They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

by Milton Sanford Mayer

“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 National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we’ve seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we’ve seen in the past year.
 
They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.
 
A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, World War II, Germany, War, Psychology

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

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 languages. He studied at the University of Chicago from 1925 to 1928 but did not earn a degree; he told the Saturday Evening Post 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 Associated Press (1928-29), the Chicago Evening Post, and the Chicago Evening American.

During his stint at the Post 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 They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, 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 What Can a Man Do? (Univ. of Chicago Press) and is the co-author, with Mortimer Adler, of The Revolution in Education (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.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 of a different sort: Trumpism.

Mayer's central conclusion is profoundly simple: "Nazism was a mass movement and not the tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions." It is easy to forget that Hitler was democratically elected and that his regime was a Rechtsstaat, 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. Nazism was what most Germans wanted - or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it."

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, "Responsible men never shirk responsibility, and so when they must reject it, they deny it." This is precisely what the American people are doing at the moment, rejecting responsibility for a situation that they created and want still.

They Thought They Were Free 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.

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Men who did not know that they were slaves do not know that they have been freed.”

“By know I mean knowledge, binding knowledge. Men who are going to protest or take even stronger forms of action, in a dictatorship more so than in a democracy, want to be sure. When they are sure, they still may not take any form of action (in my ten friends’ cases, they would not have, I think); but that is another point.”

The author of this book is an American journalist who spends a year or so in post-Nazi Germany, in a small non-industrial town. He regularly meets with ten Germans whom he calls 'my ten Nazi friends.' Their conversations and consequent observations and conclusions the author made are at the heart of this book which was first published in 1955.
Mayer’s account based on these exchanges is replete with psychological insights and relevant observations. One of them concerns our ability, or rather inability, to pay attention to important events when they are taking place. The author concludes that unless one possesses a high degree of political awareness and acuity, it is hardly possible to live in the process and be able to notice.
One of the central lessons of the book is that some things start taking on their true meaning when they are viewed from a distance. Those things may turn out to be crucial in one way or another.
People can be oppressed without knowing that they are oppressed. Many who happen to live under a totalitarian regime continue to live normal lives.
As Mayer points out, “it is local conditions, even under totalitarianism, which govern the application of public authority to the individual.”

The author is determined to try to look at things the way these ten Germans did during twelve years of Nazism. They continued to profess most of their views, albeit with some qualifications, after the downfall of Nazi Germany.
It does not mean that Mayer sympathizes with their point of view but he comprehends many aspects of it. The author admits that had he been in their shoes he might have felt and behaved as his ten friends did.
"I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusion. I felt—and feel—that it was not German Man that I had met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here, under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I."
Sometimes all that is required of most people is that they do nothing, as one interviewee astutely observes. Sometimes, a courageous act involves having to say "No" to a small change announced by the regime.

Mayer distinguishes between collective shame (or responsibility) and the notion of guilt. The latter can never be collective.
"Collective shame may be possible, but it cannot be compelled. Shame is a state of being, guilt a juridical fact. A passer-by cannot be guilty of failure to try to prevent a lynching. He can only be ashamed of not having done so."

One of the problems that hampers the ability to see things adequately and to predict their consequences is that changes often happen step by step.
"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."

What most people do is think about themselves and their families, about making enough money and being treated fairly.
The book also questions the problem of empathy, or more precisely the limits of empathy that have been inherent in different societies throughout history.
What is true for those whom we consider decent people like ourselves is not true for those whom we are accustomed to regarding as outsiders.
Having empathy does not unfortunately equate to applying it to all the strata of the population.

In this light, one dialogue between the author and one of his 'Nazi' friends seems to be noteworthy.

“You know, Herr Professor, we are told that not a sparrow falls without God’s care; I am not being light when I say this—that not a person ‘fell,’ fell ill or in need, lost his job or his house, without the Party’s caring. No organization had ever done this before in Germany, maybe nowhere else. Believe me, such an organization is irresistible to men. No one in Germany was alone in his troubles.”
“Except,” I said, “‘inferior races’ and opponents of the regime.”
“Of course,” he said, “that is understood, but they were few, they were outside society, ‘over the fence,’ and nobody thought about them.”

Being educated does not mean a bulwark against tyranny.

“My education did not help me,” he said, “and I had a broader and better education than most men have had or ever will have. All it did, in the end, was to enable me to rationalize my failure of faith more easily than I might have done if I had been ignorant. And so it was, I think, among educated men generally, in that time in Germany. Their resistance was no greater than other men’s.”

I had a hard time with certain ponderous passages of this book but overall found it an enlightening read. However, the paragraphs where the author enlarges on such notions as “the German spirit” or “the German character” were challenging to get through. I found them nebulous and not that helpful.

All in all, They Thought They Were Free provides some valuable glimpses into how most people tend to interpret things that are happening around them.

[Maru Kun · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 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.

Many of the interviewees say the same thing - unless you are more politically astute than average you won't notice the gradual wearing down of your rights and expansion of government propaganda.

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

I was introduced to this book through Reddit in the r/politics subreddit where, I am pleased to see, it is often quoted by people who are aware of the dangers of the current populist regimes such as are seen in Trump's America. But the question remains, whether it is too late to do anything about it.

"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.

More quotes can be found at this link.

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. The reasoning behind their actions is what keeps me reading and thinking about the book while not reading it. For me, it is a measure of a good book. I guess this book is food for thought if you consider all the shifts taking place in the contemporary world.

[Daniel Villines · Rating 4 out of 5]

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, 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 reductio ad absurdum (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.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 questions and believe that They Thought They Were Free has given me more plausible insight into their thinking than any other book I've ever read.

First and foremost, the majority appear, circa 1950, to have felt that the reign of the National Socialist Workers' Party was, except for the war, generally good. While the rest of the capitalist West was in depression, German living standards improved and jobs became available. Capital improvements were evident and national pride had been restored. Beyond this, however, was something more subtle. The Nazis were, from their perspective, democratizing. Were once class distinctions had divided the population, now people had more equal opportunites and felt more generally connected to one another. Indeed, Mayer cites one person, a man of an aristocratic background, who himself felt relieved of alienating formalities by the leveling effect of National Socialist leadership.

Mayer himself converted to Quakerism during his lengthy stay in Germany researching this book and went on to become prominent in world pacifist circles.

[Robert Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jan Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

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) 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 : "Oh, Mother, Mother, if I weren't a Jew, I think I'd be a Nazi."

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 their duty 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 "with a whoop and a holler." 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 causes 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 today.

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.

[Kimba Tichenor · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Don Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 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.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 predictions about Germany's political future which, in today's context, were interesting. It seemed like Mayer was almost saying that Germany would never be able to take care of itself and would always require supervision by another nation. Again, a lot of very broad generalizations that may have made some sense in the context of the Cold War. It would be very interesting to hear his thoughts now.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Susanna Sturgis · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. 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 Hannah Arendt and read (or reread) Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, 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. They Thought They Were Free 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 They Thought They Were Free 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:

"Men under pressure are first dehumanized and only then demoralized, not the other way around. Organization and specialization, system, subsystem, and supersystem are the consequence, not the cause, of the totalitarian spirit. National Socialism did not make men unfree; unfreedom made men National Socialists.
"Freedom is nothing but the habit of choice. . . ."

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terribly upsetting book to be reading on the eve of the 2024 election. It was really disturbing to learn that many of the adherents of the Nazi regime really had no compunctions about being members of it so long as they were the beneficiaries, and seemed unable to comprehend that fascism was indeed fascism so long as they came out on top. It really had all too many upsetting parallels to our current predicament, with all too many individuals willing to vote away their rights if they are promised that others will be punished. At times, reading this book became overwhelming and made me sick to my stomach to realize how all to easy it is for creeping fascism to force people into social control, step by creeping step.

Given that there were indeed a number of problems with Mayer’s analysis, I think it was really helpful to have Richard Evan’s afterword at the end to provide some larger context to things that Mayer may have overlooked or not accounted for immediately after the war that influenced his analysis.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 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.

[Jack Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

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). It shows how easily one can avoid or assume moral culpability after a creeping atrocity. The city was a college town, so only the university (but not the whole university) and the hardcore Social Democrats held out until the end. I imagine the city to be similar to the Utah cities of Orem/Provo -- a college town with most progressives being University-based surrounded by an overwhelming number of conservatives who'd be more willing to open the door to Nazis.

"Hitler was a simple soldier, like millions of others, only he had a feeling for masses of people, and he could speak with passion. The people didn’t pay any attention to the Party program as such. They went to the meetings just to hear something new, anything new."

"Thus Nazism, as it proceeded from practice to theory, had 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."

The small snapshot sample of "ordinary" Germans shows how frog-in-a-pot quickly so-called reasonable citizens can be seduced into outright inhumanity and genocide -- "The Germans’ innocuous acceptance and practice of social anti-Semitism before Hitlerism had undermined the resistance of their ordinary decency to the stigmatization and persecution to come".

Written in the mid-1950s, Mayer seems to have had bleaker predictions for the future of the German people than we have seen in recent decades -- "But maybe nothing can be done for the Germans, in which case, whatever anyone else does, we should let them alone. The proposition that anybody can do anything about anybody else is absolutely indemonstrable. Doctors of the body abound, but there are no doctors of the soul, or psyche." The way Germans have owned up to their history and have made overt attempts to atone for the travesties would probably make him proud. Indeed, even in modern-day "Kronenberg" (Marburg), 24 different Stolpersteines -- bronze memorial plaques -- are placed on the sidewalk in front of the homes of the 55 (who could be named) Jews who were deported and murdered by the Nazis.

"Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

Do something. Do the right thing. Before it's too late.

[Andrei Vylinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, if uneven book I can't get out of my head for the last two years or so: no matter how hard I try, the reality around me is trying even harder to keep it relevant, and succeeds.

Anyway, it is an insightful and engaging account (and even, quite unexpectedly, an understanding one, though Mayer certainly isn't lenient with anyone or overlooks anything, he's just judging his ten Nazi friends the way he would judge himself) of how ordinary Germans succumbed to the Nazi rule and managed to live through it and enjoy it and fail to notice it was evil. It is also quite an old book, i.e. it is not built around stories of resistance, overlooked minorities, or fringe cases that would illuminate the nature of the thing in question, but goes straight for it and tells the story of ten 1) really ordinary 2) men 3) who all either benefitted from the regime or at least weren't hurt by it. And it is a really, really helpful book on mass psychology under authoritarian/totalitarian rule - especially, and I can't stress this enough, if you read it not as a story of things long gone but try to look at the world around you through its insights. I mean, I couldn't but compare the thoughts and sentiments of the protagonists with those of Belarusians in 1994-2020 or Russians in 2000-2022 and have been haunted by thoughts about their similarities ever since. And it's not the only comparison you can make these days, I guess.

There's one caveat, though: all of the above is in the first half of the book. The second part, Mayer's speculations on the deeper sources of the Nazi regime, is interesting but looks rather superfluous today, with the wealth of books on the topic we have now. And the last part is a curious prediction which we, with the benefit of hindsight, can only see as plain wrong, though it is still useful to remember that it wasn't wrong yet in the 1950s, when it was written, or in the 1960s, when the book was reissued, and it is still less wrong than you might think even now, because it wasn't the generation of his protagonists who actually repented but their children in the 1970s. Which is a sobering thought: when people are poisoned this way, they never recover completely, some part of their psyche remains poisoned forever, and it is still a useful book if you want to understand what they are like and how they think.

[Charlene Mathe · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 bombing Dresden and Tokyo, let alone Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Mayer is a wonderful writer and thinker. I'd like to read his other book, What Can a Man Do? If you have a chance to read They Thought They Were Free, you will not be disappointed!

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a rather strange situation to be reading a piece of journalism published in 1955, and where said piece of journalism is designed to never have been read beyond the 1960s. After finishing this book, I finally understand the notion of when libraries "update" their non-fiction catalogue. Because this book certainly needed one.

I honestly thought this book would be a lot more disturbing as it would delve into the psyche of those who *knew* about the Holocaust, and other related atrocities, and either sat by - or cheered it on - as it happened. (I mean look at any political Twitter post and you have hundreds of morons praying for a second Holocaust while denying the first one) Instead, this book centers around ten men from a small German town whose worse offence is burning down a Synagogue. The general gist is that the quality of life for the average German was quite good compared to both before, and after, the Nazi Regime. I don't know to the extent that was true as 1) this book was written in 1955 and 2) pretty much everything came face value from interviews with these ten men.

Outside of exploring the lives of these ten men and their feelings surrounding it, the last two sections tack on Mayer's own analysis of the 'German character' built from centuries of social development. He takes on a very deterministic attitude to the German people, stating how the Nazis could *only* have happened in Germany (and perhaps also Russia). But if you, like me, have the ability to look out the window, that is very much not true.

Many pseudo-academic journalists love to take a very narrow view of European countries by reducing them to a single clause, which is then compared to the very heterogeneous America as a baseline from which all other countries are read from. Here the example are numerous, with Americans being assumed to be the only readers of this book. While yes, America is very much criticized in terms of German Occupation and Anti-Communism, it is almost baffling that there was zero mention of the pro-Nazi 'America First' movement, leading up to America declaring war on Germany. To think that Nazism was bound to happen in Germany (and apparently going to again?), but not in America is mind-boggling.

There is information in here that is worth reading, but it's time to address the absolute worst thing about this book. The writing. I would downright say that the writing is bad and literally unreadable at points with poor grammar (which was maybe on purpose?). The entire book is littered with purple prose and sentences which begin and end with the same statement in an attempt to lengthen the paragraphs. It's clearly trying to put some deep analysis with emphasis on certain points which comes across as: "The cat was indeed a cat, indeed, this cat was very much cat-like in a way that non-cat were non-cat-like."
The most readable parts were the actual interviews from the mouths of the men themselves as those were sentences that ordinary people could say and comprehend.

In conclusion, this book belongs in the archives and should not be recommended to people, outside of academics trying to write up their PhD thesis.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Sanford Mayer was first published in 1956 when the author lived in Germany as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt. It is based on conversations and interviews the author conducted with ten Germans about their lives from 1933 to 1945 and their reasons for joining the Nazi party. As a friend he was emboldened to push the discussions into rather sensitive areas such as the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, the general German population's acceptance of Nazi tactics and brutality, and willingness to look the other way as long as they felt their lives and financial situations were improving. Some would blame it on the gradual changes that occurred that they claim were not easily seen for what they were or where they were leading. The author presents the words of these ten representatives of Hitler's Germany who calmly share their thoughts on what they saw and did and confirmed that they were fine with what was happening until things turned for the Nazis. I was amazed at the frankness of the answers these men gave to the questions the author presented them.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Rosie Gearhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling. Fascinating. Insightful. Convicting. Eye-opening. How would you have responded had you been an ordinary German citizen in the 1930s and 1940s? Would you have stood up against what was happening? Would you have even been aware? Would you have made excuses?

The author, a Jewish American journalist, went to Germany after WWII to interview ten normal German men, to hear their stories, their perspectives, their thoughts on the war, the Jews, the Nazi government, etc. It was so interesting hearing what they had to say and how many of them had such a different perspective than ours.

I listened to the audio, read by Michael Page. He did an excellent job, but the book was often too dense or had too much foreign language in it for me to follow everything. I think ideally it would be best to listen and read at the same time.

The first 4/5 was excellent. The last 1/5 was pretty dense and full of discussion about what to do with the Germans “now” (1950s), so could probably be skipped if necessary.

-----------------------

In order to be a theory and not just a practice, National Socialism required the destruction of academic independence. In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.

Mayer, Milton. They Thought They Were Free (p. 112). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.



“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
“But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

“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 ‘Jew 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.

“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”

Mayer, Milton. They Thought They Were Free (pp. 169-172). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.



“You know,” he went on, “when men who understand what is happening—the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single events or developments—when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to. How many men would you say understand—in this sense—in America? And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don’t understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great ‘patriotic’ mob, will they understand then, when they did not before?

“We learned here—I say this freely—to give up trying to make them understand after, oh, the end of 1938, after the night of the synagogue burning and the things that followed it. Even before the war began, men who were teachers, men whose faith in teaching was their whole faith, gave up, seeing that there was no comprehension, no capacity left for comprehension, and the thing must go its course, taking first its victims, then its architects, and then the rest of us to destruction. This did not mean surrender; it meant conservation of energy, doing what little one could (now that it was too late to do anything!) and consuming one’s energy doing it, to relieve the present victim (if only by brazenly saying ‘Hello’ to him on the street!) and to prevent, or at least postpone, the fate of the next victim (if only by writing a ‘nonpolitical’ letter abroad asking somebody to take an emigrant!).”

Mayer, Milton. They Thought They Were Free (pp. 175-176). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.


What we don’t like, what I don’t like, is the hypocrisy of these people. I want to hear them confess. That they, or some of their countrymen and their country’s government, violated the precepts of Christian, civilized, lawful life was bad enough; that they won’t see it, or say it, is what really rowels. I want them to plead no extenuation. I want them to say, “I knew and I know that it was all un-Christian, uncivilized, unlawful, and in my love of evil I pretended it wasn’t. I plead every German guilty of a life of hypocrisy, above all, myself. I am rotten.”... I want my [Nazi] friends not just to feel bad and confess it, but to have been bad and to be bad now and confess it. I want them to constitute themselves an inferior race, self-abased, so that I, in the magnanimity becoming to the superior, having sat in calumnious judgment on them, may choose to let them live on in public shame and in private torment. I want to be God, not alone in power but in righteousness and in mercy; and Nazism crushed is my chance. But I am not God. I myself am a national, myself guilty of many national hypocrisies whose only justification is that the Germans’ were so much worse. My being less bestial, in my laws and practices, than they were does not make me more Godly than they, for difference in degree is not difference in kind. My own country’s racist legislation and practices, against both foreigners and citizens, is a whole web of hypocrisies. And, if I plead that racism has been wonderfully reduced in America in the past century, that the forces of good have been growing ever more powerful, how shall I answer my friends Hildebrandt and Kessler, who believed, or affected to believe, that the infiltration of National Socialism by decent men like themselves would, in time, reduce and even eliminate the evils? The trouble is that these national hypocrisies, which I myself am not called upon to practice in person, with my own hands, are all acts of the State or its culture. I feel bad about them, to be sure; very bad. But I do not in the least feel like a bad man, and I do not want to be punished for them. And, if I beat my breast, like my Nazi friend, young Rupprecht, and say, “It is I, I, I, who did it,” I am afraid that I shall sound just as pretentious as he sounded to me. The confession that I want to hear or that I ought to make does not ring real. What I really want, since (while I want to let my friends off in my magnanimity) I do not want to have to reproach myself some time later with having let them escape the consequences of their unheroism, is for each of them to have cared enough at the time to have thrown himself under the iron chariot of the State, with its wheels rimmed with spikes. This none of my friends did, and this I cannot forgive them.

Mayer, Milton. They Thought They Were Free (pp. 184-186). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.


“In history, in biology, and in economics the teaching program was much more elaborate than it was in literature, and much stricter. These subjects were really rewritten. They had to be. But literature could not so easily be rewritten to order. The rewritten subjects were the worst nonsense, and, of course, the cynicism of the teachers and the better students was worst there. Every student had to take a biology examination to be graduated, and the biology course was a complete distortion of Mendelianism to prove that heredity was everything; such technical materials were most effective, of course, because the student had never met them before.

Mayer, Milton. They Thought They Were Free (p. 198). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Julian Mayers · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the bleakest things I've ever read

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 13: absolute must read and 5 stars for that chapter. its eerie.

the whole book: 4 stars, because i felt like the last section got bogged down a bit.