Regular marked price: $18.95Discount Price: $14.40
Cost Savings: $4.55 (24%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 943.086
EAN num: 9780465085729
ISBN number: 0465085725
Label: Basic Books
Manufacturer: Basic Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: February 27, 2006
Publishing house: Basic Books
Sale Popularity Level: 106303
Studio: Basic Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The shocking oral history that reveals the truth about daily life in Nazi Germany
The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust still present some of the most disturbing questions in modern history: Why did Hitler's party appeal to millions of Germans, and how entrenched was anti-Semitism among the population? How could anyone claim, after the war, that the genocide of Europe's Jews was a secret? Did ordinary non-Jewish Germans live in fear of the Nazi state? In this unprecedented firsthand analysis of daily life as experienced in the Third Reich, What We Knew offers answers to these most important questions. Combining the expertise of Eric A. Johnson, an American historian, and Karl-Heinz Reuband, a German sociologist, What We Knew is the most startling oral history yet of everyday life in the Third Reich.
'A very important book.' (Financial Times)
'A wellspring of information, this text provides unprecedented insights into the mind set and daily lives of 'average' Germans, and the lives led by Jews in Nazi Germany.' (History in Review)
'A major contribution to the understanding of life in Nazi Germany.' (Booklist)
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
This book is a combination of both good empirical social science and excellent oral history. It takes us a hefty step further along the path to better understanding the ugly stain that the Nazi era has left on our collective consciences and on our humanity.
It consists of a series of carefully constructed interviews of Germans, both Jew and Gentile, who lived during the Nazi reign and who willingly gave their recollections and understandings of the social and political conditions of those turbulent times. The authors fashioned their questionnaires and organized the results in such a way that they were able to give the most convincing answers yet to some of the more enduring, perplexing and controversial questions the Nazi era has raised.
Among them are: Did Hitler rule with an iron hand or was he simply a popular dictator? [Yes he did, but not nearly as effectively as historians have suggested.] What made him so popular among ordinary Germans? [He became a symbol and a national cause for the restoration of German pride and national loss of respect, and with this a reason that ordinary Germans could hope again.] How anti-Semitic were ordinary Germans? [Anti-Semitism was always a simmering pot on a low flame, until the Nazis came into power and turned the heat up to the genocidal level.] Did both the German Gentiles and/or the Jews know about the mass murders? [Many knew; some were entirely innocent; others had strong suspicions but did not want to know because they knew that knowing was dangerous knowledge to own, and so both Gentiles and Jews willingly turned their heads away.]
Most of all this book challenges the conventional wisdom that Hitler's Germany was more about a single man, Adolph Hitler, or was even only about a brutal totalitarian government. It proves in a rather convincing way that Nazi Germany was about the depth of hatred and mistrust ordinary German's had held for Jews for most of the millennium.
The "take away message" of the book is that in every case, the answers to the questions posed are not simple but complex; nuance matters a lot; and that even brutal racist dictators can be very popular. Since most of those who were of age during the Nazi era are now very old and are quickly disappearing, this book may be the last opportunity for in-depth interviews of them. For that reason and for the quality of the research, this is a five star effort.
Rated by buyers -
The Gestapo served as the leading instrument of terror in Hitler's police state and its terror fell most heavily upon specifically targeted groups, including, Jews, Communists, Socialists, Homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma, and out-spoken critics of the regime. As for the vast majority of Germans, they had no contact with the Gestapo, provided the Gestapo few tips, and felt little fear of ever being arrested. The German public's silent acquiescence to Nazi policy did not, however, preclude whispered criticisms of the regime or knowledge of the fate of these targeted groups.
Johnson's conclusions, in short, are consistent with those reached by other leading scholars in the field while offering a unique depth lacking in most studies. Specifically, Johnson=s extensive research into the Gestapo merges records of post-war trials of former Gestapo officers with original documentation drawn from Gestapo case files, an array of contemporary surveys, and numerous personal interviews. Within Johnson=s focus on the Krefeld and Cologne Gestapo offices, Gestapo officers aggressively and brutally enforced the laws directed at specific target groups. Despite the evidence at hand, most Gestapo officers would never be called to account for their crimes and usually lived out their lives in post-war West Germany on a full pension.
Rated by buyers -
This book addrsses one of the most challenging aspects of undesrtanding the Holocaust. Read it...
Rated by buyers 
-
The book is more geared for apologist excuses, although there was some bits of good information inside from Jewish survivors. There seemed to be too much commentary by Germans that are still blinded by Hitler, even after all these years.
At one point, I nearly wanted to slam the book against the nearest wall, disgusted by the mentality that still exists today.
It just leaves me to one conclusion: They knew. They just didn't care.
Rated by buyers -
`What We Knew' is both a compelling and somber read. The authors sent out surveys to hundreds of people who had experienced life under the Third Reich. This book is a collection of the subsequent interviews with those who responded. The book is divided into groups of interviewees such as; Jews who left before Kristallnacht, Jews who were deported, non-Jews who claimed to know little about the mass murder, and non-Jews who knew everything. As the title implies, the book sets out to explain how much was known by ordinary Germans about the horrors of the Nazi regime, and most specifically the mass murder of Jews. Aside from this point, the interviews also reveal a vivid description of life in Nazi Germany, many of which contain some fresh insight that was somewhat surprising. Naturally, it is impossible to verify much of the testimony given, but the authors transform the stories into a statistical data analysis that uncovers a certain pattern in their experiences.
For instance, it seems that a large amount of Jews either knew of, or suspected that their brethren were being systematically killed as early as 1941. For Germans, the number of people who knew or suspected was much smaller, but steadily increased as the war went on. Most Jews did not experience significant anti-Semitism before National Socialism. Even well into the NS years, many Jews relate how many of their neighbors did not turn on them and remained opposed to anti-Semitism, at least in theory. There seemed to be a geographical aspect to the anti-Semitism as well. For instance, Jews in Cologne experienced far less anti-Semitism than Berlin. Keep in mind that these were just the majority opinion, and that virtually every one of these statements was contradicted by one interviewee or another. Several Jews felt that the average German sincerely believed in Hitler's anti-Semitic policies and knew everything. It should also be noted that the Jews who emigrated before or shortly after Kristallnacht had slightly more benign experiences, obviously confirming that things gradually got worse as time went on.
For the Germans, the stories were slightly more conflicting. One former soldier for instance, claims how he personally witnessed the murder of hundreds of men, women, and children, but was sworn not to tell anybody about it. Another soldier says that he told friends and family about what he witnessed on the Eastern front while he was on leave, and that the killings of Jews were common knowledge. Most of the Germans claimed that there were rumors of such things, or perhaps heard of specific instances of killings, but did not believe that Jews were being systematically murdered. One thing that did seem consistent was the fact that for non-Jews, Nazi Germany was not a terror state. Most Germans enjoyed a relatively normal and pleasant life under the Third Reich and they did not live in fear of the Gestapo. They supported Hitler for various reasons, most commonly because he got rid of unemployment, reinstilled nationalistic pride, etc.
Overall, this book seems to prove that people's experiences varied greatly under the Third Reich, and there is no real way to prove definitively who knew what and when. That being said, `What We Knew' definitely gives the reader a good cross section of both Jewish and non-Jewish experiences and thus a good general idea of what life was like in Nazi Germany. It will probably never be known exactly who knew what, but this book comes closer than any other that I have read, and for that, I recommend it highly.
Find other books like this one:
