Defying Hitler: A Memoir - Hardcover

Haffner, Sebastian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374161577 ISBN 13: 9780374161576

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002

Synopsis

A unique and compelling eyewitness account of Germany between the wars.

A huge bestseller in Germany, Defying Hitler is a memoir about the rise of Nazism in Germany and the lives of ordinary German citizens between the wars. This fresh and astute account offers a unique perspective on this era of twentieth-century history.

Covering the years from 1907 to 1933, Haffner's personal memories form the basis for questioning, analyzing, and interpreting much of Germany's history. His eyewitness account of groups such as the First Free Corps -- the right-wing voluntary military force set up to suppress communism during the revolution of 1918 -- which would provide training for many of the later Nazi storm troopers; the Hitler Youth movement, which swept the nation; the apocalyptic year of 1923 when inflation crippled the country; the peaceful Stresemann years; and Hitler's coming to power all contribute to the portrait of a country in a constant state of flux. Sebastian Haffner elucidates how the educated average German grappled with a rapidly changing society, while chronicling day-to-day changes in attitudes, beliefs, politics, and prejudices.

Available for the first time in English, this highly illuminating work is a unique portrait of a time, a place, and a people.

About this title

Review:

What was it about Germany that made the rise of Adolf Hitler and his murderous regime possible? That troubling question has occupied many fine minds over the last six decades, few more lucid and thoughtful than the late historian and journalist Sebastian Haffner. In this book, drawn from a manuscript he did not live to complete, Haffner examines the social and cultural conditions that made Germany ill-equipped for democracy and ripe for totalitarianism. Among these, Haffner writes, were a generational war between an apathetic adult population and a youth "familiar with nothing but political clamor, sensation, anarchy, and the dangerous lure of irresponsible numbers games"; a fatal fondness for the winner-and-loser dichotomy of sports and a rage for spectacle and entertainment; a resignation through which ordinary people came to "adapt to living with clenched teeth, in a manner of speaking," rather than stand up in protest. In that climate, Haffner--who left Germany just before World War II broke out--suggests, Nazism was almost an inevitability, against which he, too, tried to withdraw into "a small, secure, private domain," like so many others of his time and place. An important eyewitness account, Haffner's book deepens our understanding of how small missteps can lead to tragic ends, and how nations can be led into chaos. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Sebastian Haffner was born in Berlin in 1907. In 1938 he emigrated to England and a few years later began writing for The Observer. He returned to Germany in 1954 and became the best-selling author of, among other works, The Rise and Fall of Prussia, From Bismarck to Hitler, and The Meaning of Hitler. He died in 1999.

Oliver Pretzel, the translator of this work, is the son of Sebastian Haffner. He was born in 1938 shortly after his parents' arrival in England and was educated in England and Germany. He is a mathematics professor at Imperial College, London, and is married with three children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0374161577
• ISBN 13: 9780374161576
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272