"Cicero said history “casts light on reality and is a guide to life.” The wisdom gained by understanding the past helps prevent the same errors from being repeated.
"Sebastian Haffner pursued answers to the questions of how the Nazis rose to power in Germany and why the German people did not stop them. In 1939, he wrote but never finished his partially autobiographical book Defying Hitler: A Memoir. Haffner’s probing analysis led him to conclude that the choices and mindset of ordinary Germans were responsible for Hitler’s coming to power. Germans were enablers and victims of Hitler.
"Haffner was the pseudonym of Raimund Pretzel. Haffner received training as a lawyer, but circumstances compelled him to pursue a career as a historian and journalist. He fled Nazi Germany for England in 1938.
"Why should we care about Haffner’s explanation of historical events in terms of the mindsets of ordinary people? After all, as Haffner observed, the great man theory of history is widely held:
"If you are looking for the great men, Haffner wrote, you will believe the history of the 1930s “is a kind of chess game among Hitler, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt, Chamberlain, Daladier, and a number of other men whose names are on everybody’s lips.”
"When we accept the great man theory, ordinary people have little responsibility. They are seen in Haffner’s words as “anonymous others [who] seem at best to be the objects of history, pawns in the chess game, who may be pushed forward or left standing, sacrificed or captured.”
"Haffner rejected the great man principle and articulated “the simple truth” that “decisive historical events take place among us, the anonymous masses.” He explained,
The most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large. It is characteristic of these decisions that they do not manifest themselves as mass movements or demonstrations. Mass assemblies are quite incapable of independent action. . . .
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