Liberty Is Dead: A Canadian in Germany, 1938 ed. by Margaret E. Derry (review)

In this book Margaret E. Derry uses the edited letters and diary of Franklin Wegenast, a Canadian lawyer of German descent, to provide a Canadian perspective on Germany in 1938. She also provides a short biography of Wegenast and an assessment of the information on the situation in Germany available to Canadians in the Toronto Globe (after 1936 the Globe and Mail) and the London Times. She suggests that the Globe and Mail was more critical of Nazi Germany than the London Times. Derry concludes the book with an analysis of what Wegenast’s diary and letters tell us about Germans and Germany in 1938.

In the spring of 1938 Wegenast spent several months touring Europe in his car preceded by a few days in Egypt, Palestine and Greece. This book focuses on the time he spent in Austria and western Germany visiting distant relatives as part of his research into his family’s history. Wegenast also befriended a number of young Germans during his tour. For example, he picked up a Bavarian hitchhiker on the border between Italy and Austria who was on his way to Munich. They stopped in Innsbruck where Adolf Hitler was to give a speech. Wegenast allowed the young man to listen to the speech and observe the associated events from the balcony of his hotel room. The boy left the hotel room after the speech and did not return to collect his belongings. The next day a worried Wegenast visited the police station and discovered the boy had been detained by the police. The young Bavarian declined his offer of assistance and Wegenast reluctantly left him. He subsequently picked up another young Bavarian hitchhiker. Josef Kobi was a stateless person because his late father was a non-German. He was desperate to get to France. Wegenast thought Kobi might possibly be Jewish although his appearance suggested otherwise. He decided to abandon Kobi in the German border town of Kehl after learning it was very unlikely the French would allow him to enter France without a visa. Wegenast subsequently regretted his decision.

This book is a valuable addition to the literature. Derry’s chapter on the Globe and Mail’s reports on Nazi Germany in the 1930s provides a useful comparator to Laurel Leff’s Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (2005), which begins with an analysis of the New York Times’s coverage of Germany in the 1930s. The section of the book which reproduces an edited version of Wegenast’s diary and letters provides an interesting Canadian insight into civilian life in Nazi Germany. He believed liberty in Germany was being choked ‘by prosperity and well-being’ (p. 92). However, the Nazi utopia was far from inclusive as the episodes recorded in Wegenast’s diary involving the two young Bavarian hitchhikers illustrate. He suspected there were probably a good many other ‘outcasts’ wandering around.