A labourer, journalist and a professor who lived through four successive
periods of German political history - from the German Empire, through
the Weimar Republic and the Nazi state through to the German Democratic
Republic - Victor Klemperer is regarded as one of the most vivid
witnesses to a tumultuous century of European history.
First published in 1957, The Language of the Third Reich arose from
Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to
create its culture. As Klemperer writes: 'It isn't only Nazi actions
that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi
way of thinking, and its breeding ground: the language of Nazism.'