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They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

4.12 · Rating details · 1,337 ratings · 195 reviews

“When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg.”

That’s Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He’s right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the Na ...more

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Paperback, 368 pages

Published May 19th 1966 by Phoenix Books/University of Chicago Press (first published 1955)

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Jul 31, 2017 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing

Shelves: german-language

They Wanted It; They Got It; And They Liked It

Milton Mayer was that rarest of writers: a journalist who knew his job was to create interesting facts; and a philosopher who knew that facts are meaningless without a theory, a coherent narrative, that connects them. His phenomenological analysis of ten Everyman Nazis was remarkable but largely unremarked when it was first published in 1954 during the Red Scare of McCarthyism. The book may be even more relevant today in understanding the Red Scare o Milton Mayer was that rarest of writers: a journalist who knew his job was to create interesting facts; and a philosopher who knew that facts are meaningless without a theory, a coherent narrative, that connects them. His phenomenological analysis of ten Everyman Nazis was remarkable but largely unremarked when it was first published in 1954 during the Red Scare of McCarthyism. The book may be even more relevant today in understanding the Red Scare of a different sort: Trumpism.Mayer's central conclusion is profoundly simple: It is easy to forget that Hitler was democratically elected and that his regime was a , a constitutional state in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law. But perhaps few know what Mayer discovered in his year of interviews in post-war Germany, that the 'average' German working stiff not only welcomed the rise of Hitler but looked back fondly to the rule of National Socialism as the best days of his life. In the same way it's easy to forget that Donald Trump has been elected by a people, perhaps not by a majority but by enough of them. And despite his demonstrated racism, misogyny, narcissism, vulgarity, and incompetence, he still demands the loyalty of those who elected him and even of those who have been humiliated by him. As Mayer points out, This is precisely what the American people are doing at the moment, rejecting responsibility for a situation that they created and want still. is a prophetic book in an authentically biblical sense: it articulates a fundamental flaw in democratic society, namely that such societies, like every other, from time to time embrace pure evil without even becoming aware of it. Perhaps William Burroughs was right, the evil in North America was there waiting before the first European settlers, even before the first inhabitants. It has now become part of the national character. The self-absorption of the American people ensures that this evil can only fester and grow until it bursts like a boil. God help the rest of us when it does. Americans will undoubtedly find someone else to blame. ...more

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Dec 02, 2017 abby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: world-war-2, nonfiction, history

"They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it."

In 1952, American journalist Milton Mayer moved his family to Marburg, Germany, a small town near Frankfurt. There, he set about to answer the question plaguing the world since Hilter's rise in 1933: how did a modern, western democracy fall prey to Nazism? Mayer was from German decent himself and a Jew, and he decided the answer to this quandary might lie in the "little man." Mayer made friends with ten such men in Marburg, men who had average job In 1952, American journalist Milton Mayer moved his family to Marburg, Germany, a small town near Frankfurt. There, he set about to answer the question plaguing the world since Hilter's rise in 1933: how did a modern, western democracy fall prey to Nazism? Mayer was from German decent himself and a Jew, and he decided the answer to this quandary might lie in the "little man." Mayer made friends with ten such men in Marburg, men who had average jobs and lived average lives. Tailor. Police officer. Baker. Schoolteacher. What Mayer discovered, and documented in his book, was the story of how fanaticism can overtake us all.There is an old saying that no one could find a single Nazi in all of Germany the day after the war. Hilter, who? Oh, no, I was always against that stuff. Shame what happened to those poor Jews. You don't think they'll come back here to claim this house I stole from them, do you? Well, Mayer finds a very different post-war Germany. Even in all the turmoil, the poverty and the destruction, eight of his ten friends were unapologetic about their support for National Socialism. They remembered it as the best time of their lives, the time a "little guy" like them kept a job and even have money for a vacation now and again. Most were against the war, and very sorry about the whole genocide thing (but those Jews and Gypsies really did bring it on themselves), with one going as far as to blame all the Nazi bad deeds on Himmler. Hitler was just a fine chap who had nothing to do with it. He'd looked out for the "little man."The book starts with the burning of the Marburg synagogue on Kristallnacht. One of Mayer's subjects, an elderly tailor who the author suspects lies to him, at least a little, spent three years in prison for the arson. Mayer sought to get to the root of why each of his ten friends joined the Nazi party. For some, it was a true belief, but others were so-called March Violets, latecomers to the party who joined when their victory was inevitable, and because everyone else did. For the schoolteacher, the most thoughtful and remorseful of all Mayer's subjects (and I would argue his favorite), it was a matter of keeping his job. He'd been a social democrat in another town and wanted to be above suspicion himself. But, even he admitted to enjoying the feeling of belonging and took pride in wearing the Nazi uniform.I don't know if this seems familiar to anyone else. Drain the swamp! We need an outsider! Both sides are the same! The two party system is corrupt and broken! Of course, before there was President Donald Trump, there was Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Governor Jesse Ventura. What we see in this book is the for outsiders to take advantage of western democracies under the right socio-economic conditions. It happened in 1930s Germany. It's happened across the world since. It can happen to you.Interestingly, although Mayer's book makes the case that any one of us can be the next crop of "little men" taken in by a charismatic leader who provides us an outlet for our frustrations, that's not what the author set out to suggest. In fact, Mayer argues that there's something unique about the German national character that turned them into Nazis. He was also profoundly concerned that the continued American occupation of Germany (as of 1954) would turn the country again into Nazis, under a new anti-communist heading.Readers in 2018 will recognize little of what Mayer suggests is the German national character. We also know the occupation didn't turn out the way he feared, and that Germany is one of the most successful, stable and prosperous democracies in the world.The above quote is from the new afterword added to the latest re-release of the book (2017), which I highly recommend reading (I often skip such things). I'm in perfect agreement, and it made rating this book difficult, because the first 250 pages are so, so good, and the last 100 near worthless. But I suppose that's the risk you take when you read a book written 60 years ago. I do wish in the re-release the pseudonyms for the town and the ten subjects had been dropped, like with Anne Frank's diary. There's only an outside chance one of the ten is still alive and no more need to protect identities. For my review, I have chosen to call the town Mayer wrote about by it's real name, Marburg. Throughout the book, Mayer refers to it as "Kronenberg." Imagine my frustration when I tried to Google that.This is the kind of book people talk about and quote but don't read. Read it. ...more

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Apr 22, 2018 Maru Kun rated it it was amazing

Shelves: current-affairs, politics, c-germany, the-past-oral-history, the-past-ww2, the-past-20thc, the-past-the-history-of-ideas

I've seen the rise of Nazism described as a "warning from history" on many occasions.

Well this book is that warning, written in clear and concrete terms soon after the events occurred by people who experienced them directly, most of them Nazi sympathizers.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act o

...more

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Feb 08, 2018 Beata rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I came across this book by accident. It was on GR Friend's to-read list and the title and theme somehow got me interested. No regrets here! The book, published ten years after WW2, is truly surprising for a reader in the 21st century. I've read several books with witnesses' accounts but this one is exceptional. Through lives of ten 'little men' we learn how ordinary people, living in a small town, are drawn into the totalitarian system and how they reflect upon nazism some years after the war. T ...more

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Aug 09, 2010 Erik Graff rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Westerners

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: political-social-science

Shortly after the war Milton Mayer, an American Jew of German heritage, and his wife, Jane, moved into a mid-sized German city. Concealing his religious background, Mayer passed as an authentic, returning German and was thereby afforded an easy intimacy with the inhabitants. What he was aiming for was some insight into how Hitler came to power and how Germans of all walks of life thought of his regime. He apparently got it.

I've approached the German experience from 1933 to 1945 with similar ques ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Daniel Villines rated it really liked it

In contemporary times, this book has surfaced more than once in conversations. It's been touted as a means to obtain insight into the segment of society that is apparently blind to the chronic contempt for the legal, ethical, and moral principles that is being perpetrated by our current president here in the United States.

While reading They Thought They Were Free I indeed found threads of commonality between the Germans of Nazism and the Americans of Trumpism. There existed then, as exists now, In contemporary times, this book has surfaced more than once in conversations. It's been touted as a means to obtain insight into the segment of society that is apparently blind to the chronic contempt for the legal, ethical, and moral principles that is being perpetrated by our current president here in the United States.While reading I indeed found threads of commonality between the Germans of Nazism and the Americans of Trumpism. There existed then, as exists now, various psychological behaviors common to both -isms: the need to be accepted by peers, the apparent collapse of class in favor of a common cause, and the creation of a hero-figure that embodies ideas of self-perfection. These behaviors all played a part in the spread of Nazism throughout Germany of the 1930s and they translate well to Trumpism of the present day.However, this book also does a good job in bringing to light a powerful difference. Mostly all nations of the 1930s, Germany included, lived in a world where foreign interaction, information, and social relationships were relatively static. Access to education in Germany was severely limited. And Germans lived in a relatively closed society that was isolated by language as well as by a technological inability to widely distribute and receive information.Americans of today, and people all over the world, live in conditions that are just the opposite of those of Germany in the 1930s. They have direct access to science. They can evaluate credentials, judge integrity, and compare sources. Americans have no excuse but to know things and to be responsible for the things they know.Today, the tools to evaluate the detriments to society that were caused by Nazism are easily obtainable. While in the past almost all Germans may have served as useful idiots to the Nazi regime, the present American contemporaries of Trumpism are eagerly practicing willful ignorance, which could be considered the final perversion of the legal, ethical, and moral principles of society.The above comparisons and contrasts are mostly included in the first part of a three-part book. Beyond the transition of Germans to Nazism, the second part of the book explores the geographical position of Germany within the European continent and provides reasons for Germany’s aggressive behavior over the centuries. While not as pronounced as the parallels presented in the first part of the book, parallels can be drawn between a 1930s Germany that was surrounded by multiple militant nations and the American "heartland" surrounded by the populous east and west (left) coasts. If Germany became tribalized and militant as a result of these pressures, then conservatives in the heartland may find similar reasons to pursue similar paths.The third part of the book is predominantly relevant from a historical perspective. It covers post-war Germany and the pressures applied by the victors of WWII on the losers; especially under conditions where communism was a constant danger during the Cold War. Given that the Cold War has come to an end, relevance with today’s political climate is limited.Lastly, there is a school of thought that frowns upon comparisons of Nazi Germany with anything current. The thought is that the Nazis were such a aberration in history that any comparison is a violation of the logical fallacy of (Latin for "reduction to absurdity") or commonly identified as an "appeal to the extreme." While this may be valid when considering generalities such as Trumpism will lead to Nazism, specific comparisons should indeed hold valid.Nazism was an absolute dictatorial and authoritarian system of government. Thus, the quantity of accurate comparisons that exist between Nazism and Trumpism should serve as an indication of society’s relative distance from the absolute. After all, we Americans still think we are free. ...more

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Aug 16, 2013 Robert Palmer rated it it was amazing

Shelves: politics-analysis, history-analysis

You should read this book if you think that you are free.

This is an old book, originally published in 1955, but it is more relevant today than ever before. Today the U.S. government openly arrests people without probable cause, detains them indefinitely without trial, tortures them, assassinates citizens and non-citizens alike with "predator" drones, and spies on everyone, all in the name of "freedom." What is the reaction of the American people? Most of the mainstream media fails in reporting t You should read this book if you think that you are free.This is an old book, originally published in 1955, but it is more relevant today than ever before. Today the U.S. government openly arrests people without probable cause, detains them indefinitely without trial, tortures them, assassinates citizens and non-citizens alike with "predator" drones, and spies on everyone, all in the name of "freedom." What is the reaction of the American people? Most of the mainstream media fails in reporting the flagrant abuses and largely ignores the important issues (if you don't believe me, ask yourself why we know more about where Edward Snowden is and what will happen to him rather than the large scale, indiscriminate, and grossly unconstitutional spying that he reported).And what about the ordinary person? He rushes to throw out the little actual news that is reported as he frantically searches for the sports section of the newspaper.In this book, Milton Mayer tells a chilling tale about a creeping totalitarianism that most did not notice until it was too late. People were too distracted to even notice an "ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people.""What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security...."This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."You should read this book if you think that you are free. ...more

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May 02, 2017 Kimba Tichenor rated it really liked it

Shelves: wwii-and-holocaust, german-history, american-history

Seven years after the collapse of Hitler's regime, Milton Sanford Mayer, an American Jewish journalist of German heritage, traveled to Germany in an effort to understand how and why Nazism had developed in Germany. He spends a year in a small Hessian town (whose identity he disguises by calling it Kronenberg). Here he works to develop contacts with "kleine Leute", i.e. ordinary Germans who enthusiastically or reluctantly embraced the Nazi cause. He wanted to understand why they had done so. And Seven years after the collapse of Hitler's regime, Milton Sanford Mayer, an American Jewish journalist of German heritage, traveled to Germany in an effort to understand how and why Nazism had developed in Germany. He spends a year in a small Hessian town (whose identity he disguises by calling it Kronenberg). Here he works to develop contacts with "kleine Leute", i.e. ordinary Germans who enthusiastically or reluctantly embraced the Nazi cause. He wanted to understand why they had done so. And through repeated interviews with 10 ordinary Germans, he concludes that he did develop "a little better" understanding of why they chose Nazism. But he also walked away afraid for his country, the United States: " I came back a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, under combined pressure of reality and illusion. I felt and feel -- that it was not German man that I met, but man" (19). In short, he recognized that Nazism was not the product of a peculiar German path (Sonderweg); under the right conditions, it could happen anywhere, including the United States:“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.” "This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ...(196)."Given the book was first published in 1955, it is of course dated in some respects. However, this warning to future generations of Americans that their nation is not immune to authoritarianism is timely in the current political climate of nationalist populism:"The [Peorian] individual surrenders his individuality without a murmur, without, indeed, a second thought - and not just his individual hobbies and tastes, but his individual occupation, his individual family concerns, his individual needs. The primordial community, the tribe, re-emerges, it's first function the preservation of all its members. Every normal personality of the day becomes an 'authoritarian personality.' A few recalcitrants have to be disciplined (vigorously, under the circumstances) for neglect or betrayal of their duty. A few groups have to be watched or, if necessary, taken in hand - the antisocial elements, the liberty-howlers, the agitators among the poor, and the criminal gangs. For the rest of the citizens - 95 percent or so of the population - duty is now the central fact of life. They obey, at first awkwardly, but, surprisingly soon, spontaneously" (296). Kronenberg, Germany in the future could be Peoria, Illinois. As Mayer's friend pointed out the challenge faced by average Germans at that time, and by peoples across the world today, as governments are taken over by authoritarian, corporatist, or populist/nationalist regimes is how do you recognize and resist. As one former Nazi that Mayer interviewed noted:"I do not see, even now [how we could have stopped it]. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - 'Resist the beginnings' and 'consider the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?"Let us hope that we realize before it is too late the liberties and rights that are being pushed so roughly to the side in multiple nations, including the United States. ...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Don Nelson rated it it was amazing

They Thought They Were Free-the germans 1933-45
Milton Mayer – author. Published by the University of Chicago Press

First published in 1955 the book has the advantage of being a collection of recollections about the conditions of life in the small town of Kronnenberg. The citizens of Kronneberg were of the most conservative of ordinary people. In fact they were not even Germans, according to ‘real’ Germans. Kronnenberg was in Hesse. Its people were sometimes referred to as blinder Hesse – Blind He They Thought They Were Free-the germans 1933-45Milton Mayer – author. Published by the University of Chicago PressFirst published in 1955 the book has the advantage of being a collection of recollections about the conditions of life in the small town of Kronnenberg. The citizens of Kronneberg were of the most conservative of ordinary people. In fact they were not even Germans, according to ‘real’ Germans. Kronnenberg was in Hesse. Its people were sometimes referred to as blinder Hesse – Blind Hessian – when needing to call some one backward or stupid.Milton Meyer interviewed ten members of this community, as he said in his forward “It was the newspaperman’s fascination that prevailed. . . and left me dissatisfied with every analysis of Nazism. I wanted to see this monstrous man, the Nazi. I wanted to talk to him and to listen to him. I wanted to try to understand him.. . . In 1935 I spent a month in Berlin trying to obtain a series of meetings with Adolf Hitler…..but without success. . . Then I travelled in Nazi Germany for an American magazine…..for the first time (I) realized that Nazism was a mass movement and not a tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions…By the time the war was over I had identified my man: the average German.” He goes on to explain that “I never found the average German, because there is no average German. But I found ten Germans sufficiently different from one another in background, character, intellect, and temperament to represent, among them, some millions or tens of millions of Germans and sufficiently like unto one another to have been Nazis.”Mayer begins his book with a short historical over view of Kronneberg. The date is November 9, 1638 and all is well in Kronnenberg. The town watchman is calling out the hour and walking the streets of the town. The picture is of a very old and very proud people and town. Times have been hard. “Pestilence and famine recur in Kronnenberg – as where don’t they? – and where there are Jews, what is one to expect?” As this scene unfolds the reader becomes aware that the German people have long had a dislike and distrust for the Jew. As far back as one can remember – problems follow the Gypsy and the Jew. Next the history lesson brings us to November 9, 1938. The scene is pretty much the same. But this night November 9, is “the greatest of all Nation Socialist Party celebrations. January 30 (the day the Führer came to power) and April 20 (the Fuehrer’s birthday are national celebrations. November 9 is the Party’s own.”One of the themes that sounds so familiar to my American ears is that this is a quiet country town. Small in size and population. Described as “. . .old and changeless, off the main line and the Autobahn, is conservative even for Hesse. But its very conservatism is a better guaranty of the Party’s stability than the radicalism of the cities, where yesterday’s howling Communists are today’s howling Nazis and nobody knows just how they will howl tomorrow. A quiet town is best.” Kronnenberg had a Catholic Church, a Protestant Church and a Jewish Synagogue. It was the Synagogue that would signal the change that was settling over the Nation. November 9, 1938 – it was burned to the ground by a group of local members of the Party at the Command of the head of the SA Kronnenberg.Having lived in both large metropolitan cities, Tulsa, my birthplace in 1942 and Oklahoma City where my undergraduate B.A. degree was earned and in such towns as Enid – where I earned my graduate degree M.Div. and Ada, Okemah and Covington and presently in a place that has the desire to be metropolitan but has yet to achieve that status, I can attest to the ‘stability’ of the small community. Oft times comfortable in the seclusion from the ‘hustle and bustle’ and ‘business’ of places with more people and diverse views. It’s just a better, less confusing, existence when one does have to be bothered with the ideas of a ‘big city.’Kronnenberg was such a small town.Attempting to review this book thoroughly would take more time and space than I have inclination to invest. So, I am going to pick and chose my high points – with the hope that you, the reader, will have your interest aroused.Before diving into my review I want to state my only criticism of this work. Mayer, it seems to me, presumes to describe a vastly diverse population using his interviews of ten very specific ‘ordinary germans’ supported by other research that serves as a frame work for his book. Seems to be a bit like coming to rural Oklahoma and selecting ten diverse individuals of conservative mindset and trying to understand why the State is run by Republicans. I realize there is or ought to be a discernable difference between rural conservatives in Oklahoma and rural conservatives in Germany – but then, again, maybe not.To the points of interest – and since I am driving – they are my points of interest.Germany was and is a country on the defensive. Mayer traces this characteristic back to the date 9 A.D. and 1555 in the twice plundering of Rome. “In year 9 the Germans expelled the founders of secular Europe; in 1555 they cut themselves loose from the Weltanschauung which the age of the Mediterranean fused in Italy from the Greco-Hebraic break with Syria and Egypt.” Mayer in his research points to the history of German Nationhood going back to 1871 when a sort of forced unity was enacted by Prussia over dozens of sovereign German States. It was here that the diverse nature of the population originated. Not even the language was unified, but a Mischmasch as it was called by Leibniz. This diverse character contributed to a separateness that eventually led to a Nationalism that was the door through which the NSDAP was able to enter. As Mayer, at one point, writes, “Hitlerism was a mass flight to dogma, to the barbaric dogma that had not been expelled with the Romans, the dogma of the tribe, the dogma that gave every man importance only in so far as the tribe was important and he was a member of the tribe.”Geographically Germany had, sense anyone had memory, been on the defensive. National security required a strong defense. Theirs soon became an offense for defense.Nazism did not show up in the life of the ordinary German as a theory. It first engaged the ordinary German as ‘practice.’ It – “Nazism, as it moved from practice to theory has 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.” It is an unfortunate fact of history that Adolf Hitler was correct when he observed that Germany was encircled and, of necessity had to defend herself. That defense was to go on the offense.The practice was to infiltrate every fiber of the ordinary germans life with the power and control of the State. That did not always manifest itself in brute force – but oft times in much more subtle ways. Joining the Party often meant having a job. Joining the party could mean gaining new status, though that sometimes had a negative outcome. It wasn’t the big man Hitler that spread the Party line through out Germany. It was the countless numbers of ‘little Hitler’s’ that were the source of Nazism success. It was only for the ordinary german to go about their daily lives and not get in the way. I was sort of reminded of the admonitions heard in the US of A when catastrophe strikes – natural or man made – “Go about your Business” “Don’t worry” “Go shopping, Go out to Eat” “Do what you always do to occupy yourself.” In Germany, in these days it was not for the ordinary german to be concerned about anything – the State would take care of them.Mayer discusses, at length the topic of how the Jewish people were part of the German experience off and on through the history of the Nation. Anti-Semitism was nothing new for the ordinary german. As in most developing Fascist or Totalitarian States there must be a scapegoat on which all the blame for all that is wrong, can be placed. Germany had more than just the Jew. There were the troublesome Gypsy Bands – that were reviled and hated. There were the Russians, whom many ordinary germans blamed for the Jewish problem. . . . “they knew Bolshevism as a specter which, as it took on body in their imaginings, embraced not only Communism 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.”Needing a scapegoat, upon which to load all of the problems, one had only to look next door or across a convenient border and the Big Men in the Nazi Party did just that. Mayer wrote, at the end of one of his chapters: “I asked my friend Simon, the “democratic” bill-collector, what he liked best about Hitler. “Ah,” he said at once, “his ‘So –oder so,’ his ‘Whatever I have to do to have my way, I will have my way.’ “This in no way adequately covers a review of this book, but it is my hope that some interest has been created. Milton Mayer has written a book that tells a story. It is a story that is as timely today as it was when he first wrote it. ...more

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Mar 10, 2020 Jan Rice rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: them-and-us, history, morality-justice, book-club-selection

Blast from the Past
The problem with old books is that, unless they were written by geniuses, and sometimes even if they were, old books are a mixture of genuine insights and misconceptions geared to their times. This book is no exception. It's a favorite book of a friend who was urging that it be read by our small Jewish book-study group. What persuaded me to concur was that we'd just read Extracted: Unmasking Rampant Antisemitism in America's Higher Education, by a local dentist (retired) writi The problem with old books is that, unless they were written by geniuses, and sometimes even if they were, old books are a mixture of genuine insights and misconceptions geared to their times. This book is no exception. It's a favorite book of a friend who was urging that it be read by our small Jewish book-study group. What persuaded me to concur was that we'd just read , by a local dentist (retired) writing about the shenanigans at Emory University in an earlier era. For that author, the culprits were specific reprehensible individuals. My impression was that Mayer would be taking the opposite view, emphasizing the society as a whole rather than particular individuals. Although to some degree that's a chicken versus the egg question, Mayer's viewpoint was as I expected.The book was published in 1955. Apparently somebody thought this would be a good book to re-release in the time of Trump. I got the 2017 edition and eventually benefited from the afterword by the British historian Richard J. Evans. The author's methodology was to interview ten German men, "little men," all in one small town. He befriended them and became part of their community. It's intriguing to me that Mayer's venture was supported in part by principals of the famous Frankfurt Group, including Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. But the ten-men approach to the book didn't help me much with organizing and understanding what I was reading, since I had a hard time keeping them straight. Instead, I was getting something out of each chapter despite some problems and confusions.Mayer knew it's easier to judge others than oneself.He saw that antisemitic beliefs were commonly accepted.If a policy or position was too costly, the Nazis couldn't pursue it. A group had to be stigmatized as outside the social bond, as enemies; otherwise, common decency made their ill-treatment too costly. After the war, most of his respondents still leaned toward the belief that the Jews deserved what they got.Most of his respondents did not know until 1945 that Nazism was evil, nor did they know it in the '50s. Nazism was still okay with them, except for its excesses. For many, the Nazi era was the best time of their lives, the time that they felt most alive and less separated by class standing. They were lifted by being part of a movement. Mayer tells this story to illustrate the breadth and power of the mood: early on, a Jewish girl at the cinema while watching a Nazi parade march across the screen is telling her mother : People can carry only so much responsibility. Responsibility shirked is responsibility denied. And the individual will be or become blind to his responsibility. Silence about what was happening and division between people allows the process to go forward. No one knew what was happening. They didn't voice it to each other. They didn't even tell themselves what was happening. Later, ignorance became an excuse.Everyone was swept or sucked into the system. Once in, resistance made things worse, not better.The change was gradual. Individuals couldn't see what was happening. Few outside the system protested what was happening. Few outside Germany protested.Antisemitism was the distinguishing mark of Nazism that separated it from other versions of totalitarianism. Jews were scapegoats for the Great War, the difficulties of democracy, joblessness and inflation.In reaction to Jewish conversion and intermarriage, antisemitism adopted a racist strategy, that is, the rationale changed but the hate remained the same.When asked how Christians could have become genocidal, the respondents said it was to destroy the enemies of Christianity. Contradictory rationales co-existed, for example, the Jews are filthy, and the Jews are obsessed with cleanliness. The beliefs were impervious to education.I am not persuaded that the Germans got what they wanted or that Nazism took them over That latter expression shows the cutesiness that shows up in Mayer's writing, possibly a style typical of the times. Overall he puts forth hypothetical explanations as if they are certainties, for example, social restrictions and conclusions as paving the way to genocide. Hardest to swallow are contentions about the national characteristics of Germans, which to today's ears sound like profiling. Per Evans, some of Mayer's views reflect wartime propaganda. He also jumps to conclusions regarding the presumed of those presumed national characteristics. Americans as more tolerant of accepting responsibility than Germans. Americans as able to talk to each other, unlike Germans. Americans as accepting of the messiness of democracy, unlike Germans. All you have to do to spot a fallacy or two is look at Americans . Mayer is very judgmental. He doesn't credit the power of institutions or the importance of context. Even with Jews: after emancipation, according to Mayer, they were committing cultural suicide by apostasy and intermarriage yet without lessening antisemitism. He sees individuals but not the seas in which they are swimming. I am not saying people are exculpated by their contexts, yet people are social animals and not understandable out of context. Despite his pronouncements, Mayer eventually does describe the tortures of conscience that some of his German characters experienced.It's both interesting and disconcerting to read his judgments on both the Allies and Germans circa 1955 in light of how Germany turned out: much better than expected!Secondary sources can be preferable to reading old books; it's good to have a teacher. But reading old books can sharpen the mind and encourage comparison and contrast. I wonder what someone 50 or 75 years from now would think about what gets written today. ...more

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Apr 01, 2017 James rated it it was amazing

Shelves: character-studies, culture-and-politics, psychology, economics, regional, employment, military, history, justice-system, crime-and-forensics

Excellent, sad, and troubling. The author, a Jewish American, lived in Germany after World War II, in the 1950s, as a professor at a small provincial college. This book is an account of his many conversations with ten different German men about their experiences and memories of the pre-war, war, and immediate post-war periods, and their attitudes about the Nazis and their actions. They knew he was American, but not that he was Jewish.
Unsurprisingly, they almost uniformly minimized the scale and Excellent, sad, and troubling. The author, a Jewish American, lived in Germany after World War II, in the 1950s, as a professor at a small provincial college. This book is an account of his many conversations with ten different German men about their experiences and memories of the pre-war, war, and immediate post-war periods, and their attitudes about the Nazis and their actions. They knew he was American, but not that he was Jewish.Unsurprisingly, they almost uniformly minimized the scale and nature of the Nazi regime's crimes, and most claimed to have known little or nothing about what was going on (although things they said at other times about the arrests and disappearances of local members of the Jewish community contradict that.) In some cases, their stories changed almost every time he talked with them. Most felt no guilt or qualms about having supported the Nazis or been active in the party's actions, even against neighbors.They were also deeply cynical about the Cold War, its impact on the then-two Germanies, and the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. They seemed to see little or no difference among the western democracies, the Warsaw Pact, and the fascist powers before and during the war.They talked a great deal about the supposedly unique German character and its superiority to other nationalities. The author speculated about a national character and how it might have made Germans especially susceptible to falling under Hitler's spell. However, looking at history, that argument is weak - one of the important lessons, I believe, is that no society is immune to this kind of perversion and free of the need for reflection and self-questioning.One thing that surprised me was that even a decade or so after the war ended, many of the Germans insisted that Hitler had been a good man and a great statesman. When asked about the atrocities of the Third Reich, they insisted that these had been perpetrated by Hitler's senior officials but that he himself had known nothing about them. Given Hitler's penchant for micromanagement, this idea is absurd, but they clung to it.Unsurprisingly, the author's anger and disgust are quite clear at many points in the book. I was, as a result, puzzled and intrigued by his also taking pains to emphasize that he considered these Germans personal friends before, during, and after all the conversations he relates.Finally, the most depressing aspect might be that for the most part they didn't even seem to have learned anything - I got the impression that if they found themselves in a similar situation again, the whole thing might unfold again in a similar way. A bleak commentary on human nature. ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Christine rated it liked it

I found it a little difficult to rate this book. The first part, relating personal interviews with former Nazi party members was fascinating (and a little troubling when looking at some of the events in terms of modern developments.) The second half of the book, though, read like an attempt at psychoanalysis of an entire country's population that just didn't work for me (although he did admit there might be "a few exceptions" to some of the generalizations.) The final section made a lot of predi ...more

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Sep 11, 2008 Patrick rated it really liked it

Great book, if not a bit frightening. Frightening because you can really see that tyranny can happening anywhere and at any time. It really puts you in the shoes of ordinary Germans. Would I really stand up to tyranny if it meant the death of my wife and children?
Also interesting is that many Germans referred to the "30 Year War" WWI and WWII were, in many Germans' minds, the same war. ...more

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Jan 12, 2016 Susanna Sturgis rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, nonfiction, politics, terrorism

They Thought They Were Free was first published in 1955. In 1966 it was reprinted with a new foreword by the author. I read it for the first time as a college undergrad and activist in the early 1970s. It exerted a lasting influence on my emerging view of the world. Perhaps its most important lesson was this: People who are content with, or at least resigned to, the status quo have no need of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or the right to not incriminate oneself. M was first published in 1955. In 1966 it was reprinted with a new foreword by the author. I read it for the first time as a college undergrad and activist in the early 1970s. It exerted a lasting influence on my emerging view of the world. Perhaps its most important lesson was this: People who are content with, or at least resigned to, the status quo have no need of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or the right to not incriminate oneself. More, many USians are suspicious of anyone who invokes these rights: who but a guilty person or a traitor would need them?Having recently seen Margarethe von Trotta's 2012 film and read (or reread) Arendt's I decided it was time to go back to Milton Mayer's book, to see what it had to say about the times we're living in. The answer, I think, is "a lot."Mayer, Jewish and of German descent, had visited Germany as a boy. Traveling in Germany as a journalist in 1935, he writes in the foreword to the first printing, he "for the first time realized that Nazism was a mass movement and not the tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions." This is what he sought to understand when, seven years after the war ended, he went to live in West Germany with his family. is built on his interviews and conversations with "ten Germans sufficiently different from one another in background, character, intellect, and temperament to represent, among them, some millions or tens of millions of Germans and sufficiently like unto one another to have been Nazis."The book opens with the burning of the town's synagogue on what came to be known as Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938, an arson in which at least one of Mayer's informants played a part. Another, a member of the volunteer fire department, was on the scene and immediately recognized that the fire was not accidental. The news reaches the others in various ways, including the policeman, who the next day is ordered to carry out an order requiring that all male Jews between the ages of 18 and 65 be taken into protective custody.Yet these events remain on the periphery of the lives of these "ordinary" men. Through their lives and reflections Mayer explores the perhaps startling paradox: With the exception of the high school teacher, "the other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.""Men think first of the lives they lead and the things they see; and not, among the things they see, of the extraordinary sights, but of the sights which meet them in their daily rounds." So Mayer muses, and so the reader nervously begins to think of the things she doesn't notice because she doesn't encounter them in her daily rounds. With Nazism had come employment and stability, both in short supply in the post–Great War years."That Nazism in Germany meant mistrust, suspicion, dread, defamation, and destruction we learned from those who brought us word of it – from its victims and opponents . . . There were two truths, and they were not contradictory: the truth that Nazis were happy and the truth that anti-Nazis were unhappy." Mayer notes, without forcing the comparison, that something similar might be said of the U.S. during the McCarthy era, during which he was writing.The Germans who "thought they were free" took their cues about right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior, from the community around them. If no one else is making a fuss, is there anything to make a fuss about? In any case, "they had their own troubles" and weren't looking for more. "A man can carry only so much responsibility. If he tries to carry more, he collapses; so, to save himself from collapse, he rejects the responsibility that exceeds his capacity." Thus few USians protested the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and even the Supreme Court said it was OK."National Socialism," Mayer writes, "was a revulsion by my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government – against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving." Representative government was new in Germany when the Nazis came to power. It is much older in the U.S. and presumably has correspondingly deeper roots, yet I suspect similar currents are at work here today, a weariness of the hurly-burly, a desire to throw all the rascals out and start afresh – if only someone would tell us how to do it.History has continued to unroll, or perhaps unravel, since was published in 1955, and since Mayer wrote his new foreword in 1966. (Mayer died in 1986.) Both the Cold War and the rearmament of Germany are old news, and the German national character, if there is one, has continued to evolve, with several more decades of representative government under its now-reunified belt. But this book remains thoughtful and thought-provoking, not least for observations like this one: ...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Josh rated it liked it

I really enjoyed this book, but it does take a bit of effort to stay engaged in what's going on. The author's style isn't very direct until later in the book.

This book really opened my eyes to how the Germans were manipulated very carefully by the National Socialist movement. It serves as a chilling reminder that this could happen to anybody, that anything less than standing on principle regardless of the consequences makes a people vulnerable to usurpation and slavery. ...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Charlene Mathe rated it it was amazing

Milton Mayer writes wonderful profiles of ten Germans who lived through the Third Reich. His analysis is very human; compassionate, yet to some extent damning. I liked Mayer in these chapters, but liked him less in the opening and closing chapters when he writes, not so much about the individuals caught up in the war, but about the nations involved and especially the United States. Mayer joins other Blame-the-USA critics in imagining some better(undetermined) solution to winning WWII than bombin ...more

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Feb 23, 2010 Dave rated it it was amazing

Mayer - An American Jewish journalist - performs what may be nearly a supernatural feat of grace as he profiles 10 ordinary Germans shortly after the war - my '10 Nazi friends' as he puts it. Mayer quotes the prayer of the publican as a warning to all of us. The book is powerful and revealing of human nature, but in an unexpected way. The Nazi problem is indeed a human problem.

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Mar 15, 2009 Bryant rated it it was amazing

Illusion can very easily overcome ones reality. In these times in which we look at the state of the union, we would do well to remember this. This book is eerie because of how blinded they were to the reality of what they were supporting.

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Sep 14, 2020 Brett rated it it was amazing

Shelves: the-political-right, history

I first became aware this book existed in 2003 or 2004 when I saw this quote on a blog:

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security I first became aware this book existed in 2003 or 2004 when I saw this quote on a blog:"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."It struck me as such a scarily accurate paragraph about post 9/11 America that I have long remembered it and finally gotten around to reading the entire book from which it is taken.It's a barnburner. One of the best political books I've ever read, especially the first two-thirds or so. (The last third is pretty aimless and increasingly far afield, but I'm going to ignore that). Originally published in 1955, the idea is that Mayer lives in a German town and befriends 10 ordinary people who were members of the Nazi party, gradually getting them to discuss the events leading up to the war and learning what they honestly thought and their reflections on themselves and Germany.The book is absolutely chilling. The power of self-delusion on display is incredible, with the men interviewed being thoroughly unable to reconcile the moral atrocities of the German state with their own political beliefs and actions. They mostly, in fact, remember the Nazi era as one of the best times of their lives, when they were united with national purpose and afforded relatively privileged places in society. And if a few "excesses" were carried out, if a few people took things a little too far, well that certainly doesn't mean that nothing good came out of Hitler's Germany. But Mayer doesn't let the reader off that easily either, posing serious questions about what exactly we expect an ordinary person to do in the midst of a societal upheaval where one person alone doesn't have much power to alter the course of history. Do we expect a person to risk their life? To risk lack of professional advancement? To risk their children being made fun of at school? What level of resistance is the yardstick by which we ought to measure someone's actions? Earlier this year I also read Hitler's Willing Executioners, another book about the role of ordinary people in carrying out Nazi policies, and together these are an excellent pairing to help a person get a handle on what is happening at the kitchen table level of German society as Hitler and his cohort of deformed monsters developed national policies. It goes almost without saying, but these books have a frightening resonance these days as many of my countrymen reveal a part of themselves that I wouldn't have guessed was lurking inside, and we hurtle toward a future where not much is certain except many of the worst impulses of our people are increasingly being displayed as though they were virtues. If the earlier block quote caught my ear during the Bush years, perhaps this one most sums up the feelings of the Trump years: “But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”I guess it speaks to my pessimism about where this country is heading, regardless of the outcome of the election in November, that this book speaks so strongly to me. Read it yourself and see if you agree. I hope with all my might that a few years down the line someone can read this and laugh at my alarmist nonsense, though I fear that the Mayer may sound more like a prophet and less like a loon. ...more

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Oct 23, 2014 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: politics, nazi, germany, man-vs-state, history

How could ordinary, decent people abide the Nazis for the span of twelve years -- to allow a baby born at the NSDAP's seizure of power to practically come of age under their banner? Shortly after World War II, Milton Meyer traveled to Germany and attempted to answer that question for himself. Omitting his Jewish heritage, he cultivated friendships with ten German citizens and approached them with questions about their life during the war. His mission was to understand their experience.Though pri How could ordinary, decent people abide the Nazis for the span of twelve years -- to allow a baby born at the NSDAP's seizure of power to practically come of age under their banner? Shortly after World War II, Milton Meyer traveled to Germany and attempted to answer that question for himself. Omitting his Jewish heritage, he cultivated friendships with ten German citizens and approached them with questions about their life during the war. His mission was to understand their experience.Though primarily writing for the western world of the 1950s, urging the powers not to turn the Germans into the anti-Soviet front line, virtually none of the import achieved here has faded with the decades. He searched for insight about the German soul under the Nazi state, but discovered man.Today Hitler and the Nazis are a byword for evil, but for Meyer's Germans, this was not so. The totality of the Nazi evil was not revealed until after the Allies had swept across Germany and discovered the camps, those ghastly factories of obscenity where families were slaughtered with hellish efficiency. For the Germans interviewed, Hitler was a bolt from the blue, a strike of leadership in a time of self-indulgent parliamentary quibbling. He was a leader who believed in Germany, who could inspire the kind of discipline needed to rebuild and recover from the Great War and depression. He advanced a siege mentality, but stirred up the fortitude requited to endure a struggle. Judging from his friends, Meyer believes that most Germans knew little about the atrocities that would be committed under that threatened mindset; for them, Hitler was the man who had cured unemployment, who had restored national pride; such was his stature in their imaginations that even when it became obvious that the NSDAP was leading Germany into ruin, he was beyond reproach. Disconnected from the party, he was the Kaiser, the head of state, the man above politics; when things went awry, it was his advisers who were held liable, his administrators deemed malevolent. “If only Hitler know what was happening,” some thought. The belief that the king can do no wrong seems to have deep roots in the human psyche, appearing seemingly everywhere.Even if Hitler was not known then as the source of evil, no one could deny that something was amiss in Germany. Here Meyer examines how the Jews could be subjected to such desolation. . The Nazi cultivation of antisemitism worked not only to marginalize Jews, to keep the mind from lingering too long on where they kept disappearing to, but simultaneously gave baser instincts a target to fixate and build on. Urges for casual petty violence, normally inhibited by the law, were given legal sanction against Germany’s Jewish population; but violence, once unleashed, is rather difficult to rein back in. That violence was not only physical, but psychological, eroding the civil soul; Meyer's interviewees report how they were steadily compromised. Merely conflicted when the Nazi campaigns were set in motion, torn by a sense that something was not right but unsure as to whether attacking the triumphant Party was worth it. That inaction only reinforced itself as Germans were slowly prised apart from conscience, either out of fear or moral sloth. Some values, like free speech directed against the government, were so new and existing only on the periphery that when they disappeared their absence was as dimly noticed as that of the marginalized Jews. Though elements of the book are specific to Germany, the study of man compromised by rule is more generally applicable. Meyer believes the veneration of Hitler was tied to the German veneration of the Kaiser, but what society has been spared a leader who acts as if he is above the law? Even England, which prizes the Magna Carta and its supposition that the king is subject to laws greater than he, has had its Henry VIII; in the modern age the power and influence of rulers is even more strongly expressed. Of general interest, too, is the conflict of moralities at play when the state is doing things that are obviously wrong. People want to do the 'right' thing,but so utterly basic is tribal preservation instinct that we hesitate; how can we attack 'ourselves'? We must separate the players in our minds, must create a new 'us' and relegate the government to the status of 'them', but that doesn't alter the fact that those enabling the evil are still our countrymen. The tide of fear and uncertainty has an awful strength, sweeping away all but the most strident stands. It is a struggle not finished, and one which will never be finished; we are never relieved from the possibility our instincts may lead us in the wrong direction. They Thought They Were Free strikes me a must-read for beginning to grasp the German mind and the human soul in its darkest hour. Historically it alters a bounty of insight into what Germans were enduring now, but can be applied to human travails through the centuries. ...more

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Jan 20, 2019 Marks54 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a reissue of a classic 1955 study of the experiences of ten typical Germans under the Nazi regime. The author was a journalist and education writer who was on the faculty the University of Chicago. Milton Mayer is not well remembered but was the person who introduced the phrase “speaking truth to power” into journalism terminology, where it has remained ever since. He originally tried to get an interview with Hitler after he came to power in 1933 but was unsuccessful. This interest morph This is a reissue of a classic 1955 study of the experiences of ten typical Germans under the Nazi regime. The author was a journalist and education writer who was on the faculty the University of Chicago. Milton Mayer is not well remembered but was the person who introduced the phrase “speaking truth to power” into journalism terminology, where it has remained ever since. He originally tried to get an interview with Hitler after he came to power in 1933 but was unsuccessful. This interest morphed into an interest in how the typical German came to support the Nazis and enabled them to come to power and prosper, at least for a while.There is a huge literature on the Nazis, their concentration camps, Einsatzgruppen (SS murder squads), and the Holocaust more generally and one line of inquiry that comes up a various forms is how could so many apparently normal and undistinguished people have participated in such heinous atrocities. Were all the Germans evil? If not, how could these events happen and how could members of a large and civilized population take part in the barbarism? This literature has continued to this day but began in the early 1950s. One of the earliest groups was associated with the Frankfurt School and researchers like Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, who helped to arrange Mayer’s study as a related set of case interviews to further develop ideas related to their work..Mayer was an American of German and Jewish descent who did not speak German. His initial idea was to identify a typical or average German who had been associated with the Nazis and find out what life was like during the 12 years of the Third Reich. How was the life of ordinary Germans affected? What was the balance of cooperation and coercion? How were their lives affected by antisemitism or exposure to more extreme Nazi behaviors (such as orchestrated campaigns against the Jews or the outbreak of WW2 with attacks on Poland). Not surprisingly, the identification of a “typical” German proved more complicated than initially anticipated and the sample for interviews ultimately expanded to ten people. Mayer got to know these individuals and engaged in extensive interviews with them, with his data collection ending in late 1952, after which he began writing up his results for articles and an eventually book. Some general protocols were developed prior to the study and generally followed in conducting the study. Interviews were conducted in informal settings where Mayer had built a relationship with the different interviewees. This book is a general summary and discussion of Mayer’s results.Mayer was generally effective in explaining how the Nazi regime depended on the engagement of the general population to a sufficient degree that the principal Nazi program could proceed out of the public spotlight. Some of the central concerns of Nazism with antisemitism aligned closely enough with the sentiments of the interviewees that it was brought up during the course of interviews without the need for any prompting. As to the more extreme aspects of Nazi rule, the accounts in the boook are credible but consistent with a desire to stay out of trouble and not have any more contact with the SS and the camps than was necessary. Were some of the interviews avoiding the difficult aspects of Nazi rule? That is likely. There is enough to make Mayer’s account credible. It is an interesting study of what life was like in the Third Reich.There are all sorts of issues with the study design and this is not how these sorts of studies would be conducted today by reputable scholars. As a result, the book comes across as more traditional journalism than research and one hopes that norms regarding the accurate repetition of quotes and the like were followed. In fairness, these norms were just developing at the time. For a comparison, one could look at the books of Arlie Hochschild for how these sorts of studies are done today.Mayer has his own limitations as an analyst. He did not tell his interviewees that he was Jewish, which may have influenced his ability to build relationships with them. He seems prone to making global judgements about the German national character as part of his discussion of results, and his conclusions have not aged well relative to his initial focus on how these individual people came to interact with the Nazi regime. Even with these limitations, the book garnered considerable support from reviewers, although it did not achieve much popular success. It continued to be important in some intellectual communities and was reissued in the 1960s.The current reissue includes a nice postscript by Richard Evans, a major historian of Nazi Germany. Why the book was reissued in 2017 is not immediately clear although the insight it provides about how normal people relate to the establishment of potentially authoritarian regimes that must build their legitimacy on popular support may still be seen as a valid question in the U.S. today. ...more

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Jan 02, 2021 Julian Mayers rated it really liked it

One of the bleakest things I've ever read ...more

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Sep 10, 2017 Sebastian rated it really liked it

Shelves: germany, europe

There is no way for me to write an honest review of this book without addressing the elephant in the room: that room being the Oval Office.

I purchased this book at a library book sale in October 2011. I don't recall what drew me to it then, but I know what led me to pick it out from among my stacks in 2016 and tell myself I would read it very soon. Michiko Kakutani, until recently the chief book critic for The New York Times, published a review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939" nea There is no way for me to write an honest review of this book without addressing the elephant in the room: that room being the Oval Office.I purchased this book at a library book sale in October 2011. I don't recall what drew me to it then, but I know what led me to pick it out from among my stacks in 2016 and tell myself I would read it very soon. Michiko Kakutani, until recently the chief book critic for The New York Times, published a review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939" nearly a year ago, in the heat of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. By then each major party's candidate had long since been nominated, and we in the States had endured over a year of constant media (and social media) coverage of the unprecedented circus whose ringleader was later elected in a shocking upset. While I have not read Ullrich's book, I found Kakutani's review a rather enlightening - and terrifying - summary of its key points of interest. Mayer's "They Thought They Were Free", having been published only ten years after World War II, is far closer to its subject matter in both time and human space, as Mayer personally lived among and interviewed those who experienced its relevant zeitgeist. It tells a story from the other side, from the average person's point of view - the average Nazi's, that is.Germany differs from the United States of the present moment in that Hitler and his Nazi Party eventually enjoyed the support, or at least tacit acquiescence, of a large majority of its population. The current U.S. president - while he was elected not by a majority of the populace but by a quirk of its electoral system, like the Nazis - has yet to achieve such, although I fear that this is not impossible. Mayer, in his voyage into the mind of the Nazi, presents a surprisingly sympathetic picture, considering he himself was an ethnic Jew (a fact he wisely concealed from his German neighbors during his stay). The average Nazi, far from the bloodthirsty 'Fanatiker' we might imagine from our public school education, was merely going along to get along. Complicit? Absolutely, but in a less vociferous way than we might have thought. Nazis - the vast majority of those who comprised the party after it had come to power - were not clamoring for a Holocaust. They were merely willing to overlook virulent anti-Semitism if it meant rejecting Communism at the voting booth and hopefully securing a brighter economic outlook.This is not to say that they were not anti-Semitic; indeed, several chapters into the book the subject is finally broached, and the townsfolk's catalog of bizarre rumors and legends pertaining to Jews are laid bare. Anti-Semitism had been a fact of life in Germany for centuries, just as, for example, anti-black sentiments have been an undercurrent in American life since our nation's inception and even before. Such feelings and ideas need not take the form of open displays or violent action to be deadly; the casual indifference to Jewish suffering they enabled more than sufficed. And this is a key point Mayer raises: the Holocaust did not require a country's worth of 'Fanatiker' to be accomplished. With only perhaps one percent of the population under such a spell, "all that was required for the triumph of evil was that good men did nothing". Most Nazis were not especially political. Their concerns pertained mainly to their daily lives and, by extension, the economy. While I have heard claims that Weimar Germany's economic woes were largely self-inflicted by an obstructionist parliament, my knowledge of that period is sparse enough that I will not present this as a definitive claim. Regardless of the cause, the "little men" (for that is what Mayer tells us they called themselves) of Germany were suffering from a severe bout of "economic anxiety", and Hitler appeared to be just the cure.Perhaps it can be attributed by some degree to confirmation bias, but so many times while reading this book, I was struck by how familiar quotes and sentiments expressed by the Germans appeared - from both the Nazis of the book's focus, as well as the anti-Nazis sprinkled among them. History does not repeat itself entirely, for various details will always be unique to their times and places, but human nature thus far has remained so unchanged that similar scenarios will emerge and reemerge such that some among us cannot help but be struck by how foolish we are to repeat old mistakes. For seven decades, every generation has cried wolf that the latest opposition candidate is the return of Hitler. Let it be that 2016 is merely another instance in this trend - and not the ultimate fruition of this claim. ...more

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Jan 18, 2019 Ietrio rated it did not like it

Shelves: junk

The premises is fallacious. From a cherry picked bunch expand to explain a far larger group. The rapport is about one to 10 million!

The style is in sync with the era: opaque and wordy. So at first glance I had a hard time distinguishing the voice. Is Mayer who talks about "the nation" or the Nazi friends? I still have no idea, maybe I'll give it a second go some time later. Anyway, never mind whose voice is heard, the text itself is a monstrosity: "destroy a nation". Well, the destroyed are over ...more

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Nov 15, 2020 Jack Waters rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020

Mayer's book was perhaps the first (or at least the most respected) postwar inquiry into how ordinary Germans swiftly allowed (and indeed became) Nazis. It focused on ten associates of Mayer in one city (Marburg, though he calls it Kronenberg), which wasn't entirely representative of Germany as a whole as it was probably tinged with more citizenry Nazism to more of an extent of other cities (an example: the city destroyed, then burned, a synagogue before the SS arrived to order its conflagration ...more

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Aug 04, 2013 Henry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The other reviewers explain what the book is about. Mayer's discussion of the experience of his Nazi sources, which forms about the first half of the book, is its best part. Some of the stories are moving; all are frightening, showing how ordinary, generally decent people became Nazis, in some cases in spite of themselves. His further discussion of the "German character" is weaker, and his predictions concerning the future of Germany have proven to be incorrect, something for which we may be gra ...more

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Jan 28, 2017 Jim Williams rated it really liked it

Given the current state of American politics, this book, now 61 years old, is eerily relevant. The author lives for a time in postwar Germany, hiding from his "10 Nazi friends" that he is Jewish, to examine how average citizens could become supporters of a brutal dictator. The books strength is in the profiles and interviews with these 10 men (no women were profiled), who each have supported the Nazi movement to varying degrees, from local strongmen to go-along-get-along types. That so many Germ ...more

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Mar 01, 2016 Jamie King rated it it was amazing

Shelves: world-war-ii, memeology

Working through this book was a very intense exercise.

It requires you enter it with an objective perspective that then must be balanced by an empathy of the characteristics of the timeline.

I believe any reader would at several points in this book be challenged to look into themselves and question many of their misconceptions.

The exercise is made all the more riveting while trying to relate to his 1955 Orthodox Quaker Pacifism cultural perspective/solutions with the 50 years in cultural developm ...more

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May 15, 2010 Briansmom rated it really liked it

This book is scary, entertaining, and enlightening, all at the same time. The author is an American journalist who was very curious (as many people, since the end of WWII, have been) about how Nazi Germany could have happened. He had his publisher obtain a university teaching position for him at a northeastern German university (unnamed) and the book evolved from conversations with former Nazi friends. Written in 1955, it still has the power to shock, amaze, and educate. Much can be learned from ...more

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May 25, 2011 Daddio rated it really liked it

An unsympathic, somewhat unemotional view of the average German from 1933 - 1945. The book was written by a Jew, posing as a non-Jew, who interviewed average Germans in the early 50s.

The German system was "ripe" for National Socialism (Nazi Party). Under Hitler, the average German was fed, had a job, and became Someone. Hitler was their "Father" figure. At some point, the state becomes more important than the individual, and this can be the result. One can easily draw several parallels between ...more

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About Milton Sanford Mayer

Milton Sanford Mayer

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Milton Sanford Mayer, a journalist and educator, was best known for his long-running column in The Progressive magazine, founded by Robert Marion LaFollette, Sr in Madison, Wisconsin.

Mayer, raised a Reform Jew, was born in Chicago, the son of Morris Samuel Mayer and Louise (Gerson). He graduated from Englewood High School, where he received a classical education with an emphasis on Latin and langu Milton Sanford Mayer, a journalist and educator, was best known for his long-running column in magazine, founded by Robert Marion LaFollette, Sr in Madison, Wisconsin.Mayer, raised a Reform Jew, was born in Chicago, the son of Morris Samuel Mayer and Louise (Gerson). He graduated from Englewood High School, where he received a classical education with an emphasis on Latin and languages. He studied at the University of Chicago from 1925 to 1928 but did not earn a degree; he told the in 1942 that he was "placed on permanent probation in 1928 for throwing beer bottles out a dormitory window." He was a reporter for the (1928-29), the , and the .During his stint at the he married his first wife Bertha Tepper (the couple had two daughters). In 1945 they were divorced, and two years later Mayer married Jane Scully, whom he referred to as "Baby" in his magazine columns.At various times, he taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Louisville, as well as universities abroad. He was also a consultant to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.Mayer's most influential book was probably , a study of the lives of a group of ordinary Germans under the Third Reich, first published in 1955 by the University of Chicago Press. (Mayer became a member of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers while he was researching this book in Germany in 1950; he did not reject his Jewish birth and heritage.) At various times, he taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Louisville, as well as universities abroad. He was also a consultant to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.Mayer is also the author of (Univ. of Chicago Press) and is the co-author, with Mortimer Adler, of (Univ. of Chicago Press).Mayer died in 1986 in Carmel, California, where he and his second wife made their home. Milton had one brother, Howie Mayer, who was the Chicago journalist that broke the Leopold and Loeb case. ...more

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“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” — 48 likes

“Hitlerism was a mass flight to dogma, to the barbaric dogma that had not been expelled with the Romans, the dogma of the tribe, the dogma that gave every man importance only in so far as the tribe was important and he was a member of the tribe.” — 22 likes

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