Sebastian Haffner, born in Berlin in 1907, was a war journalist, publicist, historian and writer. During the Second World War he began writing for the “Observer” in British exile. In the 1950s he returned to Germany. His writings on Adolf Hitler and National Socialism in particular have received lasting attention. We do not want to go into his biography in detail here, but simply quote from his book “Defying Hitler: A Memoir” (German title “Geschichte eines Deutschen”, History of a German) because he had such a brilliant rhetorical style – and because many of his observations are strikingly reminiscent of today’s (global) political situation.
Haffner had already written the manuscript in 1939 in English exile, but it was only discovered in his estate after his death and published posthumously (2000). Haffner analyses the development of Germany between 1914 and 1933, combined with his personal experiences and impressions during this time.
Due to the many predictions that came true – Haffner even expected Hitler to commit suicide – historians doubted the year the manuscript was written, but these doubts were refuted.
Sebastian Haffner describes Hitler’s effect “as the hypnosis of his audience, who succumbed to the magic of the disgusting and the intoxication of evil with increasing lack of resistance.”
“I had at best a warning smell of what I was about to be confronted with; but I had no conceptual framework in which to accommodate it.
Haffner writes: “No one of the existing political parties particularly attracted me, despite the large number of choices. However, as history shows, membership of none of them would have protected me from becoming a Nazi. What protected me was – my nose. I have a fairly well-developed intellectual sense of smell, or, to put it another way, a feeling for the aesthetic values (and non-values!) of a human, moral, political attitude or mindset. Unfortunately, most Germans lack this completely. The cleverest among them are capable of engaging in completely stupid discussions, using nothing but abstractions and deductions, about the value of something that you can simply tell by your nose that it smells bad.
For my part, even then I had the habit of forming my few firm convictions by means of my nose. As far as the Nazis were concerned, my nose decided quite clearly. It was simply tiring to talk about what was debatable or at least “historically justified” among their alleged goals and intentions, since the whole thing smelled the way it did. I was not mistaken for a moment about the fact that the Nazis were enemies – enemies to me and to everything I held dear. What I was completely mistaken about, however, was how terrible enemies they would be. At the time I was still inclined not to take them entirely seriously – a common attitude among their inexperienced opponents that helped them a lot and still helps them today.
March 1933
This March (1933) brought four things, the result of which was the unassailable Nazi rule: terror; parties and declamations; betrayal; and finally a collective collapse – a million-fold simultaneous individual nervous breakdown.
Many, indeed most, European states were born bloodier. But there is none whose birth was so disgusting.
“The simplest reason, and almost everywhere, if you dig deeper, the deepest one, was fear. Joining in the beating so as not to be among those beaten. Then: a somewhat unclear intoxication, intoxication of unity, the magnetism of the masses. And for many: disgust and a thirst for revenge against those who had let them down. And then, a strangely German figure, this train of thought: “All the predictions of the Nazis’ opponents have not come true. They claimed that the Nazis would not win. But now they have won. So their opponents were wrong. So the Nazis are right.”
People started to join in – at first out of fear. But once they had joined in, they no longer wanted to do it out of fear – that would have been mean and contemptible. So they supplied the corresponding attitude. This is the basic psychological figure of the victory of the National Socialist revolution.
The strange and discouraging thing, however, was that – beyond the initial shock – this first manifestation of a new murderous mentality unleashed a flood of conversations and discussions throughout Germany – not about the anti-Semite question, but about the “Jewish question.” A trick that the Nazis have since succeeded in using on many other “issues” and on an international scale: threatening someone – a country, a people, a group of people – with death – they managed to make it so that not their own right, but the peoples´ right to live was suddenly generally discussed – i.e. called into question.
Everyone suddenly felt obliged and entitled to form an opinion about the Jews and to express it. Fine distinctions were made between “decent” Jews and others. Some emphasized the scientific, artistic and medical achievements of Jews, as if it were to justify the Jews. Others accused them of precisely this: they had “foreignized” science, art and medicine. Jews were blamed to make up such and such a high percentage of doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc. In general, people liked to decide the “Jewish question” by calculating percentages.
A lie told often enough will eventually become the truth. Attributed to Joseph Goebbels (probably falsely)
One last quote from Haffner, about what happens when the fundamental solidarity within the human race is destroyed: “”Now, no one doubts that in reality Nazi anti-Semitism has almost nothing to do with the Jews, their merits and their faults. The interesting thing about the Nazis’ intention, which is hardly concealed anymore, to train the Germans to persecute the Jews all over the world and, if possible, to exterminate them, is not the justification they give for it – that is such blunt nonsense that it is self-degrading to even discuss it in a combative way – but precisely this intention itself. It is something truly new in world history: the attempt to override the basic solidarity of every animal species within the human race, which alone enables them to survive in the struggle for existence, to direct the human predatory instincts, which are otherwise only directed against the animal world, towards objects within their own species, and to “sharpen” an entire people like a pack of dogs against humans.
“Once the fundamental, perpetual willingness to murder fellow human beings has been awakened and even made a duty, it is a small thing to change the individual objects of this chase. Even today it is quite clear that instead of “Jews” you can also use “Czechs”, “Poles” or something else. What is involved here is the systematic inoculation of an entire people – the Germans – with a bacillus which causes those infected by it to act like wolves towards fellow human beings; or, to put it another way, the unleashing and cultivation of those sadistic instincts which were suppressed and extinguished by a process of civilisation spanning thousands of years.”
