The Catcher in the Reich BERLIN DIARIES, 1940-1945

A beautiful White Russian princess finds herself stuck in unpredictable wartime Berlin. One night it is a piece of suspect schnitzel and a cup of ersatz coffee. The next evening it could be oysters and champagne at the spacious flat of a baron or a count. The years pass, and she discovers that many of the swells with whom she works and plays are part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.

Friends and acquaintances are dragged before the People's Court and sentenced to be hanged with piano wire. Others kill themselves or slip off to the sanctuary of their family castles. But the spunky aristocrat remains at her job with a government information office, where there is less danger from the Gestapo than from Allied bombs. Her final months of war are spent as a nurse in Austria. A year later, she marries an American Army officer in a traditional Russian Orthodox service, with a French count and a German prince holding the wedding crown.

Royalty and glamour are not often found in eyewitness accounts of World War II. When they do occur, it is usually a prelude to decadence or a setup for a crushing loss of innocence. The posthumously published diaries of Marie Vassiltchikov are an exception. The author's record of death and destruction is sustained by a strong instinct for the civilized life. This does not always mean oysters and champagne. Between her lines, it is easy to read sadness for the lost chivalry and ideals of Western culture. Being young and shielded by her status as a refugee from Bolshevism, she does not always understand the demoralizing power of barbarism. "Missie," as she is called by family and friends, is puzzled by the way "the royals" dissociate themselves from Germany's leaders and their methods. "If they don't stand up for their beliefs, where will all this end?"

But what exactly were their beliefs? The 20 July plotters were mainly German army officers who wanted to salvage something from a losing war. They seemed happy to follow the Fuhrer while he was winning. Many soldiers from noble families were willing to die for their country but were ironically spared when Hitler pulled them out of the front lines: he did not want to create upper- class heroes. Vassiltchikov has little to say about bravery on the battlefield or anywhere else. She simply reports the daily toll with the same matter-of- factness that she describes toilet-paper rationing or how to fry an egg on an upturned electric iron.

But Missie also has a Holden Caulfield eye for the ridiculous: "A lot of Italian ladies came around . . . They are, apparently, knitting tiny garments for Goering's baby. Seems a bit much . . . After dinner we had a long discussion with a famous zoologist about the best way to get rid of Adolf. He said that in India natives use tigers' whiskers chopped very fine and mixed with food. The victim dies a few days later and nobody can detect the cause. But where do we find a tiger's whiskers?"

Perhaps in Vienna, where the diarist makes one of her more bizarre entries: "Laszlo Szapary and Erwein Schonborn . . . both had just dug themselves out of the Palais Schonborn, where a bomb had crashed into the courtyard before they could reach the cellar. The building is pretty battered and they are now fishing among the wreckage for Erwein's shooting trophies; he had many ivory tusks mounted in silver, as well as two stuffed orangoutans." The power of Vassiltchikov's observations lies in her restraint: "These last days innumerable inscriptions in chalk have appeared on the blackened walls of wrecked houses: 'Dearest Frau B., where are you? I have been looking for you everywhere. Come and stay with me' . . . or 'My little angel. Where are you? I worry greatly.' "

The struggle to survive and maintain normality is rendered with an immediacy that has not staled. Yet Missie Vassiltchikov seems to grow increasingly remote as her diary unfolds. There are gaps due to loss and destruction, but mainly there is a lack of adequate information about Missie herself. What was she like? What kind of life did she have after the war? In a foreword, her brother George drapes her in a biographical purdah. He says only that Marie Vassiltchikov was born in 1917, one of the five children of Prince Illarion and Princess Lydia Vassiltchikov of St. Petersburg. The family left the Soviet Union in 1919 to live in Germany, France and Lithuania, then an independent republic. During the Depression of the 1930s, Missie and her sister Tatiana (a future Princess Metternich) sought work in Berlin. The diarist's fluent English landed her a job as a translator with the Foreign Ministry's information department. After the war, she and her husband, Architect Peter Harnden, had four children. He died in 1971 in Barcelona. Missie then moved to London, where she died of leukemia seven years later.

Brother George's reticence is a bit frustrating. On the other hand, his spare comments enhance a sense of mystery and allure. Photos of his sister in her 20s reveal mischievous Tartar eyes and a determined jaw. In the 1940s, she could have been one of the European film beauties who used only one name, like Valli and Annabella. In the '80s, her diary could yet make her a "hot property." Perhaps even now, Meryl Streep's telephone is ringing off the hook.