They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955. First Edition. First edition. Signed by Milton Mayer on the front free endpaper, inscribed to former owners with his initial: "For Gene & Hal with love - M. (hereafter referred to as the author). Carmel, May, 1955." xii, 346 pp. Bound in publisher's black cloth with red spine lettering. Near Fine in a Very Good dust jacket, lightly worn, identations to front pnael from being used a writing surface, spine panel sunned, chip to back panel near head, unclipped ($4.75).A scarce signed first impression of a classic account of what happened psychologically, culturally, and emotionally to Germans in the Nazi (truncated) Party in the lead up to WWII until the war's end. A finalist for the National Book Award of 1956, and often referenced for its revealing portrait of the totalitarian mindset. Still in print from the same publisher, who summarizes it thusly: " 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 Hitler wasn't the person he needed to talk to after all. Nazism, he realized, truly was a mass movement; he needed to talk with the average German. He found ten, and his discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.". (Inventory #: 140946490)