The Secret Annexe

by Alan Taylor, Irene Taylor

War infects everything it touches. For everyone, whether combatant or not, it is the most testing of times, when the old certainties and moral imperatives cannot be guaranteed. Life hangs by a gossamer thread and many people who would otherwise not keep diaries feel the need to record what they see, feel and do.

Arranged like a diary, The Secret Annexe tells many individual stories - some horrific, some hilarious - of many wars down the ages, with several compelling entries for each day of the year. The diarists come from every walk of life, from friend and foe, from anonymous foot-soldiers to those charged with orchestrating battle, from the Home Front to the Holocaust, from famous writers, political leaders and fighting men and women to ordinary working people enveloped by events over which they have little influence. Together they contribute to the most intimate insight into what's been described as "the most exciting and dramatic thing in life".

Complementing the diary entries are comprehensive biographies and bibliographies of the diarists as well as summaries of each of the wars covered..

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, World History, War, Historical

676 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Alan Shaw Taylor is a historian specializing in early American history. He is the author of a number of books about colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for his work.

Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977 and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986. Currently a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, he will join the faculty of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia in 2014.

Reviews

[Justin (Backstage Revisited) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Never read the diaries or impressions of men who have written in the fear of death, for their records cannot be honest." - James Lees-Milne (29th of January, 1945; London)

Almost a year ago I started this book with the intention of reading it month by month, and I'm glad I can say I succeeded doing that. The Secret Annexe is a book that contains a lot of diary entries written by many different persons during many different wars, from the 17th century to the 21st century. It includes parts from a.o. Anne Frank, Josef Goebbels, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Leo Tolstoy, Queen Victoria, Virginia Woolf, Primo Levi, Count Ciano, and many others. It's about a.o. the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the American Independence War, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Yugoslavia, the Iraq War and some others.

"There has been another assassination, this time of the heir of the Austrian Emperor. I do not know how it affects the political situation." - Wilfred Scawen Blunt (30th of June, 1914, England)

The diary entries are ordered by date, so the book starts with the writings of the 1st of January and ends at the 31st of December. Every day, the reader time travels through the years, starting with the oldest entry. That's the reason I took a year to read this, and it was a great and interesting journey. The book offers so many different perspectives in times of war; from political leaders to people who went into hiding, nurses at the front, soldiers who lost mates or even died only hours after writing a diary entry, families back at home, writers, actors, generals, refugees, prisoners, and just orinary citizens who have to go through all this terror and hell.

"One officer wanted a pair of German boots. The Goums brought him back a pair. The boots had legs in them." - George Biddle (10th of August, 1943; Sicily)

The book shows a first hand view of wars in the past, and shows how people experienced major events and what news they gathered about the front, but also what emotions, feelings, and thoughts they experienced, whatever their role and place in society was. Some parts were more difficult to understand, which was because sometimes it was written centuries ago and therefore in a more difficult form of Enlish, or because it described certain historical events or wars I wasn't (very) familiar with. To help a bit with the latter one, there's a description of every diarist and every war in the back of the book.

"I can hardly imagine men living through a worse day; indeed, many did not." - Lieut. General Sir Charles Ash Windham (14th of November, 1854; Battle of Inkerman)

Irene and Alan Taylor have done a great job by selecting these diary entries. It can be said though that the main focus of the book is on the Western world and on the First and Second World War, though they've tried to make it more global by selecting non-Western diarists and wars that take place outside Europe, but even then most of these wars involve Great-Britain or the USA as a participant.

"One sometimes wonders how one can go on, eating and drinking, walking and sleeping, reading and dictating, apparently unmoved by the world's misery." - Beatrice Webb (2nd of July, 1917; South Downs, England)

Nevertheless it's a great book that gives insight in the daily lives, thoughts and feelings of people during war. I also got introduced to writers I didn't know yet, like Primo Levi and Christopher Isherwood, whose books sound very interesting. During the year I read it I struggled a bit to keep up, especially around October and November. At that moment it felt like the book was too long and it lost my interest, so I struggled to keep reading it.

"In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life." - Cesare Pavese (9th of February, 1940; Italy)

I can definitely recommend this book, because it's not only an interesting and enjoyable book to read, I also learned a lot about people and events. It even motivated me to start writing my own diary (which I struggle to keep up, but still). Some of the parts were written beautifully and were quite philosophical. I really liked that aspect as well. As you can see, I've put some of my favourite parts in this review. If these quotes have made you curious, I can definitely recommend you to go read this book!

"Not till the end of the war will there be any time for art or love or magic again. Perhaps never." - Mary Butts (18th of September, 1916; London)

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have been reading this for three months now.
I've given up reading one per day, ie. for the apppropriate day.
Now I read the slab of days that I have missed, usually never more than ten days.
This way you may get for example several days entries of Davy Crockett at the Alamo.
World War Two has the most entries, naturally, from the weasel Goebbels to Joyce Grenful entertaining the troops.
Some wonderful diarists.
Goebbels is fascinating but NOT wonderful.
Someone who knows they may only have a short time to live can be very wonderful.
And someone honest and perceptive is usually always wonderful.

POST-READ:
I will be finished this book in TEN days.
Reading it all year means it is very much a part of one's Reading Landscape.

There are 160 diarists.
They all, men, women and children, vary according to age, situation,
and nationality.
The nineteen wars in which they are involved range
from the Anglo-Dutch Wars being fought on and off between 1652-1684
up to the Iraq War of 2003 which lasted less than two months ie.March/April.
There are Great Wars such as World Wars One and Two
and smaller ones like the Alamo and the Falklands.

The diarists include entertainers, war artists, novelists, school children, homeguard, civilians, housewives, soldiers, prisoners, those facing execution, those in hiding, those in ghettos,
socialites, royalty, country dwellers, city dwellers, victims, perpetrators, generals, politicians, nurses, celebrities.
There is much humour, tragedy, and inspiration in these entries. Some is mundane, some astounding.

In conclusion I intend to quote an extreme ongoing encounter between two opposed groups as recorded by a diarist who was still alive when this book was published in 2004. Avraham Tory (1909- ) was in the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania and recorded encounters between unborn and newly born babies and their sworn enemies, the military. These encounters illustrate the madness of war and the choices people can make in the extreme situations war throws up.

These are extracts from three entries
which are actually going backwards in time.

Kovno Ghetto, Lithuania. June 6th, 1943.
...there have been no births in the Ghetto.
Giving birth is forbidden under pain of death.

Kovno Ghetto, Lithuania.August 7th, 1942.
(SS Sergeant Helmut Rauca) toured the institutions of the Ghetto.
During the tour he noticed a pregnant woman in her seventh month.
Rauca said: "This embryo must perish. If not,
it will be taken away from its mother right after birth."

Kovno Ghetto, Lithuania. October 6th, 1941.
(Some institutions of the ghetto are being liquidated ie. its members murdered.
Patients from the surgical and therapy wards, including some doctors and staff
have been 'evacuated' and now it is the turn of the maternity ward.)
Two Germans entered the room.
They asked what type of patients were there,
and why they were not ready for transfer.
The women replied that they had just given birth
and that their ardent wish was to get up quickly from their beds
so as not to delay the operation.
The Germans wanted to see the babies who had just been born.
They came up to the ledge by the window on which the six babies were lying.
The eyes of one of the Germans grew misty."Shall we leave them?" he asked his friend.
They both left the room, letting the mothers and the babies stay.
This time they survived.

The Germans then started taking the children out of the Children's Home.
Out of the 153 children, only 12 were left in the home.
They were simply overlooked.
The nurses were also taken away.
Those children who were in swaddling clothes
were taken out and placed on the ground in the stone-paved
hospital courtyard, their tiny faces turned skyward.
Soldiers of the third squad of the German Police passed between them.
They stopped for a moment.
Some of them kicked the babies with their boots.
The babies rolled a little to the side but soon enough
regained their belly-up position,
their faces turned towards the sky.
It was a rare spectacle of cruelty and callousness.

[Lian Tanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't at all the sort of book I usually read, but it fascinated me from beginning to end. Its subtitle is 'An anthology of war diarists', and reading it is a bit like reading snippets from dozens of novels - tiny insights into people's lives and fears and loves and hopes - and I found myself coming back to it with the same anticipation that I come back to a novel after a few hours away.

The diary entries are arranged by date, so the book starts on Jan 1st and ends on December 31st. For each date there is a variety of excerpts, starting with the earliest year (some of the entries reach back to the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 1600s) and ending with the most recent. For obvious reasons there's a heavy emphasis on the first and second world wars, and they were also the ones I found most interesting - probably because they are the wars I know most about.

Diarists include Anne Frank, Queen Victoria, Josef Goebbels, Siegfried Sassoon, Samuel Pepys, Harold Nicolson, Virginia Woolf, Che Guevara, Count Ciano (Mussolini's son-in-law) and dozens of other less famous people.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of various war diaries over many years and locations. The diarists include common civilians (Anne Frank among many others), soldiers and sailors, and various politicians. The book is organized in such a way that it starts on January 1, with the editors inserting entries from different diarists who made entries on that day in their diary. So for example on that day there are entries from: Sir Walter Scott in 1826, Mrs. Henry Dudeney in 1916, Walter Musto in 1916, Marie 'Missie' Vassilitchkov in 1940, Frances Partridge in 1940, and Christopher Isherwood in 1941. The book then precedes through the calendar year with at least one entry per day. Because of the way the book was constructed with various entries from different diarists the book goes from one location and one era to another. As a consequence, the book is a bit scattered and all over the place as I saw things. So in the above example, just think about the different locations and eras involved-- Abbotsford, and W.W.I and W.W.II. The book then concludes with a series of short biographies on each of the diarists and brief descriptions of each of the wars chronicled in the book by the different diarists.

[Minnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

an interesting concept, the daily diary entries. Makes a wonderful yearlong read if you are disciplined, which i am not . i devoured the book and since then have periodically dipped into it. a must-have book.

[Margaret Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book - shows how war impacted the lives of so many people. Occasionally I found it a bit much and had to dip into something else for a while but I still enjoyed going back to it.

[Iain Watson]

The Secret Annexe: An Anthology of the World's Greatest War Diarists (2004)