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They thought they were free : the Germans, 1933-45 / Milton Mayer.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Phoenix books (Chicago, Ill.)Publication details: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1966.Description: xxii, 346 pages ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780226511924
  • 0226511928
Subject(s):
Contents:
Part I. Ten men. Kronenberg -- Ten men -- The lives men lead -- Hitler and I -- "What would you have done?" -- The joiners -- The way to stop Communism -- "We think with our blood" -- The anti-semitic swindle -- "Everybody know." "Nobody knew" -- "We Christians had the duty" -- The crimes of the losers -- "That's the way we are" -- But then it was too late -- Collective shame -- The furies: Heinrich Hilebrandt -- The furies: Johann Kessler -- The furies: furor teutonicus -- Part II. The Germans. Heat wave -- There is no such thing -- The pressure cookers -- "Peoria über alles" -- New boy in the neighborhood -- Two new boys in the neighborhood -- "Like God in France" -- But a man must believe in something -- Push-button panic -- Part III. The cause and cure. The trial -- The broken stones -- The liberators -- The re-educators re-educated -- The reluctant phoenix -- Born yesterday -- Tug of peace -- "Are we the same as the Russians?" -- Marx talks to Michel -- The uncalculated risk.
Summary: Interviews with ten former Nazis comprise the core of this penetrating study of the psychological causes of Nazism and their implications for modern Germany.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 943.086 M468 Available 33111008875961
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

First published in 1955, 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.



"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."--from Chapter 13, "But Then It Was Too Late"

Interviews with ten former Nazis comprise the core of this penetrating study of the psychological causes of Nazism and their implications for modern Germany.

Part I. Ten men. Kronenberg -- Ten men -- The lives men lead -- Hitler and I -- "What would you have done?" -- The joiners -- The way to stop Communism -- "We think with our blood" -- The anti-semitic swindle -- "Everybody know." "Nobody knew" -- "We Christians had the duty" -- The crimes of the losers -- "That's the way we are" -- But then it was too late -- Collective shame -- The furies: Heinrich Hilebrandt -- The furies: Johann Kessler -- The furies: furor teutonicus -- Part II. The Germans. Heat wave -- There is no such thing -- The pressure cookers -- "Peoria über alles" -- New boy in the neighborhood -- Two new boys in the neighborhood -- "Like God in France" -- But a man must believe in something -- Push-button panic -- Part III. The cause and cure. The trial -- The broken stones -- The liberators -- The re-educators re-educated -- The reluctant phoenix -- Born yesterday -- Tug of peace -- "Are we the same as the Russians?" -- Marx talks to Michel -- The uncalculated risk.

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