The Devil’s General/Germany: Jekyll and Hyde

Both works in this volume – a play by Carl Zuckmayer (1896-1977) and an unusual contemporary study of Nazi Germany by Sebastian Haffner (1907-99) – bear testimony to the disturbing events that were to change German history in the aftermath of World War I. The abridged translation of The Devil’s General, which was approved by Zuckmayer himself, is about a World War I flier who commits suicide as he comes to realize the unintended havoc he has wrought in his obsession to fly.

Sebastian Haffner, whose real name was Raimund Pretzel (which was changed with the publication of Germany: Jekyll and Hyde), remained a controversial journalist all his life, working for both left-wing and right-wing journals. The work excerpted here was written in 1940 when Haffner, reared in a liberal tradition, was in a British detention camp as an enemy alien.