As European capitals fell during 1940 and 1941, there swarmed to the Athene Palace, Bucharest's Grand Hotel, diplomats, generals, Gestapo spies, and demi-mondaines from all over Europe. Arriving at the crowded Athene Palace on the day Paris fell in 1940, the American female journalist Rosa Goldschmidt Waldeck observed for seven months, following all the events and the international figures that made Romania Europe's last sensational hotbed of intrigue and color.

As she described it: "In the lobby of the Athene Palace, old post-world war Europe and new-order Europe were acting out their parts in this drama. It was an epic setting, for in the last twenty-five years this lobby had been the forum of the Balkans. Here secrets of the alcove, secrets of court, secrets of diplomatic pouches were whispered into ears that miraculously turned into microphones. Here opportunities were made and destroyed; here stories were invented and from here spread like epidemics; here the skeletons of all the Balkan closets were promenaded and laughed at, and gossip sold short the honor of every politician and the virtue of every woman. Nobody minded it, not even the victims."

Hitler's beautiful feminine agents held court in the Athene Palace lobby within eyeshot of British diplomats, while around them moved fifth columnists, German economists and generals, American and English diplomats and newspapermen, all who made the Athene Palace the most glamorous spot on the continent. The dramatic events of this turbulent period in history are described here chiefly in terms of personalities: Carol and Lupescu, Antonescu and Dr. Clodius, Nazi Gauleiters, British Quislings, Romanian appeasers, and all the types who dominated the scene of World War II Europe... On the surface this is a fast-moving, dramatic book, as readable as a novel, but it is at the same time a most effective dissection of the Nazi New Order.

This newly revised edition of this classic work, a penetrating insight into the Nazi administration of Europe, originally published during the Second World War, is enhanced by a thorough introductory study on the author's life and work written by the leading authority on Waldeck, Dr. Ernest H. Latham, Jr., former cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Bucharest. Dr. Latham is a well-known specialist in Romanian history and has done extensive research on American and British journalists in Romania during World War II.

Sign up now to get the most out of Books2Read

Discover something great at Books2Read.

Thanks for signing up for Books2Read notifications!