Voices from the Past
Long before it became fashionable, my father intermittently kept a journal. He began it in 1937–8 when he was 21 to 22 years old. He was starting on a momentous stage in his life and wanted to record his aims, his progress, his reflections, and (to some extent) his experiences. Journal page describing Hitler’s speech I have no idea whether he ever went back and reread what he had written years before. I knew nothing about it until I collected up his papers after his death, thirty-five and a half years ago. There was a great deal that was interesting in the journal, so I began to transcribe it. But it seemed that he hardly threw anything away. Along with the journal I found many pocket diaries, the earliest also from 1937 and 1938. More recently I decided to transcribe the entries from these as well: I thought that they would cast light on the journal. My father’s handwriting was at times almost illegible, so the cross-references help with interpretation. Frequently I wonde...