Already have an account? Log in. Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials. Sign Up. Review Posted Online: Nov. No Comments Yet. More by Richard H. Pub Date: Oct. Page Count: Publisher: St. More by Brandon Stanton. Page Count: Publisher: Free Press. More by Thomas Sowell.
Please sign up to continue. Almost there! Reader Writer Industry Professional. What can I say? The book is getting eery. This was accomplished with rallies some of which Hitler, in person, attended , promises, marches, songs, propaganda, and finally with hard-core brainwash; and as you might have heard of because it happened all over Germany, with harassing and threatening those citizens who resisted the brainwash and sending dissidents of every couleur to Dachau.
And a few were found dead, said to be murdered by some bolshevik swines. Mind you, all this happened before I was born in This book, btw, is out of print, and there is unlikely to be a new edition because there are rumors that the author has received death threats. None of our present presidential candidates are evil. Some are even very pious. Mind you, some are a bit power-craving o. Some and here I am definitely not naming names are not the very brightest.
One seems to be megalomaniac might be treatable. This particular one is also very rude, vulgar, and scarily belligerent. Oh, btw, I have trouble with all the names in this book. But I get by without identifying all of these characters.
One of the things I really like about this book is that it enables me to widen my meager ESL vocabulary. This is such a beautiful and flowery expression. Talk to you again when I read further on. October 17, I am now on page America has been turned into a bomb-tight police state, terrorizing and murdering its non-conformist citizens. So get off your couch and do something. Will keep you posted. October 21, I have now read to page I mean the book.
So what is happening to this satire novel? I always thought that satire, while allowed to be acid, is supposed to be funny. Could it be that she kicked him and coaxed him to describe in detail what oppressive, totalitarian regimes do to their non-conformist citizens and occasionally even to their conformist citizens who fall out of grace for one reason or another?
I am confused. I hope to be able to finish reading tonight. October 21, — evening. I am now done with page ; this means that I have finished reading this book. So what can I say? First of all, I would like to express my relief that the last 25 pages contain no more horror details. So just let me say that a lot of things happened already in the previous pages—changes in government and the like.
But now, guess what! Instead, there are songs about American soldiers having fun with Mexican girls. No, it is something else. Oh gosh! And now what? It is a bit inconclusive, and I am not too impressed with it. Who expects a happy end anyway with a book like this one? Let me close with an uplifting thought: In the s, there were no nuclear weapons.
Thus, no one, not even Hitler, would be able to produce a total Armageddon. Today, however, there are nuclear weapons, and a WWIII will, most likely, be the war to end all wars, except maybe for insect wars. I hear that insects are more resistant to radiation than mammals. Now, where was I? Allow me. I am a senior, and seniors occasionally lose their train of thought. I wanted to close with an uplifting thought. I decided to leave the rating at 5 stars. The general message of this book makes up for the flaws.
Lewis was an astute and keen observer of political power and was a canary in the coal mine for a world that would soon know much grief. Considering that Lewis published this in , it is eerily uncanny the way his fictitious predictions about American despotism would four years later parallel the Nazi blitzkrieg.
Also, this is an endearing call to arms for people to stand up to tyranny, even in the early stages and to be wary of the societal symptoms of fascist beginnings.
Finally, this is simply a good story told by a brilliant writer, this being published 5 years after he had received his Nobel Prize in literature and generally considered the best of his later work. Not sure about that but what is noteworthy is Lewis' uncanny prediction in , two years after Hitler rose to power, about a populace willing to elect and support such a demagogue.
My own aversion to partisan politics blames our two party system for the late unpleasantness and calls to question the idea, brought out by Lewis here, about blind obedience. I have always thought that if fascism ever came to America it would come clothed in red, white, and blue, with patriotic songs, and quotations from founding fathers.
It would be nationalistic. It would extol military endeavors and elevate soldiers to the level of heroes. It would handle the race question in subtle yet effective ways. It would join forces with conservative Christian churches and begin to make life hard for anyone else. Eventually they agreed to talk, accepting his explanation that he hoped to enable the people of his nation to have a better understanding of Germany.
Mayer was truthful about that and about nearly everything else. But he did not tell them that he was a Jew. In the late s—the period that most interested Mayer—his subjects were working as a janitor, a soldier, a cabinetmaker, an office manager, a baker, a bill collector, an inspector, a high school teacher, and a police officer. One had been a high school student.
All were male. None of them occupied positions of leadership or influence. Mayer talked with them over the course of a year, under informal conditions—coffee, meals, and long, relaxed evenings. He became friends with each and throughout he refers to them as such. Speaking of the views of ordinary people under Hitler, one of them asked:. How would anybody know?
And then you must still guess why he says what he says. When Mayer returned home, he was afraid for his own country. They did not know between and that it was evil. And they do not know it now. Germans had jobs and better housing. Fewer people were hungry or cold, and the sick were more likely to receive treatment. I think he was carried away from truth, even from truth, by his passion.
Even so, he always believed what he said. Mayer did not bring up the topic of anti-Semitism with any of his subjects, but after a few meetings, each of them did so on his own, and they returned to it constantly.
This morning they were sent away from the city. The killing of six million Jews? Fake news. And of course they did. There was so much going on. One day it is over his head. Focusing largely on , in Defying Hitler Haffner offers a radically different picture, in which the true nature of Nazism was evident to many Germans from the start. Just twenty-five years old that year and studying law with the goal of becoming a judge or administrator, he describes the mounting effects of Nazism on the lives of his high-spirited friends and fellow students, who were preoccupied with fun, job prospects, and love affairs.
Haffner says that as soon as the Nazis took power, he was saved by his capacity to smell the rot:. As for the Nazis, my nose left me with no doubts. How it stank!
That the Nazis were enemies, my enemies and the enemies of all I held dear, was crystal clear to me from the outset. As Haffner describes it, a form of terror began quickly, as members of the SS made their presence felt, intimidating people in public places. At the same time, citizens were distracted by an endless stream of festivities and celebrations.
The intimidation, accompanied by the fervent, orchestrated pro-Nazi activity, produced an increase in fear, which led many skeptics to become Nazis.
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