In 1955 an American sociologist named Milton Mayer published a book called They Thought They Were Free. The book was an attempt by Mayer to understand why millions of Germans had surrendered the freedom they had enjoyed under the Weimar Republic and embraced a dictatorial—and later genocidal—regime. Mayer indicated in his preface to the 1966 edition that in 1955 a number of scholars were interested in the book but the public was not, either in Germany or the United States.

Mayer's research assistant, John Dickinson, had carried out extensive interviews with ten men who had been Nazis. These men included a high school student, a tailor, a tailor's apprentice, a baker, a cabinetmaker, a salesman, a bill collector, a bank clerk, a teacher, and a policeman. Three of the men had been unemployed when they became Nazis. In his analysis of the interviews, Mayer determined that these men had thought they were free under the Nazi regime because they felt they were free from the reality and fear of unemployment and financial hardship. They also felt as though they were free from the "oppression" of the Jews although only one of the ten had close contact with a Jew.

These men also felt free from the vice and crime that they felt characterized the pre-Nazi period. And they were free to enjoy the return to German power and glory: the roads, schools, hospitals, and stadiums built by the Nazi public works programs. The men did not miss the freedom to vote, to have free speech or a free press, or to criticize the government. They believed that only the "enemies" of the state had to worry about the police and arrest.

Mayer concluded that German character had been molded by history and tradition and would require a long period of reeducation to change.

The national behavior of Germany between 1933 and 1945—and it would seem, most Germans—indicates a character that is just about as unattractive as a character can be. Among the million or so who ran, or tried to run, away from National Socialism, there were many who opposed it on principle. Maybe a few million more fought it, or tried to fight it, from within. A few million more didn't like it. But so many Germans liked it (and not just some of it, but all of it) that it may justly be said to have represented the national character of the time. And National Socialism, made in Germany, out of the German character, is the worst thing that modern man has made.¹

When the book was reissued in 1966 many more Germans and Americans found it compelling reading and it formed the basis for many debates. A year later, in 1967, the publication of another book, Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich's The Inability to Mourn, marked a significant step along the road to the German people's confrontation with their past. The husband and wife psychoanalysts believed that most Germans had not yet truly faced their collective and individual histories of the Nazi years, particularly the mass murder programs. In their analysis of the Holocaust, the writers stated,

Empathy is required here in relation to events the very scale of which makes empathy impossible. Thus we cannot hope to achieve total understanding. However, there must come a gradual expanding recognition of the fact that with the Third Reich a dictatorship utterly contemptuous of humanity returned to the center of German civilization.²

The Mitscherlichs argued that unless people confronted the past and worked through the memories and implications of what had happened they could not truly get beyond those memories and events. They compared this to mourning a death of a loved one; a process that needs to be worked through before one can move on with one's life in a healthy way.

Connections for the Classroom...

• When Milton Mayer's book, They Thought They Were Free, was first released in the 1950s, German and American citizens did not show interest. But when it was reissued in 1966, many more found it compelling and provocative. How might you account for this delay in interest?

• Do you agree with Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich's argument that unless people confront the past and work through the memories and implications of what has happened they cannot truly get beyond those memories and events?

• In the aftermath of genocide or mass violence, is there a "right time" for a society to confront its painful past? Can you identify events that need to be more fully confronted in your community or country? What are the opportunities and challenges in confronting that past?

• The Mitscherlichs wrote that only if the horrors of the past are faced can we have any hope that those horrors will not be repeated. "This [the process of mourning] allows us to hope that if the memories are truly retrieved, we Germans might learn from what happened instead of having to act out yet again the components of ourselves which we cannot bear to accept into our conscious minds, namely a capacity for hatred as foolish as it is deadly."³ Do you agree with the Mitscherlichs' claim that confronting the past is necessary to avoid repeating a horror such as the Holocaust?

• Mayer concluded that German character had been molded by history and tradition and would require a long period of reeducation to change. His book and the Mitscherlichs' book are components of the long process of educating a society, not only on its distant and more recent past, but also how that collective history affects the choices Germans make today. What do you think is the proper role of education in a society trying to reconstruct after a genocidal history? In what ways would you include education within a larger strategy of transitional justice?

Resources for the classroom...

• The work of the Mitscherlichs helped pave the way for the election of Willy Brandt. Brandt was a charismatic leader who confronted Germany's past in a very real way: On a visit to Poland in 1970, Brandt dropped to his knees in front of a monument commemorating the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943. You can learn more about this famous event by going to the reading, "What People Do When Words Fail Them": Willy Brandt's Silent Apology.

• Elements of Time. This resource book from Facing History and Ourselves serves as a companion to the Facing History video collection of Holocaust testimonies. The companion manual describes the context for and content of video testimonies dealing with a wide range of themes pertinent to the study of the Holocaust and human behavior. Throughout the book are cross-references to readings and topics in our core resource book, Holocaust and Human Behavior, as well as to other Facing History publications and special information packets and audiovisual materials available at the Facing History Resource Center and Library.

¹ They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer (University of Chicago Press), 1966, p. 242.
² Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (The Inability to Mourn) by Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich (Grove/Atlantic), 1967.
³ Ibid.