Reddit reviews Defying Hitler: A Memoir

Everyone should read Defying Hitler. It really puts into perspective thoughts like "That could never happen here".

From Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner, where he describes how, at age 11, he's trying to find the latest posted army report on November 11, 1918:

>Somewhere, I saw a small crowd of people in front of a newsagent's. I gently muscled my way through and finally could read what everyone else was reading in sullen silence. It was an early newspaper sheet hanging there and it bore the headline: "Armistice Signed". Below were the terms, a long list. I read them. As I read, I froze.
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>What should I compare my feelings with - the feelings of an eleven-year old boy who sees a whole world of fantasies crashing down - however much I think about it, it is difficult to find an equivalent in normal, real life. Certain dreamlike catastrophes are only possible in dreamworlds. If someone, after paying large sums of money into his account for years, requests a bank statement one day and finds that, instead of having a fortune, he is in overwhelming debt, he might have similar feelings. But something like that is, after all, only possible in a dream.
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>These terms didn't speak the circumspect language of the last army reports anymore. They spoke the merciless language of defeat; as merciless as the army reports had always only spoken of enemy defeats. That something like that could also be true for us - and not only as an incident, but as the final result of victory after victory - my head could not take it in.

Defying Hitler. It's not a book about Hitler but rather about the German people through the first part of the 20th century. The author is no literary genius but I read it over 10 years ago and often think back to it. Too me that's what defines a great book.

I'm sure all those people who supported Hitler (in fact, the majority of Germany in 1939 according to people who were actually there and have been vetted by time and professional historians) are very happy to hear you peddle that myth.