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Written in 1939 and unpublished until 2000, Sebastian Haffner's memoir of the rise of Nazism in Germany offers a unique portrait of the lives of ordinary German citizens between the wars. Covering 1907 to 1933, his eyewitness account provides a portrait of a country in constant flux: from the rise of the First Corps, the right-wing voluntary military force set up in 1918 to suppress Communism and precursor to the Nazi storm troopers, to the Hitler Youth movement; from the apocalyptic year of 1923 when inflation crippled the country to Hitler's rise to power. This fascinating personal history elucidates how the average German grappled with a rapidly changing society, while chronicling day-to-day changes in attitudes, beliefs, politics, and prejudices.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
10mentions
6people
2011–2023years
70% recommend30% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- One of my favorite books which I discovered here on HN. Love
the writing style. Even my 6 year old loves it. Somewhat similar are “Defying Hitler” by Sebastian Haffner (Berlin in the 1930s) and “When I Was A Little Boy” by Erich Kästner (Dresden of the 1910s).
Would love to hear more such recommendations. Doesn’t need to be German focused. Just this kind of immersive history from a personal perspective, written in a plain, clear, easy to read style.
- Books your own kids have loved, books you'd want to read to your kids if you had kids, or books you wish your parents had read to you when you were little.
Am interested primarily in books rooted in the real world that kids can relate to. Like stories based on...
- the lives of interesting people (Semmelweis, Curie, or maybe even just someone who lived through interesting times or with an interesting outlook on life), - how everyday life looked like in the past and/or accounts of human history through the eyes of a child living back then, - how everyday life looks like today for kids in different countries, - travel, adventure and curiosity.
Fiction is also fine if you think the main character would be someone you'd want your child to spend time with and learn from.
The books don't necessarily have to be books written specifically for kids. For instance, I find that my daughter (6) loves it when I read to her Sebastian Haffner's "Defying Hitler", which I discovered here on HN. It's not a book written for children at all, but it's been one of her favorites for weeks now. She only understands about 90 % of it - but that leads us into some of our most interesting conversations.
- Books that immerse you in the zeitgeist of an era through the lens of a private individual's life. Books that don't describe historical events from outside, or from above, but from the perspective of an ordinary person whose life was shaped or touched by them and who saw and felt them as they were happening at the time.
I'm thinking here primarily of memoirs of real people. But if there's a well-researched novel that did this for you, please do share it as well!
Some examples I have loved so far:
- Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (Vienna in the 1890s, Europe pre-WWI and during the wars)
- Albert Ellis, All Out! (life in New York in the 1920s - electric cars, subway sexual encounters)
- M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine (the history of computing, as well as its intersections with the Cold War, with behaviorism in psychology, and other things, through the life of J.C.R. Licklider)
- Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler (life in Berlin during the rise of Hitler and during WWII, written in such a plain and clear language that my 6-year-old can vividly picture much of what he's describing)
- Here are all books I read (this year so far I read 50 books):
https://books.j11g.com/search.php?log=3
Three books from 2021 stick out:
- If This Is a Man by Primo Levi. I would urge everyone to read this. This history should be known to everyone.
- Defying Hitler (the story of a German 1914 - 1933) by Sebastian Haffner. Masterfully written autobiography that explains the rise of nazi Germany more than any other history book I ever read.
And one more for the HN crowd:
- The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. Often tipped, but it really is an insightful book, and a fun read.
- I had to come back to this thread to say thank you for this recommendation. I just started reading “Defying Hitler”. What an amazing book! It is so well written that I could read it to my five-year-old. Really a deep dive into history from a first person perspective.
I am also reading JFK by Logeval, which describes the same events as seen (or unseen) from the outside of Germany. Being able to watch events unfold from those two perspectives is just fascinating.
- > actually all those real successes as a politican made him being voted to become Germans fuerer.
Where do you have this from? From a computer game or a movie? From a gumball machine?
Read this book.
