Peter Wyden - The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolph Hitler

Copyright 2011, 2011 by Peter H. Wyden, Inc.

Translation copyright 1998, 2011 by Arcade Publishing, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or arcade@skyhorsepublishing.com.

Arcade Publishing is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

10 9876543 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61145-322-5

Other Books by Peter Wyden

Conquering Schizophrenia: A Father, His Son, and a Medical Breakthrough

Stella: One Womans True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitlers Germany

Wall: The Inside Story of Divided Berlin

Day One: Before Hiroshima and After

The Passionate War: The Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War

The Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story

As is the case with many books, there is a story behind this work, one that needs to be told so that the reader will understand the events that led to its publication.

In mid-February 1997, Peter Wyden called me and said, Dick, I have a manuscript I want to send you. Ive taken it as far as I can without editorial guidance. But I know youre an editor who doesnt mind wielding a harsh blue pencil when its called for. May I send it to you?

Id be delighted to read it, I said, and the more he described its contents the more excited I became. I had the highest respect for Peter Wyden, both as an author and publisher. I had recently read his Stella, a stark but tremendously moving account of his return to Germany to research the fate of one of his close schoolmates, a teenage girl who, as a Jew, had agreed after having been tortured and promised that her parents would not be sent to Auschwitz to collaborate with the Nazis. Peter was obsessed to know what had impelled her not only to collaborate but become, in a sense, a pro-Nazi monster. But if he was a fine writer, he was also a stellar publisher. Both of us had, in the 1970s, an editorial imprint, I at Viking, Peter at Morrow, and we used to meet irregularly to compare notes on the virtues and frustrations of having your own imprint. As Peter focused increasingly on his writing we had seen each other less, but whenever Peter and I did meet in the corridors of publishing, the mutual respect and basic friendship was always there intact.

A week or two after our conversation, I received the following letter from Peter, dated February 20, 1997:

Dear Dick:

As we discussed, THE HITLER VIRUS, just under 400 mss pages, needs one helluva lot of work: new writing, also cutting, polishing, updating. Be assured that 1) Im fully aware of the patients woeful clinical condition and 2) Ill work as long as itll take to unreel this case effectively Your suggestions are more than welcome; I solicit them. The middle sections Joachim Fest et al need pruning. Id appreciate your thoughts on whatever strikes you as long-winded.

My personal life shows up here and there, as youll see my memories of Hitlers birthday, for example but this dimension could be deepened so the book would take on more of a My-Life-With-Hitler cast. Again, guidance would help.

New developments have left some of my case histories incomplete. Just this month, the village-wide arson conspiracy in Dolgenbrodt see Chapter 3, [manuscript] page 13 broke open with new indictments. Gerhard Lauck, of the Nebraska propaganda factory, is in prison in Germany. Anna Rosmus, the nasty girl of Passau, has moved to the U.S. and works for the Holocaust Museum. Ill tidy up all this, of course.

Youre entitled to know why this body bleeds from so many wounds. I abandoned it, hastily and temporarily, for a more perishable project: CONQUERING SCHIZOPHRENIA. Its partly history of the illness; partly case record of my younger son, Jeff, schizophrenic for 25 years; and partly history of revolutionary new medications, just out on the market, and the race for their development. I still need to sweat hard over the final editing.

As Ive mentioned, I have a carton of recent documentation to be incorporated in the final HITLER chapter. A few examples from the top of the box: last December, a small revolution broke out in western Berlin over efforts to re-name a side street for Marlene Dietrich because she is still perceived as a traitor. A committee of US. doctors is campaigning against a physician, still practicing in Dachau, who was implicated in the murders of retarded children in World War II. A university president was unmasked as a former Hauptsturmfuhrer who altered his identity.

Major war criminals, including the commandant of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, were lately revealed to live comfortably, protected by fellow-citizens in the know.

So while the Hitler Virus is losing strength as new generations take over, plenty of developments keep it alive for the present.

All the best, Peter

I read the manuscript and found it fascinating, often brilliant: though it needed some serious cutting and pruning, as well as updating, it was far from in the woeful clinical condition Peter had described. Over the next three or four weeks, Peter and I talked on the phone, and on April 2, I wrote him a letter making him a formal offer, adding that I understood his prior commitment to finish, publish, and promote Conquering Schizophrenia had to take precedence, even if that meant pushing back publication of The Hitler Virus a year or more. Not atypically, Peter accepted my offer but preferred not to formalize it or take an advance until he felt the manuscript was ready for publication. Im familiar enough with the economics of independent publishing to know you cant, you shouldnt, be paying me an advance two or three years before we bring this child of mine out, he said in a phone conversation that summer. If it makes you nervous not to have a formal contract, know that you are the publisher of The Hitler Virus.

That was good enough for me. Though other, more pressing manuscripts took priority, I constantly went back to Peters, read and reread chapters, tinkered, made notes, and talked to him on the phone every few weeks.

Conquering Schizophrenia took him more time and energy, both real and psychic, than Peter had anticipated, but we kept in touch, and by early 1998, I had gone as far as I could without Peters further input. Increasingly, he felt he needed one more trip to Germany to follow up on some of the more virulent manifestations of the Hitler virus, and, during an exchange of letters in January 1998, I heartily agreed. When would he take the trip? Peter was vague, but thought sometime in the spring or summer of that year.

What I never knew, because he carefully refrained from telling me after it happened, was that in February Peter had suffered a severe heart attack. But, robust and hearty as he was, he had apparently fully recovered. To me, he simply said that, until he could make the German trip, I should put the book on hold, assuring me however that once the trip was over, it would be a matter of weeks before we could finalize the monster (his term).