This fine torso of a book, written during the Second World War, was
put away in a drawer by its author, who never got round to
finishing it, and found after his death in 1999. It has sold well
in Germany, and has now been admirably translated into English by
Oliver Pretzel, the author's son. Raimund Pretzel escaped from Nazi
Germany to England in 1938 with his Jewish wife and took the pen
name of Sebastian Haffner, by which he became famous: both as a
journalist on The Observer and as the author of incisive books
about German history, including the superb The Meaning of Hitler.
This is his memoir of his childhood and young manhood, in the
context of the rise of Nazism. He is modest in his claims - he
never played a part of any importance, yet could take in only too
clearly what was going on round him. He explains how the German
people's confidence was sapped twice over, by two wholly unexpected
catastrophes: military defeat in 1918, and the collapse of the
currency five years later. Haffner's father was a senior Prussian
civil servant, retired by the time the Nazis came to power; he was
himself in training to become a judge. Though purely Aryan himself,
many of his friends were Jews. They all lost their jobs when the
Nazis came to power - even the Jewish judge on the supreme court;
even those who had been several times wounded fighting for Imperial
Germany in the Kaiser's war. Haffner sets out with skill and
clarity the fixes that honest men were in, once the thugs had taken
charge. If you refused to give a Nazi salute when a swastika flag
was carried past you in the street, you were at once beaten up;
that was only the start. He could see that much worse might be
coming, and how right he was. This is a weighty piece of historical
evidence, about how honest men can try to behave in the face of
evil: how much, and how little, they can do. (Kirkus UK)
An absolute classic of autobiography and history - one of the few
books to explore how and why the Germans were seduced by Hitler and
Nazism. 'If you have never read a book about Nazi Germany before,
or if you have already read a thousand, I would urge you to read
DEFYING HITLER. It sings with wisdom and understanding' DAILY MAIL
Sebastian Haffner was a non-Jewish German who emigrated to England
in 1938. This memoir (written in 1939 but only published now for
the first time) begins in 1914 when the family summer holiday is
cut short by the outbreak of war, and ends with Hitler's assumption
of power in 1933. It is a portrait of himself and his own
generation in Germany, those born between 1900 and 1910, and
brilliantly explains through his own experiences and those of his
friends how that generation came to be seduced by Hitler and
Nazism. The Germans lacked an outlet for self-expression: where the
French had amour, food and wine, and the British their gardens and
their pets, the Germans had nothing, leading to a tendency towards
mass psychosis. The upheaval of post-WWI revolution, factionalism
and inflation left the Germans addicted to excitement and action:
Hitler provided this, and more.
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