They Thought They Were Free-the germans 1933-45
Milton Mayer - author. Published by the University of Chicago Press
First published in 1955 the book has the advantage of being a collection of recollections about the conditions of life in the small town of Kronnenberg. The citizens of Kronneberg were of the most conservative of ordinary people. In fact they were not even Germans, according to `real' Germans. Kronnenberg was in Hesse. Its people were sometimes referred to as blinder Hesse - Blind Hessian - when needing to call some one backward or stupid.
Milton Meyer interviewed ten members of this community, as he said in his forward "It was the newspaperman's fascination that prevailed. . . and left me dissatisfied with every analysis of Nazism. I wanted to see this monstrous man, the Nazi. I wanted to talk to him and to listen to him. I wanted to try to understand him.. . . In 1935 I spent a month in Berlin trying to obtain a series of meetings with Adolf Hitler.....but without success. . . Then I travelled in Nazi Germany for an American magazine.....for the first time (I) realized that Nazism was a mass movement and not a tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions...By the time the war was over I had identified my man: the average German." He goes on to explain that "I never found the average German, because there is no average German. But I found ten Germans sufficiently different from one another in background, character, intellect, and temperament to represent, among them, some millions or tens of millions of Germans and sufficiently like unto one another to have been Nazis."
Mayer begins his book with a short historical over view of Kronneberg. The date is November 9, 1638 and all is well in Kronnenberg. The town watchman is calling out the hour and walking the streets of the town. The picture is of a very old and very proud people and town. Times have been hard. "Pestilence and famine recur in Kronnenberg - as where don't they? - and where there are Jews, what is one to expect?" As this scene unfolds the reader becomes aware that the German people have long had a dislike and distrust for the Jew. As far back as one can remember - problems follow the Gypsy and the Jew. Next the history lesson brings us to November 9, 1938. The scene is pretty much the same. But this night November 9, is "the greatest of all National Socialist Party celebrations. January 30 (the day the Führer came to power) and April 20 (the Fuehrer's birthday are national celebrations. November 9 is the Party's own."
One of the themes that sounds so familiar to my American ears is that this is a quiet country town. Small in size and population. Described as ". . .old and changeless, off the main line and the Autobahn, is conservative even for Hesse. But its very conservatism is a better guaranty of the Party's stability than the radicalism of the cities, where yesterday's howling Communists are today's howling Nazis and nobody knows just how they will howl tomorrow. A quiet town is best." Kronnenberg had a Catholic Church, a Protestant Church and a Jewish Synagogue. It was the Synagogue that would signal the change that was settling over the Nation. November 9, 1938 - it was burned to the ground by a group of local members of the Party at the Command of the head of the SA Kronnenberg.
Having lived in both large metropolitan cities, Tulsa, my birthplace in 1942 and Oklahoma City where my undergraduate B.A. degree was earned and in such towns as Enid - where I earned my graduate degree M.Div. and Ada, Okemah and Covington and presently in a place that has the desire to be metropolitan but has yet to achieve that status, I can attest to the `stability' of the small community. Oft times comfortable in the seclusion from the `hustle and bustle' and `business' of places with more people and diverse views. It's just a better, less confusing, existence when one does have to be bothered with the ideas of a `big city.'
Kronnenberg was such a small town.
Attempting to review this book thoroughly would take more time and space than I have inclination to invest. So, I am going to pick and chose my high points - with the hope that you, the reader, will have your interest aroused.
Before diving into my review I want to state my only criticism of this work. Mayer, it seems to me, presumes to describe a vastly diverse population using his interviews of ten very specific `ordinary germans' supported by other research that serves as a frame work for his book. Seems to be a bit like coming to rural Oklahoma and selecting ten diverse individuals of conservative mindset and trying to understand why the State is run by Republicans. I realize there is or ought to be a discernable difference between rural conservatives in Oklahoma and rural conservatives in Germany - but then, again, maybe not.
To the points of interest - and since I am driving - they are my points of interest.
Germany was and is a country on the defensive. Mayer traces this characteristic back to the date 9 A.D. and 1555 in the twice plundering of Rome. "In year 9 the Germans expelled the founders of secular Europe; in 1555 they cut themselves loose from the Weltanschauung which the age of the Mediterranean fused in Italy from the Greco-Hebraic break with Syria and Egypt." Mayer in his research points to the history of German Nationhood going back to 1871 when a sort of forced unity was enacted by Prussia over dozens of sovereign German States. It was here that the diverse nature of the population originated. Not even the language was unified, but a Mischmasch as it was called by Leibniz.
This diverse character contributed to a separateness that eventually led to a Nationalism that was the door through which the NSDAP was able to enter. As Mayer, at one point, writes, "Hitlerism was a mass flight to dogma, to the barbaric dogma that had not been expelled with the Romans, the dogma of the tribe, the dogma that gave every man importance only in so far as the tribe was important and he was a member of the tribe."
Geographically Germany had, sense anyone had memory, been on the defensive. National security required a strong defense. Theirs soon became an offense for defense.
Nazism did not show up in the life of the ordinary German as a theory. It first engaged the ordinary German as `practice.' It - "Nazism, as it moved from practice to theory has to deny expertness in thinking and then (this second process was never completed), in order to fill the vacuum, had to establish expert thinking of its own - that is, to find men of inferior or irresponsible caliber whose views conformed dishonestly or, worse yet, honestly to the Party line." It is an unfortunate fact of history that Adolf Hitler was correct when he observed that Germany was encircled and, of necessity had to defend herself. That defense was to go on the offense.
The practice was to infiltrate every fiber of the ordinary germans life with the power and control of the State. That did not always manifest itself in brute force - but oft times in much more subtle ways. Joining the Party often meant having a job. Joining the party could mean gaining new status, though that sometimes had a negative outcome. It wasn't the big man Hitler that spread the Party line through out Germany. It was the countless numbers of `little Hitler's' that were the source of Nazism success. It was only for the ordinary german to go about their daily lives and not get in the way. I was sort of reminded of the admonitions heard in the US of A when catastrophe strikes - natural or man made - "Go about your Business" "Don't worry" "Go shopping, Go out to Eat" "Do what you always do to occupy yourself." In Germany, in these days it was not for the ordinary german to be concerned about anything - the State would take care of them.
Mayer discusses, at length the topic of how the Jewish people were part of the German experience off and on through the history of the Nation. Anti-Semitism was nothing new for the ordinary german. As in most developing Fascist or Totalitarian States there must be a scapegoat on which all the blame for all that is wrong, can be placed. Germany had more than just the Jew. There were the troublesome Gypsy Bands - that were reviled and hated. There were the Russians, whom many ordinary germans blamed for the Jewish problem. . . . "they knew Bolshevism as a specter which, as it took on body in their imaginings, embraced not only Communism but the Social Democrats, the trade-unions, and, of course. The Jews, the Gypsies, the neighbor next door whose dog had bit them, and his dog; the bundled root cause of all their past, present, and possible tribulations."
Needing a scapegoat, upon which to load all of the problems, one had only to look next door or across a convenient border and the Big Men in the Nazi Party did just that.
Mayer wrote, at the end of one of his chapters: "I asked my friend Simon, the "democratic" bill-collector, what he liked best about Hitler. "Ah," he said at once, "his `So -oder so,' his `Whatever I have to do to have my way, I will have my way.' "
This in no way adequately covers a review of this book, but it is my hope that some interest has been created. Milton Mayer has written a book that tells a story. It is a story that is as timely today as it was when he first wrote it.
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