style of a popularization, nor is its purpose to introduce the Nazi leadership to those unfamiliar with their history. Two quotations summarize the author's view of the Nazi leadership. "What is again and again manifest among the figures surrounding Hitler is an empty but dogged will to power, which is so often combined with extreme servility. ... The lack of independence and poverty of personality of so many of [Hitler's] leading supporters was a prime means of preserving an attachment to Hitler's person through all humiliations, and a general search for a father figure found its deepest satisfaction in the consciousness of Hitler's close presence. The stringency and caprice with which he treated his entourage merely confirmed and strengthened this feeling." (page 298) "The elements of the man willing to put himself at the disposal of totalitarianism may all be traced back: his poverty of personality, his lack of background, his weak contact with others and his emotional instability, his aggressive prejudices, his subservience to his impulses, his split mind, and his deification of the leader matched by his contempt for humanity." (page 303) This book was poorly translated and even in the original German, Fest is a heavy writer, turgid and hardly scintillating. This compilation is laden with errors, some major, some not, but the ultimate effect compromises the integrity of this book. It's absurd, for example, to make the statement that Hermann Goering's Nuremberg defense was anything but brilliant. One can loathe what Goering stood for and decry