They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

by Milton Sanford Mayer

Book Overview

"When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg."

That's Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He's right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 022652583X
• ISBN13: 9780226525839
• Release Date: November 2017
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The "M" in my name stands for "Mayer."

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.

Sleeping Societies rarely awake before its too late

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

One of the most important books of our time

Among the impossibly vast literature about how the Nazis took and held power, this book is one of a kind. It is an honest look into the minds of "typical" Germans, not as we see them, but as they saw themselves. The author admits his biases and overcomes them to let his subjects speak for themselves. We hear them, in their own words, make their excuses and justifications and evasions, but the same question will not stop coming up in our minds: "What would I have done?" This book is a journey of questions without final answers, and it deserves to be ranked as one of the essential books of our time. The fact that it is so little known, and particularly that it is not required reading in college courses, is a disgrace.

Chilling parallels with today's society

Shortly after World War II, Milton Sanford Mayer traveled to Germany to find out the mind set of ordinary Germans who were "little men" in the Nazi Party. They did not know that he was an American Jew, although he did not lie to them. To a man, they declared that their days under Hitler were the best in their lives. I found the parallels with current day America to be much to close for comfort, if you substitute white rural culture for Jews in Germany. This book will open your eyes as to how totalitarianism is welcomed by the mass of people if the media support it, and the economy is good.