If you think back to Germany in 1914-1933, what reminds you of?
World War II is generally considered to be the period from 1939 to 1945, the most famous of which is probably the Holocaust, nazi Germany wiped out nearly two-thirds of the Jews in Europe, which can be described as the largest systematic massacre of Jews in history.
But none of this happened overnight, we just saw the end result.
The epilogue to A German's Tale states: "This book answers the question in the form of eyewitness reports: 'How did it come to be that way in the first place?' This is the question that the descendants continue to ask to the generation born before the war. The answer they often get is, 'We don't know it ourselves.' ”
In the past, the historical works of this period were mostly written from the Jewish standpoint, showing the tragedy and cruelty of the massacre at that time, such as the last time I read "Anne's Diary" in 1942. But the author Hafner, as a non-Jewish German, depicts what he sees and feels from the perspective of personal experience of history, sorts out the context of how things change, and lets us stop blaming the irreparable result and explore the process that became like this. Why, exactly, did this happen?
What is the content of the book?
The author, Hafner, himself an Aryan, traveled to England in late summer in 1938 to work as a journalist, fearing that his Jewish wife would be affected.
This book is mainly the author's memoirs, from 1914 to 1918 during the First World War, the author was only seven years old, the attitude towards the war was like watching a national drama, the fanaticism and longing for victory even had a kind of fun, in the mind of a seven-year-old child, the experience of war was nurtured, until he later understood that the rise after the Nazis, this is not also a kind of help?
German society experienced the turmoil of defeat, the instability of the currency value, the Great Depression, and then in March 1933, the birth of the Third Reich, Hitler became the German Chancellor, how to use various means to uproot all political opponents, to deprive Jews of civil liberties, and later to the mass murder of Jews. The book is roughly about a piece of history, but more particularly, the angle from which the author is presented makes the events appear quite differently.
"Historical events" may be just a trace in the book, with little impact on people and little change in life; but some historical events can turn an entire generation of people upside down like earthquakes. For the author, this incident not only destabilized his life, but even made himself a "nother person" and challenged his own inner conscience.
To quote the author from the book: "Historical works based on 'scientific pragmatism' cannot tell the difference in the intensity of historical events. People who want to get to know more about it have to read biographies. But it is not the biographies of politicians that should be read, but the rarer biographies written by ordinary people who are unknown. "The annotated Diary of Anne frank from the previous one is roughly a biography of the same. When reading this book, the inner feelings are quite a lot, especially history, what does it mean?
The history we know is often a context of many people, decisions, and events, but the real history is often more complex than the book expounds, for example, we never know what the so-called "truth" is, because the perspective of standing is different, and the world we see is different. Therefore, what position you are in in history often affects the attitude of looking at things, so what is more important is not the development of events, but the "essence" of historical events.
And these essences come from all the people of the time, and can be seen as the sum of the experiences of each individual, but the common reaction of the masses at that time and the changes in the mind of the people at that time, even if they are not aware of it themselves, can influence the changes of an era. This is perhaps the key to the often overlooked thread of history. So rather than actually reading history books, this kind of autobiography of a small number of people can give us a better understanding of the atmosphere at that time and why did it become like this? ”
When this book looks at the same historical events, it is narrated from the perspective of its own small people, and when we think about this massacre that is absurd in any case, we instinctively feel how this can happen. But when it finally happens, we find that many things begin in a complex way, and often it happens under this "how can it happen" optimism. The author is a person with a strong inner resistance, but there are still many times that you have to withdraw from your true self under the last resort so that you don't really lose your self-identity.
To conclude with a sharp and profound sentence in the author's book: "Others really only need to give us specific living conditions to create a chemical reaction." It is enough to break down our self-identity and produce a catalytic effect that turns us into substances that are inexplicably excited about any manipulative action. "I hope to be vigilant all the time, and never become a person who has lost himself but has no self-knowledge."
(End)