Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner translated from the German by Oliver Pretzel Published by Plunkett Lake Press, April 2014 © Sarah Haffner and Oliver Pretzel Translation copyright © Oliver Pretzel First published in Germany by Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt as Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 1914-1933 ~ Other eBooks from Plunkett Lake Press ~ Also by Sebastian Haffner Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918-1919 Germany: Jekyll and Hyde The Ailing Empire: Germany from Bismarck to Hitler The Meaning of Hitler The Rise and Fall of Prussia By Sholom Aleichem From the Fair By Henri Alleg The Question By Jean-Denis Bredin The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus By Carl Djerassi The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’ Horse: The Autobiography of Carl Djerassi By Alfred Döblin Destiny’s Journey By Helen Epstein Children of the Holocaust Joe Papp: An American Life Music Talks: The Lives of Classical Musicians Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother’s History By Charles Fenyvesi When The World Was Whole: Three Centuries of Memories By Frederic Grunfeld Prophets Without Honour: Freud, Kafka, Einstein, and Their World By Anthony Heilbut Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present By Eva Hoffman Lost in Translation By Peter Stephan Jungk Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood By Egon Erwin Kisch Sensation Fair: Tales of Prague By Heda Margolius Kovály Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 By Peter Kurth American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson By Hillel Levine In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust By Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions By Jan Masaryk Speaking to My Country By Melita Maschmann Account Rendered: A Dossier on my Former Self By Albert Memmi Portrait of a Jew The Colonizer and the Colonized The Liberation of the Jew The Pillar of Salt By Sheldon Novick Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes By Susan Quinn A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney Marie Curie: A Life By Santha Rama Rau East of Home By Vlasta Schönová Acting in Terezín By Susan Rubin Suleiman Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook By Joseph Wechsberg Homecoming The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood By Victor Weisskopf The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist By Chaim Weizmann Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann By Charlotte Wolff Hindsight: An Autobiography By Friderike Zweig Married to Stefan Zweig By Stefan Zweig Adepts in Self-Portraiture: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History Balzac Dostoevsky by Zweig Freud by Zweig Joseph Fouché: Portrait of a Politician Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud The Struggle with the Daemon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche The World of Yesterday Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky For more information, visit www.plunkettlakepress.com Contents Introduction Prologue Chapters 1 to 15 The Revolution Chapters 16 to 25 LeaveTaking Chapters 26 to 40 Afterword Germany is nothing, each individual German is everything. — GOETHE, 1808 But first the most important thing: “What are you doing in these great times? “Great I say; for times seem great to me, when each man, driven half to death by the era’s hate, and standing in the place he’s given, “Must willy-nilly contemplate no less a thing than his own BEING! A little breath, a second’s wait May well suffice — you catch my meaning?” — PETER GAN, 1935