Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2002) is a first-person account of growing up in Germany during the rise of Hitler.
page 151: The day they threw the Jews out of the law courts
"Meanwhile 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."
page 155: "We were not equal to the situation, even as victims. If you will allow me this generalization, it is one of the uncanny aspects of events in Germany that the deeds have no doers and the suffering has no martyrs. Everything takes place under a kind of anesthesia. Objectively dreadful deeds produce a thin, puny emotional response. Murders are committed like schoolboy pranks. Humiliation and moral decay are accepted like minor incidents. Even death under torture only produces the response 'Bad luck.'"
page 185: "Today the political struggle is expressed by the choice of what a person eats and drinks, whom he loves, what he does in his spare time, whose company he seeks, whether he smiles or frowns, what he reads, what pictures he hangs on his walls, It is here that the battles of the next world war are being decided in advance. That may sound grotesque, but it is the truth."
pages 199-200: "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 helplessly, 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."
pages 213- 217: A conversation in the law study group
"It happened just after the murders in Copenick. Brock and Holz came to our meeting like murderers fresh from the deed. Not that they had taken part in the slaughter themselves, but it was obviously the topic of the day in their new circles. They had clearly convinced themselves that they were in some way accomplices. Into our civilized, middle-class atmosphere of cigarettes and coffee cups the two of them brought a strange, bloodred cloud of sweaty death.
"They started to speak of the matter immediately. It was from their graphic descriptions that we found out what had actually happened. The press had only contained hints and intimations.
"'Fantastic, what happened in Copenick yesterday, eh?' began Brock, and that was the tone of his narrative. He went into detail, explained how the women and children had been sent into a neighboring room before the men were shot point-blank with a revolver, bludgeoned with a truncheon, or stabbed with an SA dagger. Surprisingly, most of them had put up no resistance, and made sorry figures in their nightshirts. The bodies had been tipped into the river and many were still being washed ashore in the area today. His whole narrative was delivered with that brazen smile on his face which had recently become a stereotypical feature. He made no attempt to defend the actions, and obviously did not see much need to. He regarded them primarily as sensational.
"We found it all dreadful and shook our heads, which seemed to give him some satisfaction.
"'And you see no difficulty with your new party membership because of these things?' I remarked at last.
"Immediately he became defensive and his face took on a bold Mussolini expression. 'No, not at all,' he declared. 'Do you feel pity for these people? The man who shot first the day before yesterday knew that it would cost him his life, of course. It would have been bad form not to hang him. Incidentally, he has my respect. As for the others - shame on them. Why didn't they put up a fight? They were all longtime Social Democrats and members of the Eiserne Front [non-Communist leftist semimilitary group]. Why should they be lying in their beds in their nightshirts? They should have defended themselves and died decently. But they're a limp lot. I have no sympathy for them.'
"'I don't know,' I said slowly, 'whether I feel much pity for them, but what I do feel is an indescribable sense of disgust at people who go around heavily armed and slaughter defenseless victims.'
"'They should have defended themselves,' said Brock stubbornly. 'Then they wouldn't have been defenseless. That is a disgusting Marxist trick, being defenseless, when it gets serious.'
"At this point Holz intervened. 'I consider the whole thing a regrettable revolutionary excess,' he said, 'and between you and me, I expect the responsible officer to be disciplined. But I also think that it should not be overlooked that it was a Social Democrat who shot first. It is understandable, and in a certain sense even justified, that under these circumstances the SA takes, er, very energetic countermeasures.'
"It was curious. I could just about stand Brock, but Holz had become a red rag to me. I could not help myself. I felt compelled to insult him.
"'It is most interesting for me to hear your new theory of justification,' I said. 'If I am not mistaken, you did once study law?'
"He gave me a steely look and elaborately picked up the gauntlet. 'Yes, I have studied law,' he said slowly, 'and I remember that I heard something about state self-defense there. Perhaps you missed that lecture.'
"'State self-defense,' I said, 'interesting. You consider that the state is under attack because a few hundred Social Democrat citizens put on nightshirts and go to bed?'
"'Of course not,' he said. 'You keep forgetting it was a Social Democrat who first shot two SA men -'
"'- who had broken into his home.'
"'Who had entered his abode in the course of their official duty.'
"'And that allows the state the justification of self-defense against any other citizens? Against me and you?'
"'Not against me,' he said, 'but perhaps against you.'
"He was now looking at me with really steely eyes and I had a funny feeling in the back of my knees.
"'You,' he said, 'are always niggling and willfully ignoring the monumental developments in the resurgence of the German people that are taking place today.' (I can hear the very word 'resurgence' to this day!) 'You grasp at every little excess and split legal hairs to criticize and find fault. You seem to be unaware, I fear, that today people of your ilk represent a latent danger for the state, and that the state has the right and the duty to react accordingly - at the very least when one of you goes so far as to dare to offer open resistance.'
"Those were his words, soberly and slowly spoken in the style of a commentary on the Civil Code. All the while he looked at me with those steely eyes.
"'If we are dealing in threats,' I said, 'then why not openly? Do you intend to denounce me to the Gestapo?'
"About here Von Hagen and Hirsch began to titter, attempting to turn it all into a joke. This time, however, Holz put a spanner in the works. Quietly and deliberately (and it was only now that I realized, with a certain unexpected satisfaction, how deeply angered he was):
"'i admit that for sometime I have been wondering whether that is not my duty.'
"'Oh," I said. I needed a few moments to taste all the different flavors on my tongue: a little surprise, a little admiration for how far he was prepared to go, a little sourness from the word 'duty,' a little satisfaction at how far I had driven him, and a new cool insight: that is the way life is now, and that is how it has changed - and a little fear. having made a quick assessment of what he might be able to say about me, if he went through with it, I said, 'I must say that it does not speak for the seriousness of your intentions that you have been thinking about it for some time, only to tell me the result of your thoughts.'
"'Don't say that,' he said quietly. Now all the trumps had been played and to raise the stakes further we would have had to become physical."
My complete notes from Defying Hitler are at
http://www.dailykos.com/...