From 1936 to 1940 Ernest Pope was American journalist in Munich, the only one who went through the whole period of appeasement and the early months of war. Here is- not another journalist's story of what happened- but a close up study of the human frailties of Hitler and his gang, representing, says Pope, ""the reducito ad absurdum of mortal weaknesses"". He shows them all, through poison pen pictures of Hitler at play, his sex orgies with displays of naked women, his night club life, his mystics and astrologers, his excesses and abstinences; the ubiquitous Gestapo, with its contribution to propaganda set-ups, and its interference with private lives; the day of the new German art; the drinking bouts, the graft, the glutting the senses with cruelty and lust, -- Jew baiting, Catholic persecution, et al. Programs, blood purges, the digressions from work on the part of Himmler, Hess, von Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Ley, Goring. Unity Mitford and her successors. And the march of the iron men. Lots of gossip mongering here, but in a good cause, shall we say? Bavaria -- though more openly condemnatory than Russia, is the favorite playground for the brass hats, and Pope knows them all, and reports what he has seen, supplemented by fairly well substantiated hearsay. Good reading of its kind.