[The following takes place during the early days of Hitler’s chancellorship in Germany.]
Similarly, a man living in Germany, Victor Klemperer, determined to “bear witness” in his diary, could sit at his writing table on an August day in 1933 – when Shirer and his wife might have been on the beach in front of their villa, happily reading and chatting – and observe without any knowledge of what lay ahead: “I simply cannot believe that the mood of the masses is really still behind Hitler. Too many signs of the opposite. But everyone, literally everyone cringes with fear. No letter, no telephone conversation, no word on the street is safe anymore. Everyone fears the next person may be an informer.”
Source:
Wick, Steve. “The Writer.” The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 8. Print.
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