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  • They Thought They Were Free

  • The Germans, 1933-45
  • Written by: Milton Mayer
  • Narrated by: Michael Page
  • Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (20 ratings)

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They Thought They Were Free cover art

They Thought They Were Free

Written by: Milton Mayer
Narrated by: Michael Page
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Publisher's Summary

First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of 10 Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany.

Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name "Kronenberg". "These ten men were not men of distinction," Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis.

©1955 The University of Chicago (P)2017 Tantor

What the critics say

"Among the many books written on Germany after the collapse of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich, this book by Milton Mayer is one of the most readable and most enlightening." ( New York Times)

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Excellent*

*You have to be constantly aware of the year in which it is written. And hearing a British voice actor refer to himself as an American was peculiar.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Not much information about the rise of National Socialism… which is the point of the book…

The book has an interesting premise but lacks depth. The first half feels like a narrated round table conversation about pre-WWII Germans. The second half of the book starts off with a bit more information about the life and times of the German people in that era but then shifts quickly to post WWII which is not why I picked up the book in the first place…

The narrator is trying his best to keep the material alive but a man with a thick British accent speaking German in a German accent, didn’t flow well and was hard to understand.

Interesting listen but a pass nontheless.

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an unclear message

this book gave me little value. the 10 Germans are all from the same village. it's not a story of the war. it's a bit more of a story about the village. but even that story is fragmented. does this book answer the question of why the Germans did what they did? no, no it does not.

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