They Thought They Were Free 

By Milton Mayer

As Harpers Magazine noted when the book was published in 1955 (U. of Chicago), Milton Mayer’s extraordinarily far-sighted book on the Germans is more timely today than ever.

This crucial book tells how and why 'decent men' became Nazis through short biographies of 10 law-abiding citizens.

An American journalist of German/Jewish descent, Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi movement.

It is a book that should make people pause and think -- not only about the Germans, but also about themselves.

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after1933, between the government and the people.

Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider.

You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote.

All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.

And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes.

And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life.

It was all I cared about.

I was a scholar, a specialist.

Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires.

And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been important before.

It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do.

You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things.

One had no time.”

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker.

"One had no time to think.

There was so much going on."

 "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague.

"The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting.

It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway.

I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you.

Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had.

There was no need to.

Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about––we were decent people--and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies," without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.

Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it--please try to believe me--unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.

One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know.

But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings.

One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?
Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your "little men," Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say), but because we sensed better.

Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing.

And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something--but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move.

Believe me, this is true.

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.

You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble."

Why not?--Well, you are not in the habit of doing it.

And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows.

Outside, in the streets, in the general community, "everyone is happy.

One hears no protest, and certainly sees none.

You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this.

In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say?

They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."

"And you are an alarmist.

You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it.

These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end?

On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you.

On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.

You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"And the judge?"

"Yes, the judge.

He could not get the case off his conscience ö a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man.

He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man?

The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.)

After the "44" Putsch they arrested him.

After that, I don't know."

I said nothing.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment.

Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism."

You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory.

Goebbels was very clever here, too.

He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice.

And he meant it; that was not just propaganda.

And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war.

It was a long bet.

Not many made it."

-- Milton Mayer