Excerpt from Charles Taylor on Sebastian Haffner’s memoir Defying Hitler, including his experience as a law student early in the National Socialist regime.
If by now the incidents that follow are familiar—the intimidation, the erosion of press freedom, violence in the streets, people fleeing or attempting to flee—it’s their novelty to Haffner that carries the book, the distorting mirror effect of the degradation of the ideas of freedom and individuality that should be the very stuff of everyday life. And at the book’s end (Haffner never finished writing it), Haffner sees how easy it is to get swept up in the spirit that was taking over Germany.
It’s announced that all law candidates (including Haffner) must, before taking their final exams, attend training camps for ideological indoctrination and to perform military exercises. Haffner goes off with trepidation, determined to keep to himself lest he reveal his true political beliefs.
He describes young men—halfheartedly at first—taking part in the Heil Hitlers and the singalongs. The change that takes place is subtle, nothing as grotesque or clichéd as a sudden conversion to Nazi ideology. Instead, it’s a slow erosion of the “I” (Haffner even drops the word in his narrative) as each personality is subsumed into the whole. “By acceding to the rules of the game that was being played with us, we automatically changed, not quite into Nazis, but certainly into usable Nazi material.”
(Bold emphasis added.)
(On the dropping of the “I” — fascinating to consider the connections to Rand’s novella Anthem.)
Related: Nietzsche and the Nazis (book). “Why They Loved Hitler” (Triggernometry interview).