Defying Hitler: A Memoir
Written in 1939 and unpublished until 2000, Sebastian Haffner's memoir of the rise of Nazism in Germany offers a unique portrait of the lives of ordinary German citizens between the wars. Covering 1907 to 1933, his eyewitness account provides a portrait of a country in constant flux: from the rise of the First Corps, the right-wing voluntary military force set up in 1918 to suppress Communism and precursor to the Nazi storm troopers, to the Hitler Youth movement; from the apocalyptic year of 1923 when inflation crippled the country to Hitler's rise to power. This fascinating personal history elucidates how the average German grappled with a rapidly changing society, while chronicling day-to-day changes in attitudes, beliefs, politics, and prejudices.
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Sebastian Haffner was born in Berlin in 1907, and died in 1999. In 1938, he was forced to flee to Britain, where he worked as a journalist. In 1954, he returned to Germany and became a distinguished historian and commentator.
Oliver Pretzel, Sebastian Haffner's son, is the translator of this work."An astonishing memoir...vividly convey[s] the texture of life under an emerging totalitarian regime... [a] masterpiece." --The New York Times Book Review
"A masterpiece...has more to say about the enduring enigma of Hitler's Reich than almost anything else in the voluminous modern literature on the subject." --Commentary
"Haffner is like the guide of Dante's Inferno, tracing the slow descent into Nazism in intimate detail...Compelling... Fresh, immediate, and wonderfully personal...An absorbing book." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"The prophetic insights of a fairly young man...help us understand the plight, as Haffner refers to it, of the non-Nazi German." --The Denver Post
