Firstly, the English translations of non-fiction books cannot be considered true to the originals because New York publishing milieu edits them to conform to the ruling neocon ideology. Being beset in all corners of this big country, neoconservatism still runs triumphant in the BosNyWash corridor. So, I cannot be held responsible for the parts, which were either excised, heavily edited or added by request of the American editorial houses.
Secondly, because the memoirs these days are created by professional imagemakers, they are serving the primary role of glorifying the notional author rather that to be testimony to the facts of her life. So, the most interesting things in the current memoirs are the ones, which inadvertently cropped into the memoirs past attention of media gurus. Such was a tacit admission by Chrystie Freeland, a former deputy Prime Minister of Canada that, during her time as a Financial Times correspondent in Moscow, she moonlighted for the Russian oligarchs in the capacity similar to Ghislaine Maxwell supplying them with nubile flesh. Without insider trading tips obtained during their drunken orgies, how could she come so well off from Moscow as to finance from pocket her electoral campaign?
Angela Merkel is certainly in a completely different bracket from C.F. both as a politician and as a human being. The only new thing except forgettable names for her foreign policy advisers I learnt from cursory glance of her book was her hatred of dogs for she mentions Putin's "canine stubbornness" or some other negative characteristic ascribed to dogs.
The most interesting events in foreign policy, which she could have described but did not was removal of Muammar Khaddaffi -- because she mentions the chaos after his demise and very probable cautionary messages to the Ukrainian Government after the Minsk accords she helped to negotiate. She now admits that the treaties were signed -- and deposited to the UN, which she mentions as her achievement -- in a bad faith, which is a centuries-long tradition of German diplomacy beginning at least from the violation of Pragmatic Sanction by Friedrich II. But, unlike Scholz, she probably cautioned the Ukrainian leaders that she would look the other way at their violations and help them, militarily and economically only if they do not challenge two basics. Namely, they would not make loose talk of obtaining nuclear weapons and try to recover Crimea by the military means.
I shall look at "Freedom" again to find snippets other than her hatred of canines, which make the book worth reading.
