They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 | 
pickIn the 1950s, Mayer lived for a year in Marburg, Germany and held numerous interviews with ten “little men” of the lower middle class to learn their motivations for joining the Nazi party, their experience inside it and in Germany during the Nazi years and their assessment of it in the post war period. It‘s a personal book filled with observations by Mayer and anecdotes, regrets and rationalizations by his interlocutors.
Schwifty However there‘s a caveat or two. His speculations and meandering thoughts about the German national character if there could be such a thing are dated and seem totally off base 70 years later. Not only that, the book was supposed to be a project to discover why ordinary German citizens tolerated totalitarianism, yet the citizens of Marburg were socially and politically atypical, so this was not a good ordinary snapshot. 2y
Schwifty But the brief window into the minds of Germans trying to live a day to day existence inside Nazi Germany bombarded by propaganda and cowed by suspicion was still worth reading. 2y
4 likes2 comments
so-so
