In the Valley of the Valets

Andrew O’Hagan (always a delight) writes in the current London Review of Books about memoirs written by valets – valets to Frank Sinatra and Marcel Proust among others but most of all Heinz Linge, valet to Adolph Hitler. An excerpt:

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Linge’s intimacy with his boss was not merely about whether the Fuhrer dressed to the left or the right, but involved such issues as whether Mussolini did or didn’t know anything about warfare and had or hadn’t chosen the wrong time to enter the war on Germany’s side. In the valley of the valets, overhearing often cedes very quickly to advising, and by the end of Linge’s memoirs it becomes clear the valet was actually in charge of the Third Reich.

The future under Linge would be a place of inordinate neatness and firm protocol, where the fingernails of the Axis powers would be checked every morning for dirt as well as for biting.

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