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Title details for They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer - Wait list

They Thought They Were Free

by Milton Mayer
Richard J. Evans
ebook
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National Book Award Finalist: Never before has the mentality of the average German under the Nazi regime been made as intelligible to the outsider." —The New York TImes
They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name "Kronenberg." These ten men were not men of distinction, according to Mayer, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.
A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.
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Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Kindle Book

  • Release date: November 28, 2017

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780226525976
  • File size: 750 KB
  • Release date: November 28, 2017

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780226525976
  • File size: 750 KB
  • Release date: November 28, 2017

Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

History Politics Nonfiction

Languages

English

National Book Award Finalist: Never before has the mentality of the average German under the Nazi regime been made as intelligible to the outsider." —The New York TImes
They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name "Kronenberg." These ten men were not men of distinction, according to Mayer, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.
A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.
Expand title description text
History Politics Nonfiction