They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Sanford Mayer
Requirements: epub reader, 450kb
Overview: Mayer, a Jew on Sabbatical in post-WW-II Kronenberg, sets his goal as that of better understanding the life-story of the ordinary German under National Socialism.
As he tells the story, Nazism was not just a political system or just an ideology it was a worldview peculiarly suited for and congruent with the German Post WW-I temperament and mentality. In the aftermath of the much-hated Versailles Treaty, Nazism arrived on the scene just in time to not just conquer the minds of both little and big Germans but to overwhelm them. Mayer’s phrase has described it nicely: German enthusiasm for Nazism was clearly a case of “little men-gone wild.”
The true value of this book and hence Mayer’s most valuable contribution has been to draw a graphic conceptual picture of how the system of Nazism worked as seen at ground level by ten ordinary Germans and from the interior of German society: To a man, they all agreed that it brought them untold economic success, bound them patriotically and politically into a coherent cultural unit, restored the nation’s pride and gave all Germans renewed reasons for hope in the future.
Given this rosy and very much interior and insulated backdrop, it is no wonder there was no basis for ordinary Germans to see (or even to be able to perceive) Nazi excesses, or to see Nazism itself, as an inherently evil system until it was too late.
This was true in part because all Germans already had community permission to hate Jews. The excesses, reserved mostly for Jews, thus seemed normal and in any case were always introduced in carefully orchestrated, slowly escalating, but easily digestible bites. This was done specifically to stay below the radar of the everyday German conscience — so as to never assault German sensibilities too abruptly. Even the most alert of Germans and the least anti-Semitic Germans were lulled to sleep by this strategy.
Genre: Non-Fiction, History
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