A Fascinating Insight Into Defying Hitler: Sebastian Haffner's Memoir

riverrun: This is one of the most interesting and compelling books I have read. Haffner describes his experience of the First World War as a child in Germany, and his years growing up witnessing the rise of Hitler and fascism. His analysis of the why and the how as his life develops is absorbing and fascinating. This is a gripping personal story, not a history book, and it doesn't take long to read - give it a go!

His personal journey is always interesting, but for me - as a reader in the 2020s - the most striking things about this book are his observations on how Hitler, despite being a nasty joke figure initially, took power: by vilifying a minority in harsh and violent language, by bending, changing or subverting the constitution to gain control, by applauding the violent deeds of sympathetic spirits without recrimination, but above all by promising something (something terrible for the world) that filled a wound in the soul of the people and establishing all of that by eliminating opposition by creating a (well-justified) fear of speaking out. This book is as relevant today as it was on the day it was written.

United Kingdom on Jan 02, 2022

Mr. D. James: Haffner, Sebastian. Defying Hitler.

Defying Hitler is the most penetrating examination of the rise of the Nazi movement, written secretly by a German citizen who survived the horrors of living in Germany throughout the Second World War. This book, published ultimately by the author’s son, has, since 2001, become available in English. The story is of a most unpromising Austrian youth who ultimately held the fate of millions in his hands and it has long craved further explication. At last we have reached the heart of the matter. We close the book gasping ‘If only ...’

This memoir avoids the author’s real name, Raimund Pretzel, and was covertly begun in 1939 just before the Second World War got really underway, and the book was first published under the name of Sebastian Haffner, with notes to explain the political situation existing in pre-1933 Germany. I doubt very much if the German nation’s seeming conversion to Angela Merkel’s charitable invitation to foreigners can possibly wipe out or even mitigate what seems to have become a national characteristic – the German devotion to an ideal of power and self-aggrandisement, but I could be wrong. After all,...

United Kingdom on Dec 20, 2019

Teacher of Teachers: The title might make a person (as it did me) initially think this was the memoir of an overlooked resistance member, or perhaps a government or party worker who ended up aiding the fight against Nazism. Rather, it is one man's very personal, and very chilling - yet very analytical - observations of what was happening around him and how it caught up with him and his circle of friends, changing lives, destroying friendships, and causing some, like himself, to finally leave Germany.

He finds that the Nazi phenomenon was made possible by patterns in German history, particularly of the militaristic sort. He describes the excitement of the outbreak of war in 1914 among children like him, and reminds the reader that these children would be adults in their prime as the Nazis grew in significance and promised to rekindle that excitement.

Other topics include Luxemburg and Liebknecht, Rathenau, Bruening, how foreign leaders' appeasement of Hitler repeated German politicians' attempts to tame him the same way, and how some in Germany thought the Hitler chancellorship wouldn't last because he always seemed to be his own worst enemy.

But there are lots of books on all...

United States on Nov 12, 2017

Neasa MacErlean: A well-off trainee judge in Berlin, Sebastian Haffner found himself repulsed by Hitler and the Nazis from the mid-1920s when they became a force. As they rose to power, he found himself having to make huge decisions in his daily life. His girlfriend was Jewish and he discovered that two of his five fellow trainees were nascent Nazis. He responded in the way we would all wish to respond - deciding that he had to leave Germany which he did in the end, with his Jewish wife, going to London where he wrote for The Observer. But it was not easy to make brave decisions. Bystanders who did not salute the many Nazi parades were beaten up - so Haffner and like-minded people used to rush down side roads when they heard the brown shirts arriving. More difficult was withstanding the pressures of companions on a military training exercise that the trainee judges were sent on. Haffner is also fascinating when he describes the way Germans appeased Hitler. "Powerful groups were in favour of rendering Hitler 'harmless' by giving him 'responsibility'. The Communists, previously feared by many Germans, turned out to be naive in comparison with the Nazis who broke the rules and took over fairly...

United Kingdom on Feb 23, 2017

Mr. Z: I once read this memoir back in 2008, using a friend's copy, and over the years, I have been meaning to read it again because of its remarkable observations and enduring insights, so recently, I purchased it as my very own copy. Growing up, I often learned about the Second World War and a very evil man who goes by the name of Hitler and his ruthless gang of Nazis, but I had never really learned why or how Nazis came into being. Why did they do the things that they did and why weren't they stopped or resisted by the common German people? There was no sense of psychological understandings or insights into such people until I read this memoir by Sebastian Haffner. Not only is it an autobiographical but also a political analysis of Germany before the Second World War.

This book was written in 1939 in order to make a living in England after leaving Germany, but Haffner abandoned it to write a new book on the subject of the Nazi Germany during the outbreak of war. That new book was titled  Germany: Jekyll and Hyde: An Eyewitness Analysis of Nazi Germany . It wasn't until after Haffner's death in 1999 that this 1939 book was discovered by his son, Oliver Pretzel, who...

United States on Apr 05, 2013

Doug Reid: Throughout my adult life, I have often wondered how the Nazis could have come to be so powerful in a country which, to the casual observer, seemed so 'civilised'. How could the German people have been taken in by Hitler, allowing him to become so powerful when most felt he was repulsive and inappropriate? Even more, how could so many of these people then be persuaded to commit such horrendous atrocities in the name of the Third Reich and Aryanism?
Sebastian Haffner will, I think, begin to give you the answer in this book. The Germanic culture is without doubt different form the British and events during and after the First World War were very significant in creating an attitude amongst those who were to eventually 'run' Germany in the 1930s and 40s. How many of us are aware that there was a revolution in Germany after WW1?
Mr Haffner was undoubtedly someone who had enough of a conscience, was intelligent and independent enough to have been able to think for himself when the Nazis were so successfully terrorising the majority of Germans into following them. You will see that he too was very aware of the manipulation, introduced by the emerging Nazi party, to acheve it...

United Kingdom on Aug 09, 2003

Mr. George Johnson: I had always been interested in wartime history, at a mere 31 years old, my wartime knowledge was always slightly biased by memories from my London born Grandparents, balanced by my school History lessons.
I bought the book based on a book review in The Times and must say, I have never read such an interesting book. It's basically the wartime remanences of an average German growing up during two world wars. He starts at the begining of WWI as a young 7/8 year old, grows up during 20s/30s, and as he coming of age in his mid 20s, he describes what he sees as his country is slowly repressed. It doesn't actually discuss times during WWII as such, mainly the run up to that time, the time period when Hitler and his fascists started to get serious control over the country, before launching into WWII.
You really get under the authors skin, you begin to feel his dispair at what he saw and although you understand the technicalites of why it happend, you, like the author begin to feel at a loss to explain how the German people became so apathetic towards the running of their country. The author does not appear to judge anyone in particular, he just seems feel resentment that his life...

United Kingdom on Dec 17, 2002