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Milton Sanford Mayer was an American journalist, a Quaker, with Jewish heritage. But that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is what he wrote in one of his many books, titled, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45.

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After the war, Mayer interviewed 10 ordinary German men. He wanted to ask them about their views about National Socialism and Adolf Hitler and Jews. None of the Germans he interviewed had criminal records, with the exception of one who had set a synagogue on fire.

Mayer did not disclose that he had Jewish antecedents, because none of the men would have agreed to speak to him. All of them spoke fondly of Hitler, and all of them expressed disdain for Jews.

Mayer wrote this passage about the beginnings of it all, when Germany — and quite a lot of the world — went mad. He wrote about how a country, a people, lose their humanity.

“In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next,” he wrote. “And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed........

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