"When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics
but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and
its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg."
That's Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought
They Were Free. He's right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the
National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take
notice, but over time they did—what we've seen over decades is that any time
people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened,
the