First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten 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.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.”--from Chapter 13, “But Then It Was Too Late”
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346 sayfa · İlk Yayın Tarihi: 1966
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Milton MayerYazar · 1 kitap
Reform Yahudiliğinde yetişen Mayer, Morris Samuel Mayer ve Louise (Gerson) çiftinin oğlu olarak Chicago'da doğdu . Latince ve dillere ağırlık vererek klasik bir eğitim aldığı Englewood Lisesi'nden mezun oldu .Chicago Üniversitesi'nde okudu (1925–28), ancak diploma alamadı; 1942'de Saturday Evening Post'a "1928'de yatakhane penceresinden bira şişelerini fırlattığı için sürekli denetimli serbestliğe tabi tutulduğunu" söyledi. Associated Press (1928–29), Chicago Evening Post ve theChicago Amerikan .
Post'taki görevi sırasında ilk karısı Bertha Tepper ile evlendi (çiftin iki kızı vardı). 1945'te boşandılar ve iki yıl sonra Mayer, dergi sütunlarında "Bebek" olarak bahsettiği Jane Scully ile evlendi. [ kaynak belirtilmeli ] Mayer ve Scully, Scully'nin iki oğlu Dicken ve Rock'ı büyüttü . Rock Scully 1965'ten 1985'e kadar Grateful Dead'in başlıca yöneticilerinden biriydi, Dicken ise grup için mal müdürü olarak çalıştı.
