Defying Hitler

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A01=Sebastian Haffner
Author_Sebastian Haffner
autobiography
bestseller
Category=DNBA
Category=NHD
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
German history
Germany's psychological weaknesses
Hitler A Life
Holocaust
inflation after WWI
mass psychosis
Nazi Germany
Nazi rise to power
Peter Longerich
post-WWI revolution
Second World War memoir
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
why the Germans were seduced by Hitler
World War Two

Product details

  • ISBN 9781399638104
  • Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Oct 2026
  • Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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'If you have never read a book about Nazi Germany before, or if you have already read a thousand, I would urge you to read Defying Hitler. It sings with wisdom and understanding' CRAIG BROWN, MAIL ON SUNDAY

AN ORDINARY GERMAN'S MEMOIR OF HITLER'S RISE TO POWER

Born in Berlin in 1907, Sebastian Haffner came of age against the backdrop of a rapidly-changing Germany: an economy ravaged by the First World War, the radicalisation of political parties through the Weimar years, the fateful rise of Hitler's National Socialists. He watched as his peers were entranced by Nazi propaganda, even himself briefly feeling the pull of an ideology that promised purpose and pride in the face of nihilism and defeat.

Yet Haffner defied Nazism's promises and, as a political émigré, went on to author some of the century's most important studies of Hitler and the Nazis. This memoir - written in 1939 after his emigration to England, but only discovered after his death six decades later - is an astonishingly insightful portrait of that generation of Germans born in the first decade of the twentieth century who, in such large part, came to be seduced by Hitler and Nazism. Critically acclaimed around the world by scholars and readers alike, it is an invaluable record of a society on the precipice of catastrophe.

'An astonishingly effective and well-written explanation of how the Nazis managed so easily to exploit Germany's psychological weaknesses' ANTONY BEEVOR

Sebastian Haffner (orig. Raimund Pretzel) was born in 1907 in Berlin. He emigrated to England in 1938, and changed his name to protect his relatives in Germany from persecution. He wrote for the OBSERVER for many years, and became a British citizen in 1948. He returned to Germany in 1954, where he was a prominent journalist and historian, writing for DIE WELT and STERN. He died in 1999.

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