Sebastian Haffner's Defying Hitler

In Sebastian Haffner’s memoir Defying Hitler, he explains how he experienced the beginning of the rise of Nazi Germany and Hitler through World War I and shortly after the war. According to Haffner, the rise of Nazism in Germany can be accredited to the mindset of the youth, extreme nationalism throughout the war, and the crippling inflation of the German currency. Haffner talks about the youth during the First World War and how they were influenced quite differently than the soldiers that fought in it. The schoolboys saw war in the light of something honorable and glorious. Haffner talks of how the schoolboys “experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game… and were untouched by its realities” (Haffner 17). The soldiers at the front line had different views of war than the adolescence back at home. The soldiers were sometimes regarded as “critics” to the Nazis. They saw the true pains of war and death, unlike the boys at home who just saw war “at a distance” (Haffner 14). As Hitler would give speeches to these schoolboys, their interests were peaked even more and Nazism was pulling the youth in even farther. Germany’s youth during the war proved to be a big factor in the rise of the Nazi Party. Haffner explains how all of the children, including himself, took great pride in the war. Haffner made it very clear that war was exciting for them and it was never dull, (Haffner 17). The sense of a unifying nationalism was something new for the whole country. Even though there were shortages of food and living space, the people banded together and supported the war effort more or less. Haffner talks of how nationalism definitely fueled the Nazis, “Many things that bolstered Nazism and modified its character, but its roots lie here: in the experience of war” (Haffner 17). Without the war, the German people would never have shown as much nationalism which would therefore hurt the Nazi movement in the end. At the end of the war, a crippling inflation was about