Ask Lemmy

Times like the ones we are living in often do not feel abnormal for most people. Solzhenitsyn talked about this, getting transported as a Gulag prisoner through a civilian train station, twenty feet away from families pleasantly chatting waiting for their train to go on holiday, having a chance to watch them for an extended time while he was in transit from one hell to a different hell.

In 1953 Mayer interviewed ten male residents of "Kronenberg" (in reality Marburg) to understand how ordinary Germans felt about Nazi Germany.[2][3][4] The town, located in Hesse with a population of 20,000 and a university, was controlled by the United States during the postwar period of occupation.[5] The interviews occurred during Mayer's term at Frankfurt University's Institute for Social Research as a visiting professor.[6] All ten were in the lower middle class.[4] The author was not a German speaker and the men did not speak English.[7]

The interviewees had the following occupations: baking, cabinetmaking, clerking at a bank, collecting of bills, police, sales, studying, tailoring, and teaching. Walter L. Dorn of the Saturday Review wrote that the interviewees were from a pro-Nazi bloc that was the "anti-labor, anti-capitalist, and anti-democratic lower middle class".[5] The tailor had served a prison sentence for setting a synagogue on fire, but the others were never found to have actively attacked Jewish people.[5] Mayer read the official case files of each interviewee.[2]

The author determined that his interviewees had fond memories of the Nazi period and did not see Adolf Hitler as evil, and they perceived themselves as having a high degree of personal freedom during Nazi rule,[8] with the exception of the teacher. Additionally, barring said teacher, the subjects still disliked Jewish people.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free