The Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 (1985. PB 1987)

Marie ‘Missie’ Vassiltchikov was a White Russian emigre caught with her family in Hitler’s Germany at the outbreak of the war. She was a Bright Young Thing, part of the cosmopolitan set who managed to maintain a trance-like normality until as late as 1941 — picnics, house-parties, dinners at the Eden.
 
Before long, however, Missie became sickened by the brutal and repressive nature of Nazi rule which overshadowed every aspect of her life. Through Adam von Trott, for whom she worked in the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry, she became involved in the Resistance and the diaries vividly describe her part in the drama of July 1944 and its appalling aftermath.
 
Living among the ruins of Berlin durihg the Allied bombing ’ raicls, she grows up to become a strong-minded, committed anl^ courageous woman as she daily displays uncommon bravery in the face of the Gestapo and the detestable Dr Six of the SS. Having survived the Nazis, Missie ends the diaries as she flees from Vienna, where she had been working as a nurse, before the advancing Red Army.
 
First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Chatto & Vindus Ltd, 30 Bedford Square,
London wcib 3RP
This paperback edition published in 1987 by Methuen London Ltd.