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For a realistic assessment, one had to turn to those who remained inside Germany. They painted a very different, much grimmer picture. One of the most sensitive and valuable witnesses was the journalist Sebastian Haffner, who stayed in Germany until 1938. Though no one expected it when Hitler became chancellor, Haffner notes, his policies were remarkably successful at first. Within three years, Germany went from deep economic depression to full employment. Hitler also rearmed the nation, making it once again the dominant military power on the continent. And then there were the foreign policy triumphs: the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the incorporation of Austria, the acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Looking back in April 1939, Hitler could say, “I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised production in all fields of our national economy. . . . I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans, who had been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space.” To which a despondent Haffner could only reply: “Damn it, it was all true, or nearly all.” Former opponents, Communists and Social Democrats among them, were won over by Hitler’s undeniable accomplishments. Haffner estimates that at his height, Hitler had the support of 90 percent of the German people, and that a majority of those who had voted against him in 1933 were now Nazi Party members or at least party sympathizers. This, Haffner says, was “perhaps his greatest achievement of all.” What’s more, such wide popularity made it difficult for critics to find fault, even when they weren’t being hounded by the Gestapo to conform. “I don’t like that business with the Jews either,” Haffner would hear from acquaintances, “but look at all the things the man has achieved!” What could one say? Haffner himself was immune to Hitler’s appeal in part because he had many Jewish friends and a Jewish girlfriend. But articulating a response was not easy because rejecting Hitler for his faults seemed to require rejecting his achievements as well, and few wanted to go back to the frustrating political paralysis of Weimar. Opponents of the Nazis who had the inner strength to resist the inevitable self-doubt that had to creep in when everyone around them was applauding Hitler for his all-too-obvious achievements found themselves increasingly living in a world of intellectual isolation and muted skepticism. According to Haffner, “What passive resistance there was to the wave of Hitlerism in Germany was mainly caused by his anti-Semitism,” but how many wanted to stand up and be labeled defenders of the Jews?
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