They Thought They Were Free

In the early 1950s Mayer — an American Jewish journalist — moved to a small German town and spent a year befriending ten ordinary men who had been members of the Nazi Party. Not monsters. A tailor, a cabinetmaker, a bill collector, a high school teacher. He wanted to understand how it happened from the inside — how ordinary people became participants in something that looked, from inside, like normal life. What he found was that the changes came so gradually, each one small enough to accommodate, that by the time the full picture was visible it was too late to do anything about it. Published in 1955 and more widely read now than at any point since. The most unsettling book on this shelf because its subjects are so recognizable.