Berlin Diary 1940-1945

The diary of Princess Maria Illarionovna Vasilychkova (1917–1978), first published in the United Kingdom in 1984, immediately became a bestseller and was translated into multiple languages. The daughter of Russian aristocrats-emigrants, she worked for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1940 and was a friend of high-ranking officers and diplomats involved in the July 20, 1944, conspiracy that ended in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler, carried out by Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg.

After the failure of the conspiracy, Vasilychkova kept records using a special shorthand cipher. This is one of the rare surviving documents that provides an accurate socio-psychological picture of the aristocratic opposition. The diary of a brave, intelligent, talented, and observant Russian aristocrat, loyal to both her homeland and her culture, who maintained her decency and honor in a complicated historical situation, is absolutely necessary for the modern Russian reader.