Defying Hitler: morally corrupted by the Nazi regime

This is the hardest part. Sebastian Haffner recounts how life under the victorious Nazis overwhelmed his moral instincts and hopes -- and those of everyone around him. (Part one of my series on Defying Hitler: a memoir; there's a part two here:  "how could the Nazis seize power".)

For all the upheaval in German society subsequent to the Great War, the arrival of a barbaric governing force that respected no civilized norms found Haffner and his peers utterly unprepared. Everything they had ever known couldn't be collapsing, could it?

I had already lived through a fair number of “historical events.” All Europeans of the present generation can make that claim, and none more so than the Germans. Those events have naturally left their mark on me, as on all my compatriots. If one fails to appreciate this, one will not be able to understand what happened later. 

There is, however, an important difference between what happened before 1933 and what came afterward. We watched the earlier events unfold. They occupied and excited us, sometimes they even killed one or another of us or ruined him; but they did not confront us with ultimate decisions of conscience. Our innermost being remained untouched. We gained experience, acquired convictions, but remained basically the same people. However, no one who has, willingly or reluctantly, been caught up in the machine of the Third Reich can honestly say that of himself.

This unpreparedness was as much personal as societal.

... I can only smile ruefully when I consider how prepared I was for the adventure that awaited me. I was not prepared at all. I had no skills in boxing or jujitsu, not to mention smuggling, crossing borders illegally, using secret codes, and so on; skills that would have stood me in good stead in the coming years. 

My spiritual preparation for what was ahead was almost equally inadequate. Is it not said that in peacetime the chiefs of staff always prepare their armies as well as possible — for the previous war? I cannot judge the truth of that, but it is certainly true that conscientious parents always educate their sons for the era that is just over. I had all the intellectual endowments to play a decent part in the bourgeois world of the period before 1914. I had an uneasy feeling, based on what I had experienced, that it would not be much help to me. That was all. At best I smelled a warning whiff of what was about to confront me, but I did not have an intellectual system that would help me deal with it.

Like most people everywhere, politics was just background noise to Haffner, more unpleasant static than a vital interest. He didn't have to define himself in relation to this country's political currents -- and he didn't.

At that time I had no strong political views. I even found it difficult to decide whether I was “right” or “left,” ...

 

But his gut knew that rule by Hitler meant an onrushing atrocity in progress. He remembers the moment when he learned that the bombastic Austrian corporal leading a gang of thugs had assumed control of the state.

At about five o’clock the evening papers arrived: “Cabinet of National Unity Formed — Hitler Reichschancellor.” I do not know what the general reaction was. For about a minute, mine was completely correct: icy horror. Certainly this had been a possibility for a long time. You had to reckon with it. Nevertheless it was so bizarre, so incredible, to read it now in black on white. Hitler Reichschancellor ... for a moment I physically sensed the man’s odor of blood and filth, the nauseating approach of a man-eating animal — its foul, sharp claws in my face. Then I shook the sensation off, tried to smile, started to consider, and found many reasons for reassurance.

It was just too much of a break from the world that he had known to take in. But very quickly, he began to hear dire stories. This was a world before the internet, so rumors of the worst atrocities passed from mouth to mouth. Massacres in working class neighborhoods; Jewish professionals beaten and dragged into the streets. But the Nazi-controlled media -- that was all mainstream media -- also frequently trumpeted horror stories of terror, naming them victories for the purity of the fatherland.

In 1933 the terror was practiced by a real bloodthirsty mass (namely the SA — the SS did not play a part until later), but this mass acted as “auxiliary police,” without any emotion or spontaneity, and without any risk to themselves. Rather, they acted from a position of complete security, under orders and with strict discipline. The external picture was one of revolutionary terror: a wild, unkempt mob breaking into homes at night and dragging defenseless victims to the torture chambers. The internal process was repressive terror: cold, calculated, official orders, directed by the state and carried out under the full protection of the police and the armed forces.

Yet he had to keep on living. People do.

Daily life also made it difficult to see the situation clearly. Life went on as before, though it had now definitely become ghostly and unreal, and was daily mocked by the events that served as its background. 

Strangely enough, it was just this automatic continuation of ordinary life that hindered any lively, forceful reaction against the horror. I have described how the treachery and cowardice of the leaders of the opposition prevented their organizations from being used against the Nazis or offering any resistance. That still leaves the question why no individuals ever spontaneously opposed some particular injustice or iniquity they experienced, even if they did not act against the whole. (I am not blind to the fact that this charge applies to me as much as to anyone else.) It was hindered by the mechanical continuation of normal daily life.

Haffner was a law student, cramming for an approaching exam which would entitle him to a career in the courts -- and justify all the money his father had paid for his education. He spent his days reading alongside a roomful of students much like him -- a room from which all the Jewish students quickly disappeared. One day, S.A. thugs came in to inspect who was left ...

... a brown shirt approached me and took up position in front of my worktable. “Are you Aryan?” Before I had a chance to think, I said, “Yes.” He took a close look at my nose — and retired. The blood shot to my face. A moment too late I felt the shame, the defeat. I had said “Yes”! Well, in God’s name, I was indeed an “Aryan.” I had not lied, I had allowed something much worse to happen. What a humiliation, to have answered the unjustified question as to whether I was “Aryan” so easily, even if the fact was of no importance to me! What a disgrace to buy, with a reply, the right to stay with my documents in peace! I had been caught unawares, even now. I had failed my very first test. I could have slapped myself.

Shamed as he felt, the temptation was always to go along and keep his head down.

The plight of non-Nazi Germans in the summer of 1933 was certainly one of the most difficult a person can find himself in: a condition in which one is hopelessly, utterly overwhelmed, accompanied by the shock of having been caught completely off balance. We were in the Nazis’ hands for good or ill. All lines of defense had fallen, any collective resistance had become impossible. Individual resistance was only a form of suicide. We were pursued into the farthest corners of our private lives; in all areas of life there was rout, panic, and flight. No one could tell where it would end.  

At the same time we were called upon, not to surrender, but to renege. Just a little pact with the devil — and you were no longer one of the captured quarry. Instead you were one of the victorious hunters. That was the simplest and crudest temptation. Many succumbed to it. Later they often found that the price to be paid was higher than they had thought and that they were no match for the real Nazis.

Under the pressure of circumstances, the instinct is to deform your own being in an illusory escape.

You do not want to let yourself be morally corrupted by hate and suffering, you want to remain good-natured, peaceful, amiable, and “nice.” But how to avoid hate and suffering if you are daily bombarded with things that cause them? You must ignore everything, look away, block your ears, seal yourself off. ...

 ... So it is no wonder that the opposition has never developed any goals, methods, plans, or expectations. Most of its members spend their time bemoaning the atrocities. The dreadful things that are happening have become essential to their spiritual well-being. Their only remaining dark pleasure is to luxuriate in the description of gruesome deeds, and it is impossible to have a conversation with them on any other topic. ... 

... However far one retreated, everywhere one was confronted with the very thing one had been fleeing from. I discovered that the Nazi revolution had abolished the old distinction between politics and private life, and that it was quite impossible to treat it merely as a “political event.” It took place not only in the sphere of politics, but also in each individual private life; it seeped through the walls like a poison gas. If you wanted to evade the gas there was only one option: to remove yourself physically — emigration. Emigration: that meant saying goodbye to the country of one’s birth, language, and education and severing all patriotic ties.

Emigration was the personal solution that Haffner was fortunate to be able to accomplish in 1938. Shortly after, he began writing the manuscript that became this book. He abandoned the project when the shooting war began in August 1939. During the war, he made a living in journalism, first writing in German and then in English while living in Britain. In the 1950s, he left Britain to return to Germany where he became an esteemed political commentator over several decades. His son found the manuscript of Defying Hitler after his father's death.

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Coda: on The Bulwark Podcast, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, a leader in the Congressional effort to impeach Donald Trump -- twice -- was asked what it was like to see Republican colleagues he had long known absorbed by an authoritarian cult: ".. what I learned all too painfully was, it happens one day at a time, one small concession at a time in the beginning, one small lie, followed by a demand for a bigger lie and a bigger concession, a bigger moral lapse, followed by another until you know, these folks that I admired and respected, because I believe that they believe what they were saying, had given themselves up so completely to Donald Trump and his immorality."

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Postlude: G. Elliot Morris is a young and upcoming data nerd for The Economist. He has looked at what he's finding and concluded: 

"Democratic decline starts when one party refuses to play by the agreed-upon rules. Accelerating downturn ends either when forces for good reform institutions and cut off illiberalism at its roots, or when authoritarians succeed in overthrowing the government without the consent of all the nation’s people. America has begun its decline. The people must now choose the ending...."

We've been warned.