Defying Hitler
On sale
15th November 2012
Price: £10.99
An absolute classic of autobiography and history – one of the few books to explore how and why the Germans were seduced by Hitler and Nazism.
‘If you have never read a book about Nazi Germany before, or if you have already read a thousand, I would urge you to read DEFYING HITLER. It sings with wisdom and understanding’ DAILY MAIL
Sebastian Haffner was a non-Jewish German who emigrated to England in 1938. This memoir (written in 1939 but only published now for the first time) begins in 1914 when the family summer holiday is cut short by the outbreak of war, and ends with Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933. It is a portrait of himself and his own generation in Germany, those born between 1900 and 1910, and brilliantly explains through his own experiences and those of his friends how that generation came to be seduced by Hitler and Nazism.
The Germans lacked an outlet for self-expression: where the French had amour, food and wine, and the British their gardens and their pets, the Germans had nothing, leading to a tendency towards mass psychosis. The upheaval of post-WWI revolution, factionalism and inflation left the Germans addicted to excitement and action: Hitler provided this, and more.
‘If you have never read a book about Nazi Germany before, or if you have already read a thousand, I would urge you to read DEFYING HITLER. It sings with wisdom and understanding’ DAILY MAIL
Sebastian Haffner was a non-Jewish German who emigrated to England in 1938. This memoir (written in 1939 but only published now for the first time) begins in 1914 when the family summer holiday is cut short by the outbreak of war, and ends with Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933. It is a portrait of himself and his own generation in Germany, those born between 1900 and 1910, and brilliantly explains through his own experiences and those of his friends how that generation came to be seduced by Hitler and Nazism.
The Germans lacked an outlet for self-expression: where the French had amour, food and wine, and the British their gardens and their pets, the Germans had nothing, leading to a tendency towards mass psychosis. The upheaval of post-WWI revolution, factionalism and inflation left the Germans addicted to excitement and action: Hitler provided this, and more.
Reviews
Raw, passionate . . . Reads as compellingly as a top-class thriller. The outstanding impression you get as Haffner takes you from day to day through early 1933 is how easy it was for Hitler, beginning in such small ways, to turn a civilised, intelligent people into a helpless, penned-in flock of sheep
Nothing less than a clear-eyed autobiographical analysis of the German character as it appeared to the writer, and who experienced it, in his own heart and mind . . . Raw, revelatory stuff . . . Haffner distils the essence of the Weimar Republic: its snapshot scenes are little nuggets of pure sensation informed by sensibility
As gripping as any thriller I've ever read
As a memoir of life in Germany during the Nazi rise to power, it is unsurpassable
Haffner's outstanding gifts of observation and imagination enabled him to reconstruct, vividly and convincingly, the state of mind of the German people during the tumultuous decades before 1933
Brilliant, moving and terrifying
An astonishingly effective and well-written explanation of how the Nazis managed so easily to exploit Germany's psychological weaknesses
A riveting story
An unforgettable memoir of life in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, a mesmerising study of the way a generation surrendered to Hitler
Each of us sometimes asks what we would have done if we had been young and German in 1933. There could scarcely be a better way to explore this question than to read Haffner's book . . . He is vivid, concise, lucid, penetrating, humane, brave, playful and profound: a representative of the German civilisation which thuggish German nationalists tried to destroy
If you have never read a book about Nazi Germany before, or if you have already read a thousand, I would urge you to read DEFYING HITLER. It sings with wisdom and understanding