Books: Rogues’ Gallery

CAESARS IN GOOSESTEP — William D.

Bayles — Harper ($3).

William D. (for David) Bayles went to Germany in 1932. He taught English for two years at the University of Munich, then free-lanced. In a little Munich cafe he used to see a “small, nervous, threadbare man with bad teeth, greasy, dandruffy hair, a colorless wisp of a mustache, and pale blue eyes which, like his hands, were never quiet.” It was Adolf Hitler.

Later in Berlin, Bayles (as correspondent for TIME Inc.) had a closer look at the little man. Bayles also paid close attention to the littler men who were Hitler’s chief lieutenants, and witnessed some of their works — the burning of the Reichstag, the June blood purge. Now & again he would send a profile of one of them to LIFE or The New Yorker. They were portraits sketched with careful artlessness against the background of the subject’s weird biography and crimes.

This week these scattered pieces appeared in book form under the title, Caesars in Goosestep. All the little Caesars were there with their records up to date. There was Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, whom his fellow Rhinelanders call “Jupkin” (insignificant little Joe), and who is so non-Aryan-looking that a policeman once tried to stop him from entering a Nazi rally. “Better not go in there, buddy,” said the cop. “They’re all anti-Semites.” There was the only normal Nazi, Rudolf Hess, called “Fraulein” because he is hysterical Hitler’s nursemaid and governess. There was the ex-wine salesman, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who used to be much in demand for amateur theatricals in the homes of rich and cultured Jews, because he played effete Englishmen in Oscar Wilde plays. There was Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, about whom the Munich police in 1923 made a mistake his secret police would never make. They thought he was so unimportant they did not arrest him. There was Hitler’s brutal Labor Boss Robert Ley. Bayles describes his first meeting with the doctor: “Dr. Ley . . . was sitting at the head of a long table slopped with spilt beer and wine, and strewn with cigar and cigarette butts, broken glass, bread crusts and the remains of meals. He was in a soiled brown uniform and his huge, florid face and baldish head were streaked with blood because he had cut his hand on a broken glass and then wiped the blood over his face and into his hair.” There is a timely last chapter on the Reichswehr generals. Though more & more under the Nazi thumb, they are still the most independent group in the Third Reich. For by winning or losing the war, it is still the generals who will finally decide the fate of their goose-stepping Caesars and most of mankind.