At Hitler's Side: The Memoirs of Hitler's Luftwaffe Adjutant [Hardcover]

Nicolaus Von Below (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 19, 2006

Published for the first time in English, a firsthand account by the Luftwaffe aide always at Hitler's side during the war, giving essential insight into the heart of the Nazi state and military machine.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1980 in von Below's native Germany, this English translation is sure to become an important memoir for those studying the Nazi war machine. In 1937, von Below was a 20-year-old pilot when he was selected by Hermann Goering to be the Luftwaffe's adjutant on Hitler's personal staff. Von Below held this position and was near Hitler most of the time until he fled Berlin in the waning days of April 1945, the last of Hitler's staff to escape the doomed bunker. Written without his diaries and notes, which were lost in 1945, von Below's memoir will be most enticing for military historians studying the strategic thought of Hitler and his generals. He chronicles the repeated controversies between Hitler and his generals on all aspects of the war the Russian front, mat‚riel production, tactical objectives and future plans. Hitler's continued anger with Goering over the Luftwaffe's ineffectiveness in protecting the Reich from Allied bombing is readily apparent, as are the arguments over holding ground on the Russian front. The Hitler who emerges from these pages is a wise, perfectly rational war leader betrayed by others who failed to do his bidding. This view alone will make for great controversy. Von Below also states that he never heard a word about the concentration camps or the liquidation of European Jews, a claim that seems dubious at the very best. After a bomb meant for Hitler exploded on July 20, 1944, von Below claims that Hitler seemed to sense the Reich's fate. The memoir ends abruptly, with notes added throughout by the translator to clarify or identify factual errors. Despite the editors' efforts, Holocaust deniers may still use the memoir for fodder. 45 photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Von Below, who served as Hitler's Luftwaffe (air force) adjutant, here seeks to provide an intimate glimpse into the decision-making process of the Nazi military leadership. Since the author's personal diaries were destroyed at the end of World War II, his memoir (originally published in Germany in 1980) is based on his reconstruction of events, not his contemporaneous reactions. The details, in particular the dates, are so specific that he obviously researched the events very thoroughly. The result is not so much a glimpse of the inner workings of the German high command as a brief history of the war from the perspective of someone who witnessed it at the highest levels and then interspersed this history with his remembered observations and occasional references to surviving correspondence. The book is troubling in that von Below is still enthralled by Hitler's military insights and attempts to place blame for German military blunders on someone other than Hitler. And naturally, despite his being close to Hitler almost every day, he knew nothing about the Final Solution. Although some military enthusiasts and specialists might glean some useful information from this book, it cannot be recommended for a wide audience. Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Greenhill Books; First edition (February 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1853674680
• ISBN-13: 978-1853674686
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sophisticated & Articulate Memoir, August 15, 2002

By 

Daniel J. Cragg (Springfield, Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At Hitler's Side: The Memoirs of Hitler's Luftwaffe Adjutant (Hardcover)

Von Below was Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant for eight years, from 1937 to the very end of the war. As such he held many intimate conversations with Hitler and in this well-written (and very well translated) memoir, he claims to have had Der Fuhrer's confidence. That he remained in this job for 8 years is proof enough of that fact. Von Below's portrait of Hitler on the job is very different from the raving single-minded maniac usually portrayed in movies and popular biographies. Von Below claims that if one knew how to approach Hitler one could reason with him and even get him to change his mind. By this account Hitler was a hard-working, dedicated, charismatic and intelligent leader who was often misled by his subordinates. Von Below claims to have known nothing about the mass murders committed by the Nazis. He also claims to have had serious misgivings about Hitler's war strategy; and he writes that he was well aware of the shortcomings of the Luftwaffe. As a pilot himself, I tend to believe him outright on this point, but otherwise I don't know how much of the insight he claims to have had into strategic matters might have been colored by hindsight. In any event, he was never able to convince Hitler although he writes that many times he did express his doubts to Der Fuhrer, who always heard him out. Compare this book with the memoir written by Hitler's pilot, Hans Bauer. Both men, knowing the end was inevitable, stuck it out and for that we must admire their courage and dedication. I don't think they remained with Hitler in Germany's doomed capital because of some lemming-like compulsion to destruction ingrained in the German psyche, but because of their personal devotion to Hitler. And since neither man was an idiot nor a war criminal with nothing to lose, commanding such loyalty from men like these says a lot about Adolf Hitler's personality. Bauer spent 10 years in a Russian POW camp while von Below managed to escape the Russians after Hitler gave him permission to escape from Berlin. For my money this book ends too abruptly. I would like to know what happened to von Below after the war and that is why I gave it only 4 stars. But in summary, this book is a valuable addition to the study of Adolf Hitler and a testament to its author, who I think was a man of honor.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the read, January 25, 2005

By 

Adem Kendir (Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At Hitler's Side: The Memoirs of Hitler's Luftwaffe Adjutant (Hardcover)

This book doesn't present anything groundbreaking about Hitler, but it s particularly valuable for its picture of what it was like to live around Hitler for many years. As part of Hitler's personal staff, especially for such a long time, Below's experiences were obviously unique and would be interesting to anyone interested in WWII or Hitler. It present an insider's view of what was going on at Hitler's headquarters. In many cases (he claimed) he was not in the know. Below wrote that it was only later, after the war, that he found out the full extent of the atrocities. This was probably true, as it was with many members of his personal staff, who lived isolated lives with Hitler, who never spoke directly about it. Below does say, however, that he finds it inconceivable that Himmler would have exterminated Jews without Hitler's knowledge. Himmmler would not have informed Hitler about the details, writes Below, but Hitler certainly gave his go-ahead. It's little passages like this one that make this book interesting to read, if one is interested in the subject.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, January 4, 2010

By 

M. G Watson "Miles Watson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At Hitler's Side: The Memoirs of Hitler's Luftwaffe Adjutant (Greenhill Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)

George Orwell once wrote that "the hatred the Spanish Republic aroused in dukes, playboys, millionaires and what-not" was sufficient cause for believing it had right on its side. The reaction of the two men quoted by Amazon (see above) towards this book is sufficient cause for reading it. Such people view all firsthand accounts from Hitler's regime in terms of "does he say what we want him to say, or doesn't he? Does he admit to knowing about the concentration camps, or not?" One could scarcely have a narrower view or miss the point more completely.

AT HITLER'S SIDE is the most emotionally honest, and least politically correct, of all the memiors written by survivor's of Adolf Hitler's inner circle. The author, Colonel Nicholaus von Below, served as Hitler's air force adjutant from 1937 until 1945, and as a result was one of the priveleged few who enjoyed a "view from the top." That is not to say that he always felt priveleged or enjoyed the view: Below was clearly a man who wished on occasion he were an ordinary Luftwaffe pilot. Certainly his job involved a lot more than just briefing "Der Fuehrer" on technical air force matters, but therein lies the story.

Like most of the people around Hitler, Below's "real" job was not listed in his job description. He seems to have been an unofficial representative of the rank-and-file officers in the Luftwaffe - that is to say, a spokesman for the Luftwaffe itself rather than for Goering, who was despised and hated by most of his men for his vainglory, bullying, and incompetence. Below felt it incumbent to push an agenda with Hitler that ran contrary to the "Fatboy's" wishes, but though he gained Hitler's trust and respect he was never able to effect the changes in the system he desired, with the result that he, Below, had to watch as yar in and year out, his beloved air force declined further and further into technical obsolescence and impotence. In addition, he was also witness to palace intrigues right out of Byzantium - all those cliques and cabals in government, business, the armed forces, and the Party, each trying to advance its own interests at the expense of the other, and often, at the expense of Germany. This often caused great psychological strain, as did Below's controversial suspicions that some in the high command were deliberately sabotaging the military effort - suspicions that have always been hotly denied by surviving members of the "military resistance against Nazism", and by those who want to believe that Hitler alone was the cause of all Germany's defeats. More controversially yet, Below flatly denies that he had any inkling of the "special measures" being taken in Russia and Poland by the SS, which the reviewers above find ludicrous, but which anyone who has actually researched the highly compartmentalized nature of Hitler's dictatorship may find less so.

But probably the biggest controversy is Below's depiction of Hitler himself. Americans tend to think of Hitler as something between a comic-opera nut case, screaming abuse and chewing the carpet like Charlie Chaplain, and a glowering Antichrist figure out of Revelations. Certainly Hitler was a complex man, "a demon struggling with a genius" as Speer related, and according to Manstein, well capable of tailoring his personality to his audience. Below's experience with Hitler seems to have been largely positive: he recounts a more or less benign tyrant, man of unfailing personal courtesy and broad vision, whose psychological state was slowly undermined by the immeasurable pressures he took upon himself, as well as by ceaseless palace intrigues and the unscrupulousness of some of his confederates. Whether one believes Below or not in this regard is to me irrelevant, since what matters here is the man's perceptions of what happened and not the reality as such. ALL memiors are filled with lies, evasions, distortions, and self-serving facts. Winston Churchill managed to write a six-volume history of the Second World War that hardly mentions the all-important Eastern Front, where 32 million people died, and which downplays the innumerable military blunders he committed during the war; Dwight Einsenhower, on the other hand, devoted exactly one sentence in CRUSADE IN EUROPE to the Battle of the Huertgen Forest, in which 30,000 U.S. troops were killed or wounded because he couldn't be bothered to stop a pointless attack. Obviously Below's memior doesn't jibe with certain views of Hitler expressed by others; but that neither invalidates what Below has to say nor "proves" the others wrong. It's up to the reader to determine the accuracy of what he/she is reading, and not to fall victim to the "if he doesn't admit X or Y or say Z, he must be lying" type of not- thinking.