They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45

I've seen the rise of Nazism described as a "warning from history" on many occasions. Well this book is that warning, written in clear and concrete terms soon after the events occurred by people who experienced them directly, most of them Nazi sympathizers. "What happened here was the gradual habit......more

In contemporary times, this book has surfaced more than once in conversations. It's been touted as a means to obtain insight into the segment of society that is apparently blind to the chronic contempt for the legal, ethical, and moral principles that is being perpetrated by our current president he......more

Shortly after the war Milton Mayer, an American Jew of German heritage, and his wife, Jane, moved into a mid-sized German city. Concealing his religious background, Mayer passed as an authentic, returning German and was thereby afforded an easy intimacy with the inhabitants. What he was aiming for w......more

You should read this book if you think that you are free. This is an old book, originally published in 1955, but it is more relevant today than ever before. Today the U.S. government openly arrests people without probable cause, detains them indefinitely without trial, tortures them, assassinates cit......more

Seven years after the collapse of Hitler's regime, Milton Sanford Mayer, an American Jewish journalist of German heritage, traveled to Germany in an effort to understand how and why Nazism had developed in Germany. He spends a year in a small Hessian town (whose identity he disguises by calling it K......more