Defying Hitler: A Memoir

by Sebastian Haffner

Then came 1923. That extraordinary year is probably what has marked today’s Germans with those characteristics that are so strange and incomprehensible in the eyes of the world, and so different from what used to be thought of as the German character: the uncurbed, cynical imagination, the nihilistic pleasure in the impossible for its own sake, and the energy that has become an end in itself. In that year an entire generation of Germans had a spiritual organ removed: the organ that gives men steadfastness and balance, but also a certain inertia and stolidity. It may variously appear as conscience, reason, experience, respect for the law, morality, or the fear of God. A whole generation learned then — or thought it learned — to do without such ballast. The preceding years served as a novitiate in nihilism, but in 1923 its high priests were ordained.