Books: Munich Confidential

UNHEARD WITNESS (317 pp.)—Ernst Hanfstaengl—Lippincott ($4.95).

Schicklgruber just laughed when Hanfstaengl sat down at the piano, but when he started to play . . .

. . . Schicklgruber-Hitler was delighted and Naziism began to take shape. That, at any rate, is the way Ernst ("Putzi") Hanfstaengl tells it. A sometime Harvard student (his grandmother was a New England Sedgwick) and longtime Hitler crony, Putzi* began supporting the Nazi Party in 1922 and labored to make it palatable to Germany's "best people."

With this aim in mind, Putzi excitedly told Adolf about the hypnotic effect of college cheering sections at U.S. football games and,...