A newly discovered memoir by a German classified as “Aryan” describes the insidious early spread of Nazism and how hard it was to resist.

Charles Taylor writes in Salon about a book on how fascism can destroy a society from within, and how seemingly respectable societies allow for such events to transpire. I know it seems like a cliche anymore these days, but it is a lesson we are overdue in heeding with meaningful seriousness.

Here are just a few of the key points outlined in this review, though this is a highly recommended and relevant essay, that effectively and accurately puts the onus of responsibility on the course of events of a nation and society on all of its members, not just a few rogue leaders.

By not limiting his definition of history to the stories of the powerful (who are often presumed to be the only ones to make it), Haffner is, I think, committing an act of resistance. It isn’t just that Haffner is acknowledging political and historical reality (”The most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large”), but that he is insisting on the democratic idea that people are not merely “objects of history.” Writing in the midst of a crushing dictatorship, Haffner is saying that defiance can come even from an individual who simply refuses to accept the “truth” of the political rhetoric that is put before him.

The question that always springs from accounts of Hitler’s Germany is “Why didn’t the Germans resist?” Some of the reasons have long been obvious. There is a natural human instinct for survival, however odious the forms it takes or the lengths it may go to. And there is also the understandable refusal to believe that the worst will come to pass. Again and again in “Defying Hitler” Haffner’s acquaintances talk of the Nazis as clowns who, because they cannot help revealing their true natures, are destined to fall out of power.

Haffner’s endorsement of the idea that even dictators are powerless without the consent (or at least the passivity) of the masses means that “Defying Hitler” has no time for quibbling about how much the Germans knew and when; he was there shortly before World War II broke out, after all. Haffner takes it for granted that Germans knew about the brutality of Nazi rule — brutality that, logically, would only increase as the state consolidated its power — and that they lacked the will to resist it.

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This, then, is the chapter that none of the film versions of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” have given us: what life feels like to the pods, a fleeting taste of how easy it would be to submit, how pleasant to see the world through the eyes of the young Nazi who addresses them one morning: “What dismal faces you’re all making, in such glorious weather — and with such a satisfying occupation.” What a relief it would be to sleep.

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