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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 943.086
EAN num: 9780226511924
ISBN number: 0226511928
Label: University Of Chicago Press
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: May 19, 1966
Publishing house: University Of Chicago Press
Sale Popularity Level: 131754
Studio: University Of Chicago Press
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'Among the many books written on Germany after the collapse of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich, this book by Milton Mayer is one of the most readable and most enlightening.'—Hans Kohn, New York Times Book Review
'It is a fascinating story and a deeply moving one. And it is a story that should make people pause and think—think not only about the Germans, but also about themselves.'—Ernest S. Pisko, Christian Science Monitor
'Writing as a liberal American journalist of German descent and Jewish religious persuasion Mr. Mayer aims—and in the opinion of this reviewer largely succeeds—at scrupulous fairness and unsparing honesty. It is this that gives his book its muscular punch.'—Walter L. Dorn, Saturday Review
'Once again the German problem is at the center of our politics. No better, or more humane, or more literate discusion of its underlying nature could be had than in this book.'—August Heckscher, New York Herald Tribune
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Rated by buyers -
I was required to read this book in 1973 for a history class at University of Wisconsin - Marathon campus. And I kept it all these years, even though I majored in science not history, because it was such an amazing book. I recently went to the Holocaust Museum in DC and rented the German movie "The Ninth Day" about a Nazi camp, which is excellent. So on a whim I searched Amazon to see if this book was still in print and was surprised to see the Cleere review of March '05 wondering why it wasn't required reading in colleges. Maybe it was required reading in Wisconsin because of the large German population.
Colleges might be using the Stanford Prison Project to teach the some of the same ideas in 2008. There is some crossover between the two studies on the scary, seldom acknowledged truths about humanity.
Many of the Germans who were not deluded, and who helped the Jews, were religious people. With the decline in the strength of organized religion in western culture this situation could occur more easily today. Everyone
is so distracted and overwhelmed with modern life that many people really are not paying attention.
This book describes a subtle, creeping, contagious blindness that we should all be mindful of in everyday life. In Mayer's foreword to the 1966 edition he says that the Germans basically got what they "wanted -or under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want". What happened in 1930's Germany applies to the US today, and to South America and Africa. Whenever I glance at this book on my shelf I am reminded to try to think and see clearly and, to be careful what I wish for.
Rated by buyers -
This book will open your eyes and broaden your mind about history. Be ready to see Nazi Germany in an entire new light, and also see YOURSELF in a new, and disturbing way. You are NOT immune to their fate. Remember...."THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE" and SO DO YOU!
Rated by buyers -
It is wonderful to see so many thoughtful and incisive reviews of my father's book. A few details that might interest you: 1) None of the "unimportant Nazis" he interviewed knew he was a Jew, which he was. 2) The book wasn't published in German for years after its original publication (we spent 1951 in the small town which Milton Mayer calls "Kronenberg," where he wrote the book, which was published shortly afterwards). 3) His German was awful! And, he said, this was a great aid in the interviews he conducted: having to repeat, in simpler words, or more slowly, what they had to say, made the Germans he was interviewing feel relaxed, equal to, superior to the interviewer, and this made them speak more freely. "Sehen Sie, Herr Professor Mayer, SO war die Sache," very patiently. ("You see, THIS is how it was...").
He made one small, but dreadful mistake: There is a very common name in German, to which Milton Mayer added a suffix--because, with the suffix, it was the name of a great family friend (in fact, my boyfriend four years later) and used it fictitiously for one of the interviewees.. However: with the suffix, it's a very RARE German name, and, having given the general location and size of the town together with the rare German name, he really identified the interviewee as-our family friend-- who was quite upset. (He never told my father this, though.)
My father was always a superlative interviewer; he said as little as possible, aside from encouraging the interviewee to go on talking. If someone seemed to be avoiding a subject he was really interested in, he would repeat the name of the subject the interviewee had abandoned, and look terribly keen and respectful.
When my father was about 14, a wind blew in one of his ears while he was camping out, paralyzing one nerve in his face. For the rest of his life, he could only open, while speaking, one side of his mouth (and he had a very diabolical grin), and could never raise both eyebrows--always, he was raising one eyebrow! This gave him a very wise look, somewhat ironic at the same time, and made him appear even smarter than he was.
My sister and I occasionally exchange "Misms." Things he used to say from time to time, some inherited from his father, and others from God knows where. Here are a couple (try them; they are very effective in many convrersations):
"I left it in my other suit."
"Been to the city and seen the gaslights."
I don't think I have anything to add substantively to what has already been said in the excellent reviews, aside from these few personal details. Milton Mayer died in 1986, and is survived by several real and step children, real and step grandchildren, and two great grandchildren (at least), all of whom, like him, are pacifists.
Rated by buyers -
Ann Coulter and her ilk should read this book: the Hard Right is among us and have taken power just as they did in Germany in the 1930's.
I'm moving to Mongolia.
Rated by buyers -
Mayer, a Jew on Sabbatical in post-WW-II Kronenberg, sets his goal as that of better understanding the life-story of the ordinary German under National Socialism.
As he tells the story, Nazism was not just a political system or just an ideology it was a worldview peculiarly suited for and congruent with the German Post WW-I temperament and mentality. In the aftermath of the much-hated Versailles Treaty, Nazism arrived on the scene just in time to not just conquer the minds of both little and big Germans but to overwhelm them. Mayer's phrase has described it nicely: German enthusiasm for Nazism was clearly a case of "little men-gone wild."
The true value of this book and hence Mayer's most valuable contribution has been to draw a graphic conceptual picture of how the system of Nazism worked as seen at ground level by ten ordinary Germans and from the interior of German society: To a man, they all agreed that it brought them untold economic success, bound them patriotically and politically into a coherent cultural unit, restored the nation's pride and gave all Germans renewed reasons for hope in the future.
Given this rosy and very much interior and insulated backdrop, it is no wonder there was no basis for ordinary Germans to see (or even to be able to perceive) Nazi excesses, or to see Nazism itself, as an inherently evil system until it was too late.
This was true in part because all Germans already had community permission to hate Jews. The excesses, reserved mostly for Jews, thus seemed normal and in any case were always introduced in carefully orchestrated, slowly escalating, but easily digestible bites. This was done specifically to stay below the radar of the everyday German conscience -- so as to never assault German sensibilities too abruptly. Even the most alert of Germans and the least anti-Semitic Germans were lulled to sleep by this strategy.
But more importantly, because all Germans were wedded to the Nazi worldview thorough its benefits, both tangible and intangible, there were few incentives for them to "rock the boat" by pointing to its excesses. Dissension was left for victims and outsiders to engage in. However, being identified as an outsider or as a dissenter, at a minimum, could ensure social exclusion and a slow social death; and if one were very unlucky, it could mean disappearance into a concentration camp, or even a swift bullet to the temple.
Ordinary Germans thus were willing contributors to their own self-imposed trap: They needed the community's approval on its own terms. Sometimes this meant turning a blind eye to community sanctioned criminal activity, such as was the case in the event that set off a cascading sequence of pogroms against Jews, Crystal-nacht. Ordinary Germans did not want to approve of the criminal behavior involved, but was it not the community to which they were bound that decided what was criminal and who should be rewarded and punished for community-defined criminal behavior? It is easy enough for outsiders to exaggerate the actual relationship between man and state under tyranny, but from the inside, it is always made to seem normal and seamless.
Like a thief in the night, tyranny always descends upon sleeping societies in a cloak of patriotic conformity. It attacks when one is unguarded psychologically and least wary of an assault. By the time the citizen is prepared to raise a dissenting voice, in the name of state security, his throat (and presumably his vocal cords) have already been cut and he has been rendered mute. Once the national conscience has been drugged, sedated, or put to sleep, it is difficult to reawaken it.
Since there are no political systems that are entirely insulated against criminal activity, corruption or evil, only healthy, timely, vigorous and authentic dissent can act as an antidote to the evil inherent in tyrannical political systems like Fascism and Nazism.
Without drawing too fine a distinction, it is difficult to miss the many parallels between contemporary American society and 1933-1939 German society.
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