Sydney Williams: “Defying Hitler” by Sebastian Haffner
“It is this lack of self-reliance that opens the possibility of immense catastrophe of civilization, such as the rule of the Nazis in Germany.” Sebastian Haffner (1907-1999)
China in 2021 is not Germany in 1933, nor is the United States. History never repeats itself exactly. The past, despite Antonio’s remark to Sebastian in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is not necessarily prologue. But knowledge of the past provides warning signs. The book is a cautionary tale to those who believe in the goodness of big government. They forget what evil people, in the name of the common good, can do.
In this personal, Orwellian-like memoir, Sebastian Haffner attempts to answer the question of why “no individuals ever spontaneously opposed some particular injustice or iniquity they experienced…”, an accusation, he wrote, that applied to himself. “What,” he asked, “became of the Germans?” Haffner was born in 1907, so his earliest memories are of the Great War, a war that was not fought on German soil. “It took place somewhere in distant France.” To a generation of German school boys, war was seen as a “great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations,” which became “the underlying vision of Nazism.” By the spring of 1919 the Nazi revolution was already fully formed and potent: “It lacked only Hitler.” He quotes Bismarck who once said that moral courage is a rare German virtue but “it deserts a German completely the moment he puts on a uniform.”
We read of the hyperinflation of 1923, the year Haffner turned sixteen: “The old and unworldly had the worst of it. Many were driven to begging, many to suicide. The young and quick-witted did well.” The decade of 1914-1923 was a time when a sense of balance, tradition and continuity were abandoned, and many youths turned nihilistic. How, for example, were elders to explain to the young why Germany lost the Great War. As the 1920s wore on, those like Haffner wanted to see the world they loved preserved, but they were becoming a minority: “We knew we could not talk with many of our contemporaries because we spoke a different language.” Hitler was master of promising “everything to everybody.” He evoked the glorious memories of pre-war 1914, as well as the triumphal, anarchic looting of 1923. In doing so, Haffner experienced the loss of “fun, understanding, goodwill, generosity and a sense of humor.”
By the summer of 1932, the Nazi Party had increased their representation in the Reichstag and Hitler was offered the vice-chancellorship. Haffner compares the summer of 1932 in Germany to 1939 in England: “…the League of Nations lies moribund [in 1939]; there is no security…Spain has fallen, as have Austria and Czechoslovakia,” yet “a pathological, unreasonable optimism seized us.”
Once in power, in 1933, the Nazis ruled via terror – not wild, unkempt mobs, but a cold, calculating and repressive terror, using state-sanctioned orders, a “nightmarish reversal of normal circumstances…” All designed to induce fear. Jews were not initially chosen for annihilation. Distinctions were made between “decent’ Jews and others. But fiendish questions were asked: Why do Jews represent a higher proportion of doctors and lawyers than their percent of the population would imply? Are they over-represented in the Communist Party? Did they experience fewer deaths in the Great War? An insidious incrementalism of venality brought a “systemic infection of a whole nation.” Diabolically, they destroyed in a few years the restraints that “had been the work of a thousand years of civilization.”
The Nazis were masters of propaganda, allowing a façade of normalcy to define everyday life. Yet fear kept people meekly accepting a gradual shift toward conformity and hatred. Once in full political mastership, the Nazis knew they must control people’s private thoughts. Haffner wrote: “Having cleared the sphere of politics of all opposition, the conquering, ravenous state has moved into formerly private spaces in order to clear these, too, of any resistance or recalcitrance and to subjugate the individual…whom he loves, what he reads, what pictures he hangs on his wall.”
Haffner justified his memoir: “I am convinced that by telling my private, unimportant story I am adding an important, unrecognized facet to contemporary German and European history – more significant and more important for the future than if I were to disclose who set fire to the Reichstag, or what Hitler really said to [Ernst] Röhm.” He is right, for if we are to learn anything from the horrors that Germany wrought it is to not allow such events to happen again. While most people are good, bad people exist, and so does evil. Reliance on the state leads to “groupthink,” and a loss of individual accountability and personal independence, the bedrock of freedom. Government is the most powerful instrument in any state, therefore must be restrained. How different history would be if men were still independent, standing on their own two feet, as in ancient Athens.
The author trained as a lawyer, to follow his father into Germany’s civil service. He had a few months of military training before taking his final exams. In 1934 he went to Paris, but soon returned home. During the next couple of years, Haffner supported himself writing harmless pieces. In early 1938, with war looming, the young Jewish woman with whom he had fallen in love was able to get to England. He followed a few months later. By mid 1939, he had become a permanent resident. After the War, the manuscript of this book lay forgotten, as Haffner’s literary career took off. He returned to Germany after the War, but this book never saw publication. He died in 1999, at age 92. Publication was left to his son Oliver Pretzel, who also served as translator. When asked: how was the rise of Nazism possible and why didn’t you stop them, Oliver Pretzel wrote: “My father’s vivid account makes the rise of the Nazis psychologically comprehensible, and it shows how difficult resistance was.”
Most frightening was the ease with which the German people surrendered politically, morally and spiritually – something that rings familiar to this reader. But I also suspect (and pray I am right) that Americans of the 2020s are more independent, resilient and smarter than Germans were in the 1930s.
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