Germany Possessed: By H. G. Baynes. (Jonathan Cape, London, 1941. Pp. 305. Price, 16 s.)

This is a book well worth reading. It is, however, hard to review it, because, following closely Jung's mode of thought, it is frequently couched in semimystical language the significance of which it is not easy to appreciate or even to comprehend. To clear the ground for this the author first repudiates the Freudian conception of the Unconscious, which he describes as 'a depository of personal refuse which accumulates from infancy onwards'.

The theme of the book is the relationship between Hitler's personality and the mental state of Germany in general. It is one that could not fail to interest even if handled by a less qualified writer than Dr. Baynes. He possesses a very considerable knowledge of Germany itself and has a mind fraught with the most recondite learning—a burden which he carries lightly and never obtrudes. Shortly put, his thesis is that Hitler has played to the Germans the part of a Shaman and that he is to be strictly correlated with a savage magician of this order. On the vexed question of Nazi versus German Dr. Baynes's opinion is that the Germans as a whole tend to have a mental polarity, possessing the capacities for both sentimental tenderness and brutish frenzy. The Nazi movement has of course drawn out and accentuated the latter of these, but it has not created it.

Dr. Baynes has a great deal to say about Hitler himself and here he bases himself mainly on Rauschning's records of conversations with him. All sources of information, however, are grist to the mill, including a lengthy astrological diagnosis which he appears to take quite seriously. He also accepts the gossipy legend, improbable in the highest degree as it is, about Hitler being the illegitimate son of a wealthy Viennese Jew who foisted him and his mother on the elderly Schickelgruber. When Hitler himself is supposed to have heard of this we are not told, but the story goes that when he was a grown man he once tried in