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First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town, which he disguised with the name "Kronenberg." "These ten men were not men of distinction," Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis.… (meer)
A profound experience. Opens up the experience of being a citizen and should be read by everyone. Who is responsible? How? If they aren't just exactly like us then what are they like? As much a book about America as it is about Germany. I would say it is critically important to read especially at this time so near to trump's presidency and the obvious split between what seems rational and what half the country professes to believe. If you haven't seen the red in the eyes of the people gathering in hate then perhaps this will help you to understand how little it seems to take to captivate a population. ( )
Libro estremamente interessante, soprattutto quando si focalizza sulle vicende e i colloqui con i dieci "piccoli uomini" tedeschi scelti come casi di studio. Ovviamente datato e superato dagli eventi dei decenni successivi nell'ultima parte, quando affronta temi di carattere più generale. Da leggere comunque nella prospettiva storica di un libro pubblicato nel 1955. ( )
Mayer, recrea su paso por una pequeña ciudad alemana donde pocos años después de la guerra socializa con "gente del común", y su visión del nazismo. Sobrecogedor recuerdo de como se puede terminar sintiendo como normal el horror, y la capacidad de negación del ser humano. Luego cuando habla del temor a los "demonios" de los alemanes, resulta muy interesante pero tal vez algo desactualizado con la caída del muro. Muy bueno ( )
Really insightful and definitely unnerving in its relevance to what's happening with regards to immigrants and asylum seekers at the southern border of the U. S. right now. My only real issue with this book is that the author's religious and anti-socialist bias tends to pour over into his commentary at times. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For the first time [I] realized that Nazism was a mass movement and not the tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions.
Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany—not by attack from without or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted—or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.
I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusion.
My friends wanted Germany purified. They wanted it purified of the politicians, of all the politicians. They wanted a representative leader in place of unrepresentative representatives. And Hitler, the pure man, the antipolitician, was the man, untainted by “politics,” which was only a cloak for corruption.
Thus Nazism, as it proceeded from practice to theory, had to deny expertness in thinking and then (this second process was never completed), in order to fill the vacuum, had to establish expert thinking of its own—that is, to find men of inferior or irresponsible caliber whose views conformed dishonestly or, worse yet, honestly to the Party line.
Did they know what Communism, “Bolshevism,” was? They did not; not my friends. Except for Herr Kessler, Teacher Hildebrandt, and young Horstmar Rupprecht (after he entered the university, in 1941), they knew Bolshevism as a specter which, as it took on body in their imaginings, embraced not only the Communists but the Social Democrats, the trade-unions, and, of course, the Jews, the gypsies, the neighbor next door whose dog had bit them, and his dog; the bundled root cause of all their past, present, and possible tribulations.
First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town, which he disguised with the name "Kronenberg." "These ten men were not men of distinction," Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis.
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