Conversation

“Because the mass movement of Nazism was non-intellectual in the beginning, when it was only practice, it had to be anti-intellectual before it could be theoretical. Expertness in thinking, exemplified by the professor, by the high school teacher, and even by the grammar school teacher in the village, had to deny the Nazi views of history, economics, literature, art, philosophy, politics, biology, and education itself. Thus Nazism, as it proceeded from practice to theory, had to deny expertness in thinking and then, in order to fill the vacuum, had to establish expert thinking of its own—that is, to find men of inferior or irresponsible caliber whose views conformed dishonestly or, worse yet, honestly to the Party line. The nonpolitical schoolmaster could not help being dangerous—not if he went on teaching what was true. In order to be a theory and not just a practice, National Socialism required the destruction of academic independence. In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion.”

—from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, a journalist, based largely on interviews of former Nazis several years after the war and published in 1955. Recommended reading for insights about human, not just Nazi, bigotry and contemporary politics.

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