Categories: books
Date: 14 May 2009 20:17:11
Defying Hitler: a memoir by Sebastian Heffner is translated by the author's son, Oliver Pretzel. The original German title is a bit bland, really, "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The history [or story] of a German). Although the English title is an improvement in my view it still does not quite describe what is between the covers of the book.
The author relates his life as a schoolboy in the First World War fascinated by the facts and figures of war which were posted outside the newspaper's offices. The numbers of casualties, the numbers of metres (metres!) advance the troops had made on the front line in France/Belgium and so on.
Later he finds himself equally fascinated by the figures which characterised Germany's hyperinflation after the War. A working man's wages brought home on a Friday night in millions of Marks was not enough to buy a loaf of bread by Tuesday morning. It was against this background of craziness that Heffner, the pen-name of Raimund Pretzel, watched the rise of Hitler. Heffner, an 'ordinary German' taking his exams and beginning to form relationships with girls in the heady liberal days of 1920's Berlin, is disgusted by the Brown Shirts' tactics and cannot believe that upright, middle-class citizens would ever have anything to do with this peculiar man from Austria. He then finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place and finds himself being sucked relentlessly into the whole system, a situation which is particularly difficult as his fiancée is Jewish.
'Defying Hitler' could be better described as wishful thinking on the part of the author? publisher? as Heffner does not seem to outwardly resist Hitler's regime. Perhaps a more accurate title would be 'Surviving Hitler' or even 'Avoiding Hitler' but, whatever the title, the account makes for interesting reading and the translation is first class.