military service, he decided to volunteer for the armed forces rather than risk being conscripted into the SS. His father disagreed, writing that: “One doesn’t volunteer to take part in Hitler’s criminal war, not even to avoid the SS.” But in the end Fest went ahead, and was taken prisoner by the Americans in France. His father, meanwhile, suffered a much worse fate, taken by the Russians as they entered Berlin and kept for years in the Soviet Union until he was sent back, a broken man.
Another writer of a "Bunker Book" however was Armin D. Lehmann
He was HJ in Berlin....
http://www.arminlehmannforpeace.com/
Now there's an interesting man
Kurt Volkmar

Post by Kurt Volkmar »

I read Armin D. Lehmann book “In Hitler's Bunker" and I can highly recommend it here.
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