Reddit reviews I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941

I agree. I've been reading a great deal about that period in the last year or so, both pre-1933 and post. This book, which I've read twice, shows how people didn't think Hitler would last long once he came to power.

The difference between Bevin and a head of state is that a state governor ultimately is limited in his or her power. However, when you put a fascistic narcissistic dissembler in the head of state chair, it's a very different story.

In Victor Klemperer's diary published in volumes from 1933 to 1941 and from 1942 to 1945, he describes how even in Germany small pockets of the Jewish population remained all the way to the end. Every week a few were picked up from his friends' circle never to return, and as early as 1941 he writes it was generally known that if you went to these camps, you died.

Klemperer himself was a jew who fell between the cracks of subsequent waves of arrests. He a) was married to a German woman, b) had converted to Protestantism before WWI, c) had served in the German army during WWI and most importantly d) they had no children, so hadn't "produced mixed offspring" (families with mixed children were prioritized for the camps). Hitler himself had signed laws giving a special pension to WWI veterans, so Klemperer created a head scratcher for nazi bureaucrats who didn't know how to deal with it, so they always let him go after questioning.

Amazingly enough, he was saved by the Dresden bombing. Klemperer lived in the outskirts of Dresden, and could flee to allied territory when the city was in chaos after the firebombing.

For one personal view, take a look at the diaries of Victor Klemperer. One volume, I Will Bear Witness, covers the years 1933-1941. Another volume covers the years 1942-1945. (I think there are four volumes in the English translation.)

Klemperer was a professor in Dresden when the Nazis came to power. He lost his position at the university due to Nazi edicts, eventually worked in a factory, was moved (with his wife, who was not classified as a Jew) to a Judenhaus, and was about to be sent to a concentration camp when Dresden was bombed by the allies. He and his wife fled in the confusion of the bombing and made their way to allied forces.

His diary gives interesting insight not only into his thought processes about the changes around him, but also some glimpse of the society around him. It's been several years since I read this, but I recall reading of his trip on a street car and his comments on the reactions of various people seeing someone wearing the yellow star (I'm sorry, but I don't remember the details of this exchange to recount it here). Another interesting detail is to read his thoughts on conversations that he had with friends who either planned to leave Germany themselves or tried to encourage him to leave. His diaries also raise questions about the identity of one's self versus the identity placed on a person by others.

I've learned so much more by reading personal diaries and accounts pertaining to history than any other book that tries to provide a summary. Some specific ones:

I Shall Bear Witness, the diary of a Jewish professor who barely survived WWII thanks to being married to an Aryan woman. That's the first of three volumes. Maybe the most amazing thing I've ever read.

Mary Chestnut's Civil War - the diary of a well-connected society woman living in the South during the American civil war.

Eyewitness To History - First person accounts of many historical events.

I'm in the middle of the new Mark Twain autobiography which is great too.

Anyone else have recommendations along these lines?

>rightist

There is no "rightist". Fascism is just economic leftism with some nationalism and racism tossed in for good measure. Mussolini was a life-long socialist, and Hitler ordered that all communists be automatically allowed to join the Nazi party because they had so much in common. Even Victor Klemperer remarked that the differences between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks were trivial.