Ebook: They Thought They Were Free The Germans, 1933-45

"When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg."

That's Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He's right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we've seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we've seen in the past year.

Mayer, an American journalist of German descent, traveled to Germany in 1935 in attempt to secure an interview with Hitler. He failed, but what he saw in Berlin chilled him. He quickly determined that...