- Haffner, Sebastian [Raimund Pretzel].
Defying Hitler.
New York: Picador, [2000] 2003.
ISBN 978-0-312-42113-7.
-
In 1933, the author was pursuing his ambition to follow his
father into a career in the Prussian civil service. While
completing his law degree, he had obtained a post as a
Referendar, the lowest rank in the
civil service, performing what amounted to paralegal work for higher
ranking clerks and judges. He enjoyed the work, especially
doing research in the law library and drafting opinions,
and was proud to be a part of the Prussian tradition of
an independent judiciary. He had no strong political views nor
much interest in politics. But, as he says, “I have
a fairly well developed figurative sense of smell, or to put
it differently, a sense of the worth (or worthlessness!) of human,
moral, political views and attitudes. Most Germans unfortunately
lack this sense almost completely.”
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, “As for the
Nazis, my nose left me with no doubts. … How it stank!
That the Nazis were enemies, my enemies and the enemies of all
I held dear, was crystal clear to me from the outset. What was
not at all clear to me was what terrible enemies they would turn
out to be.” Initially, little changed: it was a “matter
for the press”. The new chancellor might rant to enthralled
masses about the Jews, but in the court where Haffner clerked, a
Jewish judge continued to sit on the bench and work continued
as before. He hoped that the political storm on the surface
would leave the depths of the civil service unperturbed. This was
not to be the case.
Haffner was a boy during the First World War, and, like many of
his schoolmates, saw the war as a great adventure which unified
the country. Coming of age in the Weimar Republic, he experienced
the great inflation of 1921–1924 as up-ending the
society: “Amid all the misery, despair, and poverty there
was an air of light-headed youthfulness, licentiousness, and carnival.
Now, for once, the young had money and the old did not. Its
value lasted only a few hours. It was spent as never before or
since; and not on the things old people spend their money on.”
A whole generation whose ancestors had grown up in a highly
structured society where most decisions were made for them now
were faced with the freedom to make whatever they wished of their
private lives. But they had never learned to cope with such
freedom.
After the
Reichstag fire
and the Nazi-organised
boycott
of Jewish businesses (enforced by SA street brawlers
standing in doors and intimidating anybody who tried to enter),
the fundamental transformation of the society accelerated.
Working in the library at the court building, Haffner is shocked
to see this sanctum of jurisprudence defiled by the SA, who had
come to eject all Jews from the building. A Jewish colleague is
expelled from university, fired from the civil service, and opts
to emigrate.
The chaos of the early days of the Nazi ascendency gives way to
Gleichschaltung,
the systematic takeover of all institutions by placing Nazis
in key decision-making positions within them. Haffner sees
the Prussian courts, which famously stood up to Frederick the
Great a century and a half before, meekly toe the line.
Haffner begins to consider emigrating from Germany, but his father
urges him to complete his law degree before leaving. His close
friends among the Referendars
run the gamut from Communist sympathisers to ardent Nazis. As
he is preparing for the Assessor
examination (the next rank in the civil service, and the final
step for a law student), he is called up for mandatory
political and military indoctrination now required for the rank.
The barrier between the personal, professional, and political had
completely fallen. “Four weeks later I was wearing jackboots
and a uniform with a swastika armband, and spent many hours each
day marching in a column in the vicinity of Jüterbog.”
He discovers that, despite his viewing the Nazis as essentially
absurd, there is something about order, regimentation, discipline,
and forced camaraderie that resonates in his German soul.
Finally, there was a typically German aspiration that
began to influence us strongly, although we hardly noticed
it. This was the idolization of proficiency for its own
sake, the desire to do whatever you are assigned to do as well
as it can possibly be done. However senseless, meaningless, or
downright humiliating it may be, it should be done as efficiently,
thoroughly, and faultlessly as could be imagined. So we should
clean lockers, sing, and march? Well, we would clean them better
than any professional cleaner, we would march like campaign
veterans, and we would sing so ruggedly that the trees bent over.
This idolization of proficiency for its own sake is a German
vice; the Germans think it is a German virtue.
…
That was our weakest point—whether we were Nazis or
not. That was the point they attacked with remarkable
psychological and strategic insight.
And here the memoir comes to an end; the author put it aside.
He moved to Paris, but failed to become established there and
returned to Berlin in 1934. He wrote apolitical articles for
art magazines, but as the circle began to close around him and
his new Jewish wife, in 1938 he obtained a visa for the U.K.
and left Germany. He began a writing career, using the
nom de plume Sebastian Haffner
instead of his real name, Raimund Pretzel, to reduce the
risk of reprisals against his family in Germany. With the
outbreak of war, he was deemed an enemy alien and interned on
the Isle of Man. His first book written since emigration,
Germany: Jekyll and Hyde,
was a success in Britain and questions were raised in Parliament
why the author of such an anti-Nazi work was interned: he was
released in August, 1940, and went on to a distinguished career
in journalism in the U.K. He never prepared the manuscript of this
work for publication—he may have been embarrassed at the
youthful naïveté in evidence throughout. After his
death in 1999, his son, Oliver Pretzel (who had taken the original
family name), prepared the manuscript for publication. It went
straight to the top of the German bestseller list, where it
remained for forty-two weeks. Why? Oliver Pretzel says, “Now
I think it was because the book offers direct answers to two questions
that Germans of my generation had been asking their parents since
the war: ‘How were the Nazis possible?’ and
‘Why didn't you stop them?’ ”.
This is a period piece, not a work of history. Set aside by
the author in 1939, it provides a look through the eyes of a
young man who sees his country becoming something which repels
him and the madness that ensues when the collective is exalted
above the individual. The title is somewhat odd—there is
precious little defying of Hitler here—the ultimate defiance
is simply making the decision to emigrate rather than give tacit
support to the madness by remaining. I can appreciate that.
This edition was translated from the original German and
annotated by the author's son, Oliver Pretzel, who wrote the
introduction and afterword which place the work in the
context of the author's career and describe why it was
never published in his lifetime.
A Kindle edition is available.
Thanks to Glenn Beck for recommending this book.
June 2017 