Defying Hitler

Written in 1939 and unpublished until 2000, Sebastian Haffner’s memoir of the rise of Nazism in Germany offers a unique portrait of the lives of German citizens between the wars.

Covering the period between 1907 and 1933, his eyewitness account describes a country in constant flux, where civilians struggle to reconcile the tedium and dramas of their private lives with the world-historical scale of Nazi politics. How does one recognize a turning point in real time? From the rise of Hitler Youth to the economic crisis of 1923, Haffner charts a personal history through the disturbing years in which ordinary Germans joined the Nazi party with willingness, indifference, and glee. An unflinching look at the day-to-day changes of an increasingly fascist society, Defying Hitler is a perennially urgent work of first-person history.