Berlin Fall

Marie Vassiltchikov's wartime diaries

'Missie" Vassiltchikov (1917-78) was a White Russian Emigre who moved to Berlin at the outbreak of W.W. II. Her Berlin Diaries (Knopf) is a clear-sighted, sprightly, and deeply engaging account of life on the edge of the abyss, providing a vivid insider's view both of Nazi Germany and of the Central European aristocracy in its last gasp. As exemplified by the doughty Miss Vassiltchikov, this is a class which (at its best) exhibited a combination of bravery, kindness, gaiety, and resilience— alongside its political heedlessness. Missie evokes a demonic wasteland of burning buildings, disease, starvation, and mass terror in which she and her friends managed nonetheless to throw good parties, to cause a dozen oysters to materialize, or to learn to play the accordion. In a characteristic episode, Missie flees Sovietoccupied Austria with a girlfriend who then stays behind to see if she can't find a decent hairdresser. But parties are the least of it; in Berlin, Missie joined the Resistance and became involved in the famous—if extremely belated—"July 20th" conspiracy of army officers and aristocrats who planned to assassinate Hitler and re-establish a "civilized" Germany. The plot failed, and many of Missie's closest friends were put on show trial and executed (she herself narrowly escaped arrest during the last months of the war). One cannot but admire the cool head and loving heart of this young woman, whose sometimes comic and often deeply moving diaries offer a salutary tale of true personal grit.

FERNANDA EBERSTADT