The Father: A Revenge

by Niklas Frank

Niklas Frank was just seven years old when his father, Hans Frank, Hitler’s legal adviser and Governor General of occupied Poland, was executed at Nuremberg as a Nazi war criminal. Throughout his life, Niklas has attempted to come to terms with the enormity of the crimes his father committed, and this remarkable book traces how after years of research he uncovered the extent of the horror unleashed by the man who was known as the butcher of Poland. The Father is an extraordinary account of a scarred son struggling to comprehend the depravity of the acts that were committed by his father. Whereas other descendants of Hitler’s henchmen and co-collaborators have tried to explain or to forget the crimes of their forebears, Niklas’s disgust for his father’s actions is unremitting. This book is his attempt to seek revenge. Featuring forewords by Philippe Sands and Sir Ian Kershaw, The Father is by turns shocking, twisted and heart-rending; a devastating settling of accounts written by a son addressing his father as he pictures him burning in the eternal fires of hell.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Memoir, World War II, Biography, War, Germany

Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Niklas Frank is a German author and journalist best known for writing a book which denounced his father Hans Frank, a German lawyer who was executed after being found guilty at the Nuremberg trials for his actions, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, arising from his involvement with the Nazi party and as Governor-General of occupied Poland during World War II.

Reviews

[Corielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Shadow Of The Reich by Niklas Frank
I have a coworker who is borderline obsessed with the Holocaust -- she's still in college and wants to make it her main focus of study. I was a history major as well -- although I focused mainly on the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War -- so we discuss her classes and what she's learning (both in class and on her own) often at work. She knows I'm a big reader, so when she heard of Niklas Frank's biography of his father, Hans Frank, in a documentary, she bought a copy and lent it to me.

I took a while to start reading it, primarily because it was a hardback book and I hate lugging hardbacks around (since I bring a book with me everywhere). Plus, it honestly looked dull. Hans Frank was Hitler's personal attorney and the Governor General of Poland. I've read a lot of books concerning the Holocaust, both fiction and non-fiction, but I tend to read those that tell the stories of the victims, not their oppressors.
But she kept bugging me about reading it, so I finally picked the damn thing up. I'm glad I did. This was probably one of the strangest books I've ever read, but I could not put it down.
Like I said, Hans Frank was Governor General of Poland. His son, Niklas, who wrote the book, was about seven years old when Hans was hanged for his crimes. Niklas grew up hearing how his father was a hero among the German people and when Niklas's mother published his father's memoirs, the praise grew even more.

It wasn't until Niklas grew up and moved to America that he began to realize who his father really was. He researched Hans, read every single thing the man ever wrote and from this research, he wrote his father's biography. He wrote about how horrible his father was, the crimes he committed for Hitler's vision and how he never felt guilt about a single damn thing he ever did. He exposed his father's lies -- both public and the lies he wrote in his diaries after he knew he would be put on trial. He insults his father, his mother and everyone else involved in the horrors of the Holocaust. He explains how his father had multiple opportunities to either step down from his post, or how he could have used his post to HELP people, but chose to continue doing what he did in order to stay in Hitler's good graces.

In The Shadow Of The Reich is rather bizarre because Niklas insults his father over and over -- calls him a son of a bitch, a cuckold and a fat face. He reprints his father's diary entries and inserts his own commentary. The book is funny. Really. The lengths he goes to to hurt his father's reputation and image and the language he invents to insult him had me actually laughing. But the crimes his father and his father's friends committed were, of course, horrific. I was unaware of a lot of what his father oversaw in Poland, and the book was definitely an education in those events. It's the ultimate in dark humor, black comedy.
Like I said, a strange book. But worth reading.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niklas Frank writes about his father Hans Frank (Hitler's governor-general of occupied Poland). His story of growing up in the shadow of his father is shocking and honest...it provides a rare look at the inner life of a top Nazi official. This book would be of interest to those studying the manifestations of childhood trauma on adults.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Demented, a word I do not usually apply to books I like. Niklas Frank is the son of Hans Frank, the Governor General of the General Government (it didn't sound any better in German, in case you wondered), the occupation regime the Nazis set up in Poland between 1939 and 1945, when Niklas, his father and mother scampered away from the approaching Red Army. One year later, Hans Frank was executed as a war criminal at Nuremberg.

His wife, Brigitte Frank, who had spent her time as Frau Reichminister driving down to the Cracow ghetto and "shopping' (read stealing) from the Jews incarcerated there before transport to the extermination camps, lived on until 1959. Her chief regret was the end of National Socialism, although she didn't put her money where her mouth was and kill her children and herself, as did Magda Goebbals. I have no idea how the other Frank children fared, given their parentage, but Niklas became a journalist. He eventually produced this . . . what? Memoir? Polemic? Scream? I have never run across anything like this book. Niklas was six when his father was executed, but he hated him. Hated him. And I mean, a lot. He frequently fantasizes about his father's execution, wanting to know the details of the rope snapping his neck, to say nothing of any loose bowels right after the drop. I can't describe the last image in the book, it is just that horrific.

But can he write --- it comes through even in the translation. Frank has what can be euphemistically described as a mordant sense of humor. By the time he has finished eviscerating his mother and father's memories, one might be tempted to feel sorry for the hapless Franks. Until one remembers what they did. Hans and Birgitte presided over the extermination of millions of Jews and Poles, Roma, gays, political prisoners --- anyone who fell into the clutches of the murderous regime they so ably represented.

So let Niklas rage. But I recommend the book only to those interested in the period.

[Gerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Such a dark subject matter aside, I absolutely loved the inventive ways that the author Niklas, used to belittle, dismiss, and condemn his notorious father. (Spoiler Alert?)The best comes from the very last paragraph where his occasional flights of nightmarish fancy imagine his father being turned inside out by the arm of God. With his father's heart now exposed he begins to consume it.
"And I open my mouth and bite into it, into your heart, I take bite after bite, until I swallow you and your last flood of lies, until that pumping heart of yours goes limp and you collapse like a bag in the witness stand, a horrifying mass of tattered flesh---while I, an eternal zombie, no doubt about it, leap away from you. I will be trying to leap away from you for the rest of my life."
Quite the emotional outpouring of feelings. Any doubts of the author's total and consuming hatred of his father have been forever set aside in this very descriptive last paragraph. If you like it as much as I do take the time to read the entire paragraph---or better yet, the whole book.

[Paul Callister · Rating 4 out of 5]

The child of a prominent Nazi officer, and attorney, hanged at Nuremberg denounces his father in a bitter and raw account that reads like a long accusations. Some very poignant facts and anecdotes that suggest the breadth of complicity with Nazism.

[Fionnuala · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was good, it was easy to read, it was full of emotion so genuine that it could be seriously uncomfortable reading at times, but I wanted to like it more. I think this is a straightforward case of personal taste here. There's nothing technically wrong with it and it is not a bad book. I can recognise that it's a very good book, in fact. But I didn't get on well with the writing style, which, as you can imagine, intefered with some of my enjoyment.

I think the problem for me was that it was very vague in some parts, and blended fantasy and speculation with fact in a way that it was difficult to discern the two. I would probably benefit from re-reading this once I have more knowledge about the specific people in question rather than just the wider context of the war. This kept me relatively grounded, but I admit that there were significant portions of this where I was utterly lost and well aware that something that was supposed to be groundbreaking or significant was going way over my head. This book manages to be personal but also not. I don't know how else to describe it. It's personal in the way that this is a very honest book about a son's hatred of his war criminal father, and his attempts to work the man out, and the brutal depiction of horrific crimes and a legacy that has haunted the son every waking moment of his life and always will. At the same time, there are no personal details, no biographical details, nothing to set the context or the time or the place in a way that feels personal. Facts are mentioned but only as part of something else, usually a small part of a wider context or presented in the way that it's expected the reader already knows way more about the background. I admit that part of this is on me -- maybe I'll get more from it when I read more about these aspects specifically. But it's sold as a deeply personal portrait of a father by his son and I feel it fell short of that in large areas. It's personal in that the hatred and the resentment is clear, and it's personal in the way of a journey to reconcile what happened and condemn his father. But it's not personal about people -- relationships and memories and context and dynamics and Frank-Sr-as-a-father. I don't know. Maybe that's the point.

Still, there are parts of this that are incredible. The emotion, the hatred, the torment -- it's terrifying. I cannot imagine living under the weight of something like this. The language is incredible, evocative, there are lines from this that are going to forever live in my head and the imagery is absolutely brutal. It does a fantastic job of illustrating evil that many think is beyond words. Written as an open letter to his father, the narrative addressing him directly as "you" and "Father", it's deeply uncomfortable at times and absolutely harrowing consistently throughout. Frank's anger and despair is palpable and it's very clear that this is something that he will always carry with him. It's an incredible perspective and it is an impressive piece of work. I will definitely revisit this once I know more, and I look forward to it.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Niklas Frank was seven years old when his father, Hans Frank, governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, was hanged after the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1946. In the Shadow of the Reich reads like a conversation with his dead father, in which Niklas Frank pours out his hatred and rage. He details his father's career as a lawyer for the Nazi party and his rise to the governor general position, his theft from the Jewish ghetto, his groveling at Hitler's feet, his hatred for Himmler, and, mostly, his cowardice.

In the Shadow of the Reich is the most bizarre book I've ever read about the Nazis. Niklas Frank imagines he is speaking to his father in hell. He interrupts excerpts from his father's diary, letters, and testimony with his own thoughts. He imagines how his father acted in certain situations or what his father should have done, calls his father names, and basically goes on and on (and on and on) about how much he hates his father and his crimes.

This was a hard book to read, both for the content and its rambling. There was a lack of focus in its structure, like the only purpose of the book was to denounce his father. Niklas Frank had a lot of things to get off his chest, a lot of things to say to his father that he wasn't able to say as a child seeing his father for the last time, and it feels like this book served as a kind of therapy to his tortured soul.

On the one hand, it was nice to see that he distanced himself from his father's beliefs, but on the other hand, it felt way too personal. It's hard to describe the book to people who haven't read it before, but as someone who has read dozens and dozens of books about Nazi Germany, I must say this is the most unique and yet most disappointing in terms of the writing. Niklas Frank has an interesting story to tell, but I got more out of watching various YouTube interviews with him and other books about the children of Nazis in which he was featured (such as My Father's Keeper) than from his own book. However, I think it would be worth giving a try if you are fascinated with firsthand accounts from World War II. In the Shadow of the Reich is definitely something different.

Review originally posted on Diary of an Eccentric

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written by Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank. Hans Frank was a lawyer for the Nazi Party and found himself lording over Poland. He was eventually executed as a Nazi war criminal. Niklas Frank outlines his life as the son of a prominent Nazi official, and goes on what can only be described as a venomous tirade against his father and Nazi ideology. Who can really blame him? I really like the books written by children of Nazis, because it shows an aspect of the war that is often over looked. We read plenty about how people fought in the war, how they survived camps, things that people endured. It is less common to read about the children of these Nazis. I found this extremely interesting and entertaining. I highly recommend this for any World War II reader out there.

[John Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was hard to find this book on Goodreads, unless one selected a German version. While I took German three years in either high school or college, I couldn’t read much in German but selected this title. Who knows if I got it right.

Frank shows how different children of Nazi leaders viewed their situation entirely differently. Some knew and loved their fathers – and mothers – for good reasons and could separate what they did to society versus their parenting; others cut all ties or just met to see if their parent would ever share why they would do such horrific actions. Still others, bought into the entire hateful Nazi views.

So many of these children were raised in loving families, sometimes just on the other side of the wall where people were being murdered by placing them in ovens. Many of the families lived high, including art stollen from the Jews who were killed.

Some, like Hans Frank, were raised by parents who had no loving instincts. He bought into the idea of German superiority. He was ruthless yet at the end of his life, after being convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he converted to Catholicism and said that he was no like “two people,” disassociating himself from his horrendous crimes. His son did not believe him or have any respect for him. His wife argued she didn’t know about his crimes, about how she secured such a high-living standard and bragged about being in a nice prison. She made money from her husband’s memories but when that funding ended, she ended up having to rent out beds in her home. His son simply went the rest of his life hating his father and wishing her would burn in hell. He was pleased his father died for his murderous past. Yet, his younger brother could never hold his father accountable for his crimes.

Lives of other Hitler leaders were reviewed, including Albert Hess’ family, Rudolf Hoss (who was responsible for killing 1 to 1.5 million people in camps while his family lived at the camp then sent out to exterminate 400,000 Hungarian Jews. When caught, he testified that he no longer had any feelings for anything.

This book was really hard to read, leaving me with no interest in detailing the book despite taking notes when reading the book. It’s good that someone writes such books, especially since we now have more people who claim that the Holocaust never occurred.

[Otto · Rating 4 out of 5]

#lesejahr2019 #geschichte #biographie Aufmerksam wurde ich auf die Biografie von HF, dem Generalgouverneur von Polen, verantwortlich für den millionenfachen Mord in den Konzentrationslagern, durch die Lektüre von Philippe Sands Buch über Lemberg. #niklasfrank ist der Autor, er, der Sohn des im #nürnbergerkriegsverbrecherprozess zum Tode verurteilten HF versucht hier keine Verteidigungsschrift für den Vater aufzubauen, sondern er beschreibt in drastischen Worten das Wesen des Unmenschen, der nach außen so bürgerlich - wenn auch sexuell auffällig - wirkt, der seinen Goethe hochhält, der seinen katholischen Glauben vor sich herschiebt und dadurch noch nach dem Krieg in diversen katholischen Kreisen und Klöstern verehrt wird und der weinerlich versucht, im Prozess seine Schuld wegzuwischen. Niklas Frank ist keiner, der als Nazisohn versucht, die Schuld seiner Vorfahren zu verharmlosen, der politische Parteien im Andenken an diese gründet, nein, er ist einer der anklagt, der verzweifelt versucht, für sich das Unvorstellbare zu verarbeiten. Wenn es auch sprachlich oft nicht überzeugt, als Zeitzeugnis ist das Buch auf alle Fälle lesenswert, v.a. auch als Zeugnis, wie Aufarbeitung in Deutschland (und bei uns in Österreich war es wohl nicht anders) lange Zeit verharmlosend verlief und wie sie hätte verlaufen können. #nationalsozialistischeverbrechen #polen

[Emily☂️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niklas Frank kotzt sich über seinen Nazi-Vater aus!

Das Buch ist wirklich sehr interessant, da es das dritte Reich und die Machenschaften der Nazis aus einer anderen Perspektive zeigt.

Niklas Frank ist der Sohn des ,,Schlächter von Polen" und der ,,Königin von Polen". In diesem Buch richtet er sich an seinen Vater und beschreibt, welche Graustaten er vollbracht hat.

Die problematische Thematik wird an einzelnen Stellen durch Niklas Franks zynischen Humor gebrochen und ist ab und zu sogar lustig.

Mein Respekt geht voll und ganz an den Autor, der mit so viel Dreck und Beleidigungen und dem grausamen Erbe seines Vaters leben muss.

[Lukas Slavik · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is good.. Niklas is asking many important question to his father. Children are in no way responsible for their parents, and i don’t believe that behavior is hereditary. Yet it must have been really huge burden of Niklas, as his father was a really big monster.

That also allowed for the you form.. in German language active form is almost forbidden.. (germans never say you did it, they always say something bad was done).. so it was nice to see something new..

Nevertheless, I’m giving just 3 stars. First because it’s pretty rambling and secondly that this I’m not my favorite topic to read about.. i would prefer a movie..

[Dorte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Den er flere stjerner værd. Den er bare så forbløffende dårligt oversat, at det trækker ned i læseoplevelsen. Jeg håber ikke, at det, der blev slået op på frakken, faktisk var en krage. Eller at den unge Niklas blafrede gennem Tyskland og håbede på at blive samlet op. Eller at den korrekte jurist faktisk spurgte, hvilken lovsætning Röhm havde forbrudt sig mod. Og nej, der er ikke noget der hedder foregænger. Og, og, og...

[Theresa Heiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niklas Frank liefert mit diesem Buch im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes eine Abrechnung mit srunem Nazi-Vater. Er verbindet historische Quellen mit Erinnerungen und läsdt seinen Emotionen freien Lauf. Ich habe noch in keinem Buch diese Intensität an Hass und Enttäuschung gelesen. Ein einzigartiges Werk der Nachkriegsliteratur!

[wiktoria:) · Rating 5 out of 5]

dawanie 5 gwiazdek tej książce jest dla mnie niekomfortowe ze względu na tematykę… Przerażają mnie odczucia Niklasa na temat jego ojca i tego co zrobił, ale jednocześnie jest to niesamowicie ciekawe. Nie wyobrażam sobie jak potężne emocje targają tym człowiekiem przez całe życie, że postanowił napisać tą książkę i w taki sposób opisać swoją rodzinę.

[John Jansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessant om je eens te verdiepen in wat er allemaal gebeurd is in het Gouvernement-Generaal, en dan met name in wat er op het internet over te vinden is. Hans Frank was een van de ergste oorlogsmisdadigers en werd niet voor niks de slachter van Polen genoemd. Maar dit boek druipt van (terechte) haat (van de zoon voor zijn vader) waardoor het, naar mijn mening, vrij onprettig is om te lezen.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poorly written

[Derk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taalkundig zeer goed en intellectueel geschreven. Erg genuanceerd is het echter niet.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A satisfyingly vicious look at one of history’s most repulsive men as seen through his son’s eyes. The most recent translation in particular is superb.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super

[Gaurav · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a result of post-defeat anti-German propaganda. Niklas Frank has bought in to the entire junk fed to him, and programmed his responses accordingly. What happened at the time was a reflection of what mankind was practising across continents - whether it be Europe/ US (anti-semitism) or the colonial attitudes and practices of European nations in Asia. Is there a strident mention of the Russian abuses that happened well after the war?

On a different note, the book is extremely poorly written. It deserves the wastepaper basket, where it is going.

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ich weiß, dass relativ viele Leute das Buch mochten, aber als ich es gelesen hab - In der 8. Klasse? Und ja, freiwillig - habe ich den Autoren getroffen, der zwar nicht unsympathisch war, aber irgendetwas hat schon damals mein Pet Peeve O Meter höher schlagen lassen.

In wieweit Der Vater also wirklich historischen oder pervers-unterhaltenen Wert hat, weiß ich nicht mehr.

Note to myself: Nie wieder Bewertungen mit Bleistift auf Papphefter schreiben.

[Paul Saanen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nederlandse vertaling: Vader, ik haat je.
Het boek gaat op een zeer analytische wijze in op de gruweldaden cq uitspraken van vader Frank. De haat en het cynisme druipt er op elke pagina van het boek af. De titel is dan ook alleszeggend.
De vertaling van het boek vind ik niet altijd even sterk en soms door de opbouw van de zinnen erg verwarrend.