Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful and chilling
Review: Sebastian Haffner was the pen name of a German-born journalist named Raimund Pretzel who fled Germany for England in 1938 and became known as a "British" journalist and historian during and after the war. This manuscript, which describes the Germany of his youth and the rise of Hitler, was written shortly after his escape, but filed away when the war broke out. His son discovered it only after Haffner's death in 1999 and it was a smash bestseller in Germany the following year.The author describes what it was like for thoughtful, liberal Germans to see their country taken over by monsters, and explains how so many "ordinary" Germans could have failed to resist, and even participated. (I'd be curious to know whether the title is his; Haffner is very hard on his fellow Germans and himself, and it would not have surprised me, now that I've read the book, if he would have settled for something closer to "Succumbing to Hitler" or "Marching In Step." There's precious little defying of Hitler in this account, as Haffner would be the first to admit.) It starts slow by analyzing German politics and society after the First World War -- few readers aside from German history nuts will recognize names like Rathenau, Stresemann, and Bruening -- and I expected to have to give it three stars, despite the thoughtfulness and intelligence of the writing. But try not to let that discourage you. When Haffner gets to the personal narrative about his Jewish friends and girlfriend, the changes in his Berlin society and neighborhood, and the grotesque "training camp" which he and other aspiring lawyers were forced to attend before being allowed to take their qualifying exam, the book becomes gripping. (And he takes a few pages to apologize and justify this very aspect!) His description of the rationalizations, the delusions, the mutual suspicions and pressures on ordinary Germans -- even the intellectual elite -- is most illuminating. Haffner beautifully describes the poisoned pill of "comradeship," which was imposed on the German populace at more or less every level, just as it is in any military organization or religious cult, and how Germans were, in his estimation, particularly susceptible to it. The account ends rather abruptly, and one wonders what happened to some of the players, but there is quite enough here to offer something new indeed about the history of Nazi Germany ... from the inside, on the street.
Rating: 
Summary: Haffner's Rosetta Stone
Review: Sebastian Haffner's "Defying Hitler" is a rare gem that explains what is was about those in Germany between 1918 and 1933 that found a hearth in Hitler's promise of a glorious Fascist future. 1933 is the story's kernel when, as Haffner says, the dual begins. Hitler comes to power. It's the state versus the individual; the struggle for one's soul. It's the ordinary person (Haffner) up against Big Brother, Nazi style, with fangs exposed, talons sharpened, ready to strike. Haffner probes the riddle of motivation and explains how for some Hitler was the hero for the hour to restore German's stature among the leading rank of nations. For others, it was join the cause or to yield to the alternative temptation of rejection or resistance. For Haffner himself the Nazis are a deadly pestilence that overturns the individual's capacity to live, to love, and enjoy life as one wants. For Haffner, this foot soldier for nondescript humanity, what does he do? This is the real tease. Haffner later becomes a celebrated German writer and commentator. Written in 1939, he never actually completes this early work which his son Oliver only discovers after his father's death in 1999. Thankfully Oliver fills in the blanks and we are not going to spoil the story by revealing the outcome here. Despite the abrupt end, it's not hard to see why this book became a best seller in Germany. Haffner writes with a beautiful cynical wit and has a grasp for history and the human condition. Champollion's Rosetta Stone provided a key to unlocking the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs. In its own way Haffner's "Defying Hitler" is the Rosetta Stone for Nazi Germany. It's a carriage for meaning and insight into not just a dark chapter of German history, but perhaps our own.
Rating:
Summary: How Germans were turned into wolves who hunted other humans
Review: The title of my review is a paraphrase of Haffner's description of Hitler's sinister accomplishment. He certainly doesn't pull any punches, and is unsparing on the moral failings of his fellow Germans in the early 1930s. This book was written in 1939, shortly after the author's escape to England. Although Haffner became a distinguished journalist and historian, he never published this book during his lifetime; it was discovered by his son and published after the author's death at the age of 91. Perhaps, like many war veterans, the experiences tangled up with the manuscript were so painful and so personal that the author couldn't bear to revisit them (a chapter was published on the 50th anniversary of an event that it describes). What Haffner--and his son, who is the assured and elegant translator--have given us is one of the most compelling and insightful descriptions of the period that has been written. It can only be compared to the diary of Otto Klemperer as a revelatory description of how a nation of people, not so different from other nations at the time or indeed of any nation today, could descend into barbarism and criminality on the vast scale of the Third Reich. From the opening sentence the 1920s and 30s in Germany is evoked: "This is the story of a duel." Specialists will be aware of the importance of actual duelling in middle and upper class German society as late at WWI, and its endurance as a symbol thereafter, and with this characterisation of his personal struggle against the Nazi State, Haffner seductively invites his reader into the authentic atmosphere of the period. Scholars who have thought deeply about the Nazi period recognise it as the final culminating phase of a second Thirty Year's War that began in 1914; indeed, Haffner's explanation for the Nazi catastrophe is based upon his view that the generation who grew up during WWI, NOT the soldiers but the children who experienced the excitement but not the misery and death, were the key constituency for the Nazis. Haffner's use of generational analysis is a powerful conceptual tool that is much more understood and accepted these days--Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation", however correct or incorrect it may be, has been a huge best seller--and Haffner in 1939 stumbled upon this type of analysis as he sought to describe how Hitler had come to power. "Defying Hitler" is also the intense, personal description of the crisis that Haffner and his family and friends underwent during the rise of Hitler, conveyed with the power of a novelist. Haffner succeeds in humanising the Germans he knew and lived among without ever downplaying the horror of the decisions that they made, as he shows that it was all too clear what the consequences of those decisions were likely to be. This is a unique book and it is highly recommended for both readers who have read almost nothing about the period, as well as readers who are thoroughly familiar with the subject, and yet are still trying to come to terms with how such a terrible catastrophe could occur in a civilised nation.
Rating:
Summary: How Germans were turned into wolves who hunted other humans
Review: The title of my review is a paraphrase of Haffner's description of Hitler's sinister accomplishment. He certainly doesn't pull any punches, and is unsparing on the moral failings of his fellow Germans in the early 1930s. This book was written in 1939, shortly after the author's escape to England. Although Haffner became a distinguished journalist and historian, he never published this book during his lifetime; it was discovered by his son and published after the author's death at the age of 91. Perhaps, like many war veterans, the experiences tangled up with the manuscript were so painful and so personal that the author couldn't bear to revisit them (a chapter was published on the 50th anniversary of an event that it describes). What Haffner--and his son, who is the assured and elegant translator--have given us is one of the most compelling and insightful descriptions of the period that has been written. It can only be compared to the diary of Otto Klemperer as a revelatory description of how a nation of people, not so different from other nations at the time or indeed of any nation today, could descend into barbarism and criminality on the vast scale of the Third Reich. From the opening sentence the 1920s and 30s in Germany is evoked: "This is the story of a duel." Specialists will be aware of the importance of actual duelling in middle and upper class German society as late at WWI, and its endurance as a symbol thereafter, and with this characterisation of his personal struggle against the Nazi State, Haffner seductively invites his reader into the authentic atmosphere of the period. Scholars who have thought deeply about the Nazi period recognise it as the final culminating phase of a second Thirty Year's War that began in 1914; indeed, Haffner's explanation for the Nazi catastrophe is based upon his view that the generation who grew up during WWI, NOT the soldiers but the children who experienced the excitement but not the misery and death, were the key constituency for the Nazis. Haffner's use of generational analysis is a powerful conceptual tool that is much more understood and accepted these days--Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation", however correct or incorrect it may be, has been a huge best seller--and Haffner in 1939 stumbled upon this type of analysis as he sought to describe how Hitler had come to power. "Defying Hitler" is also the intense, personal description of the crisis that Haffner and his family and friends underwent during the rise of Hitler, conveyed with the power of a novelist. Haffner succeeds in humanising the Germans he knew and lived among without ever downplaying the horror of the decisions that they made, as he shows that it was all too clear what the consequences of those decisions were likely to be. This is a unique book and it is highly recommended for both readers who have read almost nothing about the period, as well as readers who are thoroughly familiar with the subject, and yet are still trying to come to terms with how such a terrible catastrophe could occur in a civilised nation.
Rating:
Summary: a life in Germany from 1914 to the 1930s
Review: This is an elegant book, written in 1939 but not published till after its author's death in 1999. It throws light on the endlessly absorbing question: How could Hitler take over the country so completely as he did. I found absorbing the account of the child growing up during the first World War, living thru the inflation of 1923, attaining manhood in the 1920s, and then all at once the ridiculous Nazis are in power and the nightmare begins. This is a well-told account, and of great insight.
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