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In hindsight, it seems clear that Adolf Hitler's policies and beliefs were immoral to an extreme. Even at the time, the things he wrote and said should have made it clear to people that he should never have held any real power or authority and that his Nazi Party was a danger to society. How, then, were so many Germans led to give so much support to Hitler and the Nazis? What caused people to think that the Nazis were not only good, but better than the alternatives at the time?


Summary

Title: Seduced By Hitler. The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival
Author: Adam Lebor, Roger Boyes
Publisher: Sourcebooks
ISBN: 1570717427

Pro:
•  Lots of personal stories of the experiences of individuals

Con:
•  None

Description:
•  Analysis of how people came to compromise beliefs and values under the Nazi government
•  Explains how people come to be "seduced" by authoritarian movements

Book Review

Some scholars have argued that there is an underlying strain of antisemitism or authoritarianism in German culture that made it easier for a man like Hitler to assume power. Although such explanations may have a kernel of truth to them, they are too simple and too easy - they allow us to pretend that it was a problem unique to the Germans which we don't have to worry about in our own society. That is a serious mistake.

In Seduced By Hitler. The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival, Adam Lebor and Roger Boyes argue for the idea that the German people were "seduced" by Hitler and the Nazis.

What they mean by this is that Germans went along with the Nazis not because of threats or because they were afraid, but because they made certain choices which made the Nazi agenda possible. They didn't make a choice for mass murder and genocide immediately, but they did make a series of choices, all wrong, which gradually led up to genocide.

It is important to remember in this context that almost all Germans at the time were devout Christians, Protestant or Catholic, so these compromises were made against a background of Christian education, indoctrination, and belief. Indeed, in many cases people didn't necessarily see any compromises at all: the Nazis promised a return to traditional values and ways of living which Christian leaders had long been calling for. The Nazis also opposed the modernist, leftist system which had developed and which Christian leaders had also long complained about.

If achieving the goals which so many had sought for so long meant giving up a little in terms of civil liberties, well what was the harm? Those liberties kept being abused by unGerman, anti-Christian traitors for too long anyway.

The power and authority of the Nazis, according to Lebor and Boyes, was never as total as that of the communist party in the Soviet Union and their satellite states. There was one Gestapo agent for every two thousand Germans, but one Stasi agent for every 166 East Germans. People in Nazi Germany were not under the same level of observation or the same threat of informants as people in later communist nations. Most people in Nazi Germany were relatively safe from the Gestapo and concentration camps.

Thus the Nazi Party needed to get people's consensus and agreement in order for them to achieve their goals. Most histories of Nazi Germany discuss the various ways the government tried to avoid inflaming public opinion, but few take from this the obvious conclusion that the government and the people ended up working together.

Major social institutions, like churches and universities, played integral roles in this by making it easier for people to chose poorly and advance the Nazi agenda. These institutions backed the Nazi policies, thus giving individual, ordinary Germans an excuse for choosing to go along. Even in societies today it can be easy to underestimate the influence which non-government institutions have over people's willingness to obey the government. Churches in particular can be powerful in this regard and it is their failure to encourage open resistance to the Nazis which ultimately allowed their agenda to become so successful.

In such a context, refusing to go along meant not just standing up to the government, but also professors, priests, bishops, and other institutions with moral, social, and cultural, authority. In effect, by going along with the Nazis they reduced the scope of social action that was easy for people to choose or pursue. Personal resistance was still possible of course, but it was made so much harder with so many authority figures either refused to criticize the government or openly endorsed what the Nazis were doing. It takes a great deal of personal and psychological strength to stand up to so many different authorities in one's life.

The complicity of Germans and their active accommodation of Nazi policies is an important issue which usually isn't addressed in as much detail as Lebor and Boyes do here. They are uniquely suited to write such a book because both worked as journalists in Eastern Europe while it was still controlled by communist governments. They thus have first-hand experience life in a totalitarian dictatorship, even if a bit removed as foreigners.

There is a single question which winds its way through the book, sometimes made explicit but usually implicit: What Would I Have Done? This is a moral question in that it demands that you examine whether you would have made the same immoral choices or would have stood up for the moral decisions. This is also a social and political question because it demands that you consider whether you would have even recognized the political direction which these choices were leading.