In his new novel, Frank Sanello vividly recreates the Third Reich and World War II as seen through the eyes and daily diary of Hitler's imaginary wife, Countess Christina Bernadotte (1916-1948). The granddaughter of the king of Sweden, the countess is forced at the age of 16 to marry the 43-year-old Nazi dictator by her socially ambitious and abusive mother, an heiress to
In his new novel, Frank Sanello vividly recreates the Third Reich and World War II as seen through the eyes and daily diary of Hitler's imaginary wife, Countess Christina Bernadotte (1916-1948). The granddaughter of the king of Sweden, the countess is forced at the age of 16 to marry the 43-year-old Nazi dictator by her socially ambitious and abusive mother, an heiress to the Vanderbilt fortune. Her husband, strung out on morphine and cocaine, makes revolting sexual demands on his virginal wife involving coprophilia, a fetish that eroticizes feces. Lonely and isolated, Frau Hitler throws herself into a series of transient love affairs with the Third Reich's handsome foreign minister, the corrupt Joachim von Ribbentrop, Cary Grant, and Ernst Rohm, leader of the SA (Storm Troopers). Because of her many romantic liaisons, she doesn't know the identity of the father of her son, Folke, except that he's not her husband's. As the Holocaust claims more victims, Christina begins smuggling Jews out of Germany right under her drug-addled husband's nose. During the war, she travels to Auschwitz to rescue Jewish friends and bribes the Gestapo to allow other Jews to flee Nazi Germany. With her uncle, Count Folke Bernadotte, she helps organize the White Buses operation, a dangerous mission that transports 30,000 Jews and POWs to safety in Sweden aboard Red Cross buses painted white to avoid bombing the Allies or the Luftwaffe. As First Lady of the Reich, she meets or corresponds with various historical figures such as Sigmund Freud, Pope Pius XII and MGM chief Louis B. Mayer. Toward the end of the war, as she tries to flee home to Sweden with her son and adopted daughter, her arch-nemesis, Hermann Goring, Hitler's second in command and pedophile, forces her to choose one of her children to leave behind with him. The choice haunts the countess until tragedy intervenes during her work as UN mediator between warring Palestinian Jews and Arabs in 1948. These dramatic events are recorded in her daily diary, which her grandson finds hidden in a Holocaust memorial library and publishes as "The Autobiography of Frau Adolf Hitler."
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A brilliant new look at the private life and perversions of Adolf Hitler.
Finally a great novel of the twenty first century and about Adolf Hitler too.
I am one of those readers who yawn at the prospect of reading either science-fiction or historical novels. My notion of hell would be to be forced to spend an eternity wading through books that purport to take me into a realm that I could never enter myself. My horror would be further increased by being told by the devilish librarian that the book
A brilliant new look at the private life and perversions of Adolf Hitler.
Finally a great novel of the twenty first century and about Adolf Hitler too.
I am one of those readers who yawn at the prospect of reading either science-fiction or historical novels. My notion of hell would be to be forced to spend an eternity wading through books that purport to take me into a realm that I could never enter myself. My horror would be further increased by being told by the devilish librarian that the book portrayed a parallel universe. Satan will now have to think again. That torture no longer holds any fears for me. I've just read a volume that is a historical novel and also takes the reader into a parallel universe. I have to say that this book is one of the very best I've read and I'm penning this short review, in order to introduce it to the wider readership, that its quality and breadth of vision undoubtedly deserve.
A really good book about Hitler, for a change.
There have been many novels written about World War II and the characters that were the leading lights in that great conflict. The Pyramids of Giza could probably be wallpapered with the books which have been written about Adolf Hitler alone. How often has a publisher not sighed in exasperation when yet another tome about the Second World War lands on his desk? What is needed to set the publishing and reading world on fire is a book that treats the last great worldwide conflagration with some imagination and originality. I have to tell you that such a piece of literature has at last been completed. The book which I am about to review is one of the most startlingly original of anything that it has been my pleasure to peruse in recent years. I am speaking about The Autobiography of Frau Adolf Hitler, born Countess Christina Bernadotte, translated and edited by historian and novelist Frank Sanello.
What you will be acquiring, if you purchase this book, is a panoramic and intimate insight into the world surrounding Adolf Hitler. This will be presented to you through the words of the evil dictator’s wife. I am not talking about the insipid and frivolous Eva Braun. Rather the genius of Mr Sanello has told the story of the Third Reich from the point of view of the wife, which nobody knew Hitler had. Countess Bernadotte, according to the story, was forced to wed Adolf by her ambitious Nazi loving mother. She detested her husband for more than just his political ruthlessness. He had some pretty disgusting sexual depravities as well, the details of which are portrayed graphically in the book. I will only say here that the words “walking”,”dog” and “brown” figure in the description of this perversion.
I don't wish to give away too much of the story. But I will tell you that Countess Bernadotte, or Mrs Hitler, if you prefer, proceeds, from her position at the centre of the evil conspiracy to conquer the world, to try and mitigate some of its worst excesses. She sets up an organisation to save as many Jews as possible from the Holocaust. To help her do this she has to flatter some seriously odious characters. Hermann Goring is among the more evil of them. Towards the end of the book there is a chapter which shows this loathsome Reich Marshal in all his absolute odiousness.
The more minor characters are no less well portrayed in this gripping novel than the central participants. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are shown to us in all their ridiculous and idiotic vanity. The intrepid countess also has a meeting with the less than sympathetic Pope Pius XII. I must at this stage take issue with Mr Sanello regarding the picture he paints of this great Pontiff. Pope Pius has been disgracefully treated by some ill-informed historians in recent years. It takes away somewhat from this, otherwise excellent, book to see the libel being repeated yet again. Still it is a very well crafted, if inaccurate, picture.
The saddest part of this book is, that while its heroine exhausted her strength and risked her life, in trying to save thousands of the victims of this evil time, she was not shown the gratitude or the appreciation that she should have been, by the co-religionists of the people she helped. To find out what happens you will just need to read the book.
The touching relationship between the book’s central character and her son by Hitler gives an engaging story within a story to this epically scoped book. The terror of and detestation for his evil wicked father scars the young boy for life. But his existence is made tolerable by the great genius that germinates within his youthful soul. The love which Countess Bernadotte has for her son also elevates her stress filled life.
Read no more books about Adolf Hitler until you read this one.
I will bring this review of the “Magnum Opus” of Mr Frank Sanello to a close by urging you, if you spend your money on nothing else during this recession haunted era, to purchase your copy immediately it becomes available. Read it, and then give it an honoured place, either on your bookshelf or your hard drive, (depending on whether you buy the printed or the digital version). You may be stultified at the prospect, of being faced with the ordeal of reading yet another book about World War II. But people, you haven't read this one yet.
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