Rating: 
Summary: Honest account by an angry young man
Review: Especially relevant with today's political world climate, this interesting autobiographical account of a young man's exposure to the rise of the Nazi party. A small book with a heavy message, altho' I feel it could have benefiited from some editing by or because of the translation into English.
Rating:
Summary: Honest account by an angry young man
Review: Especially relevant with today's political world climate, this interesting autobiographical account of a young man's exposure to the rise of the Nazi party. A small book with a heavy message, altho' I feel it could have benefiited from some editing by or because of the translation into English.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting book
Review: Everytime I thought of Nazi Germany, up until I read this book, I only envisioned Hitler, the war and the persecution of the Jews. This book got me thinking of what might have gone through the minds of ordinary German citizens, espacially those who (secretly) opposed the Nazi regime.
Rating: 
Summary: a deep,personal insight,and a lesson in style...
Review: Haffner spares nobody,least himself.The story encompasses the years 1907-1933,and in all fairness,I have to state,that I read the complete story,in a German edition,so I know what happened afterwards.
the author explains,taking himself and the people about him as living examples,how Hitler and his gang could seize power,and,subsequently,sink the German ship as deeply,as it sunk,morally,ethically,politically.
Most explanatory is the phase of 1933,when haffner describes how he,his decent friends,his father,tried to retire to small niches,to live some sort of biedermeier,and were uprooted by the nazi machinery,washed out of their holes of seeming innocence,
deprived of all means and space for inner emigration.
I don't want to spoil the exquisite joy,that reading Haffner's account provides,so in conclusion,let me say that Haffner is a journalist of a kind not found anymore,short,concise,to the point,in the original at least,of a unique style,that does not require a thousand words to draw a pandemonium of unheard of proportions.
Be sure to read the book,all books,by Haffner,if they do not enlighten you to their subjects,they will do your style a world of good.
Rating:
Summary: Different modes of psychic dying
Review: Haffner's book depicts very precisely how the radical political changes in 1933 in Germany affected the personal lives (friendships, loves, family ties) of every German, when Hitler and his Nazi Party took power and turned the country into a totalitarian racist State. All those who didn't support the new rulers were nearly daily harassed. For Haffner, this harassment became a daily duel between the individual (himself) and the State.
Under the guise of fighting for the liberty of the German State, letter and phone secrecy were abolished as well as freedom of speech. People were submitted to unrestricted search warrants, property seizure and arbitrary detention.
This book gives also a succinct but excellent summary of the German political situation after World War I until 1933 with the cowardly betrayal of their voters by the leaders of the opposition parties as a culmination point.
This book is an in depth personal account of the catastrophic change in Germany in 1933, which forced the majority of the German population (the Nazis didn't obtain the majority in the election) to live in a fascist State.
Not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: The Growth of Nazism, Told First Hand
Review: How did it happen that Germany elevated the Nazis to power, and allowed them to create the worst nightmare of the last century? It is a question that has been argued about ever since, and as with all such big questions there are lots of answers and the sum of them always prove unsatisfactory; a mystery still remains. Nonetheless, a new part of the answer was published in Germany in 2000, and caused a sensation. The book, _Defying Hitler: A Memoir_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), was actually written in 1939 and had remained secret. It was written by Sebastian Haffner, the pen name of Raimund Pretzel, while he was in English exile from Germany. The manuscript was interrupted by the outbreak of war, at which time Haffner put it away in order to write a more urgent book on how the English might best win the war. Haffner went on to become a highly respected British journalist and man of letters. He forbade his son from looking through his old papers until after his death. He died in 1999, and his son, Oliver Pretzel, found the manuscript in a drawer. Having published it in the original German, Pretzel has now translated it into English. A valuable work, it not only throws fresh light on the rise of Nazi power, but gives vivid pictures of how life was lived as the dictatorship progressed.Haffner traces some of the roots of the rise of Nazism come from The Great War. He was seven years old when the war erupted, and he recalls how invigorating the time was for him. The schoolboys' experience of war at home, Haffner says, gave them an indifference to lack of food, but more importantly it gave them a taste for excitement, for marching, for militarism. When Hitler came, his unspoken promise to repeat the great war game, and win it, easily found a receptive audience. Haffner had lost his jingoism by the decade after the war, though his contemporaries had not. Haffner began to study law, and became a law clerk in Prussia's courts, with the promise of rising in the legal ranks. Haffner loved the legal system for many reasons, not the least of which is that the law functioned from day to day, undisturbed by the moral morass caused by the Nazi revolution. He thought this a triumph over the Nazis. But one day, while he was going through legal documents within the quiet and solemn library of the court, he heard a growing disturbance in the corridor and doors being banged. A Jewish clerk packed his papers and left. There were shouts of "Out with the Jews!" and a few of the clerks giggled that they were already gone. A Jewish attorney, a wounded veteran of the previous war, "caused a fuss" and was beaten up. Soon a brownshirt was inspecting the nose of Haffner himself and asking if he was an Aryan. "Before I had a chance to think, I said 'Yes.'... What a disgrace to buy, with a reply, the right to stay with my documents in peace!... I had failed my very first test." It is this sort of detail and introspection that make this book so valuable. Regrettably, this is an unfinished narrative. How we would like, after such a memoir, to hear about how he became a novelist and journalist, and insisted on writing things he would not be ashamed of when the Nazis were defeated. He met a Jewish woman and married her, becoming guilty of violation of the race laws but somehow evading prosecution. He eventually arranged a visa to go work on articles about England, where he arranged to stay, even though he was interned in the camps for Germans. His son and translator has provided a small amount of this story to add to the truncated memoir, but Haffner's words speak in clear horror of the threat going on around him, and within him. It is an unforgettable addition to the histories of the time.
Rating:
Summary: The Growth of Nazism, Told First Hand
Review: How did it happen that Germany elevated the Nazis to power, and allowed them to create the worst nightmare of the last century? It is a question that has been argued about ever since, and as with all such big questions there are lots of answers and the sum of them always prove unsatisfactory; a mystery still remains. Nonetheless, a new part of the answer was published in Germany in 2000, and caused a sensation. The book, _Defying Hitler: A Memoir_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), was actually written in 1939 and had remained secret. It was written by Sebastian Haffner, the pen name of Raimund Pretzel, while he was in English exile from Germany. The manuscript was interrupted by the outbreak of war, at which time Haffner put it away in order to write a more urgent book on how the English might best win the war. Haffner went on to become a highly respected British journalist and man of letters. He forbade his son from looking through his old papers until after his death. He died in 1999, and his son, Oliver Pretzel, found the manuscript in a drawer. Having published it in the original German, Pretzel has now translated it into English. A valuable work, it not only throws fresh light on the rise of Nazi power, but gives vivid pictures of how life was lived as the dictatorship progressed. Haffner traces some of the roots of the rise of Nazism come from The Great War. He was seven years old when the war erupted, and he recalls how invigorating the time was for him. The schoolboys' experience of war at home, Haffner says, gave them an indifference to lack of food, but more importantly it gave them a taste for excitement, for marching, for militarism. When Hitler came, his unspoken promise to repeat the great war game, and win it, easily found a receptive audience. Haffner had lost his jingoism by the decade after the war, though his contemporaries had not. Haffner began to study law, and became a law clerk in Prussia's courts, with the promise of rising in the legal ranks. Haffner loved the legal system for many reasons, not the least of which is that the law functioned from day to day, undisturbed by the moral morass caused by the Nazi revolution. He thought this a triumph over the Nazis. But one day, while he was going through legal documents within the quiet and solemn library of the court, he heard a growing disturbance in the corridor and doors being banged. A Jewish clerk packed his papers and left. There were shouts of "Out with the Jews!" and a few of the clerks giggled that they were already gone. A Jewish attorney, a wounded veteran of the previous war, "caused a fuss" and was beaten up. Soon a brownshirt was inspecting the nose of Haffner himself and asking if he was an Aryan. "Before I had a chance to think, I said 'Yes.'... What a disgrace to buy, with a reply, the right to stay with my documents in peace!... I had failed my very first test." It is this sort of detail and introspection that make this book so valuable. Regrettably, this is an unfinished narrative. How we would like, after such a memoir, to hear about how he became a novelist and journalist, and insisted on writing things he would not be ashamed of when the Nazis were defeated. He met a Jewish woman and married her, becoming guilty of violation of the race laws but somehow evading prosecution. He eventually arranged a visa to go work on articles about England, where he arranged to stay, even though he was interned in the camps for Germans. His son and translator has provided a small amount of this story to add to the truncated memoir, but Haffner's words speak in clear horror of the threat going on around him, and within him. It is an unforgettable addition to the histories of the time.
Rating:
Summary: Moving Personal Story
Review: I found this to be an absorbing and moving account of one fairly ordinary person's experience in Germany of the 1920's and 30's. From a historical vantage point, it provides one valuable perspective of the rise of Hitler and why it was allowed to happen --- I'm reminding of the quote from Edmund Burke about evil triumphing because good people do nothing. Several times, Haffner apologizes for providing so much of his personal opinions and stories, but for me, the story of him and his friends was the most rewarding part of the book. This memoir ends fairly abruptly, in late 1933, so we are left hanging, though the author's son, who translated the book into English, includes an afterward with details of the Haffner's life after 1933. Unfortunately, the abrupt ending leaves us in the dark about the fate of my favorite of Haffner's friends, his Carnival girlfriend Charlie, who was Jewish. I was very moved by the brief glimpses of their short romance and her devotion to her family.
Rating:
Summary: Moving Personal Story
Review: I found this to be an absorbing and moving account of one fairly ordinary person's experience in Germany of the 1920's and 30's. From a historical vantage point, it provides one valuable perspective of the rise of Hitler and why it was allowed to happen --- I'm reminding of the quote from Edmund Burke about evil triumphing because good people do nothing. Several times, Haffner apologizes for providing so much of his personal opinions and stories, but for me, the story of him and his friends was the most rewarding part of the book. This memoir ends fairly abruptly, in late 1933, so we are left hanging, though the author's son, who translated the book into English, includes an afterward with details of the Haffner's life after 1933. Unfortunately, the abrupt ending leaves us in the dark about the fate of my favorite of Haffner's friends, his Carnival girlfriend Charlie, who was Jewish. I was very moved by the brief glimpses of their short romance and her devotion to her family.
Rating:
Summary: Answers a lot of questions...
Review: If you are like me and you've always wondered just how an insane madman like Adolf Hitler came to power in a modern country like Germany than read Defying Hitler. The author, who describes his personal experiences of the time, pulls no punches and makes no excuses for the shift to radical nationalism in Germany in the 1930s.
The book is presented much like a diary recounting the author's life at specific times in Germany between WWI when he was a small child and 1933 when the Nazi regime began to reveal it's true face to the German people.
Sebastian Haffner presents his own theory about where this radical nationalism first developed and supports his theory with what he experienced.
It's an excellent book and a great read.
|
