Actual experience of opposing totalitarianism Automatic translate

ST. PETERSBURG. One of the main books of 2017, The History of a German by Sebastian Hafner, was published by Ivan Limbach.

Dictatorship does not occur suddenly. Her skirmishers are perspicacious and know how to wait. They appeal to weaknesses and phobias, excite base instincts, manipulate public consciousness, manipulate facts and incite hatred. The difficult economic situation and the inability of democratic forces to join forces is an excellent catalyst accelerating the advent of totalitarianism.

That is what happened in Germany. As early as 1932, the rise to power of Hitler and his party seemed unlikely. The following year, the situation radically changed. Played the role of political intrigue, the lack of consolidation between the Communists and the Social Democrats, economic problems, Hitler’s hypnotic charisma. He skillfully pressed on pain points. He spoke of the collapse of the great empire, a revenge for the painful defeat in the First World War, unemployment. He promised to revive national pride, to cope with corruption and the Bolshevik threat.

Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek said that dictatorship is the most effective instrument of violence and forced imposition of the ideals binding on all. In five years, unemployment, as well as multi-party system and democratic freedoms, was over. Opponents of the regime found themselves in concentration camps or in the grave. The mass extermination of Jews, gypsies, Slavs, people with mental disabilities, the persecution of liberal intelligentsia, homosexuals, clergy who did not want to serve the regime - part of a cannibalistic plan to strengthen the power of the Third Reich.

There was no way to sit back. Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller, sent to Sachsenhausen and Dachau for openly criticizing the Hitler regime, delivered his famous speech, “When they arrived…” after the war. She was about his own errors and about the conformism of intellectuals. The book The History of a German (Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 1914 - 1933) is also about this. And also about how the fooling and dehumanization of the nation gradually took place, about the premises of a local tragedy that grew into a global catastrophe. About the sweet feeling of camaraderie, inseparable from the war and become poisonous bait. About the unequal struggle of a small person with the state, forcing him to abandon his beliefs and support any crimes against which the government goes. Otherwise, a concentration camp or death. Hafner chose freedom, having emigrated to England in 1938. He wrote research on Churchill and Hitler, articles for The Obsever. Son Oliver found the manuscript of "History" on the table two years after his death and published it.

The author of the afterword and brilliant translation into Russian is an employee of the Public Library of St. Petersburg Nikita Alekseev. The book, acquired in Weimar in 2002, shocked with relevance and frightening parallels.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru