Defying Hitler: A Memoir

by Sebastian Haffner

We did not need great orations, he said, or interminable lectures and explanations. Being young German men, all that we needed to show, quite automatically, that we were at heart National Socialists, was to be removed from our deceitful bourgeois environment and our dry-as-dust legal files, and put in the right surroundings. That was the secret of the success of National Socialism, that it appealed to something that was part of every German’s makeup. Those of us who were not yet National Socialists knew now that it was in their blood. The rest would look after itself. The appalling thing was that there was some truth in this speech, if you interpreted it correctly. It really was true that you had only to place us in the right circumstances for a kind of chemical process to corrode our individualities and turn us into an unthinking mass, easily arousable for any cause whatever... This process reached its climax that evening. There was universal brotherhood. Everybody praised and proposed toasts to everybody else. The lieutenant praised our military prowess. We praised the lieutenant’s strategic genius. A petty officer, replying humorously to a toast, stated in his gruff manner that he had never dreamed that lawyers and academics would make such good soldiers. “Sieg Heil.” There were humorous poems written for the occasion, and read out by their authors to general acclaim from the undiscerning, tipsy audience. We sang that we were Geyer’s black band one last time, and at the...