The TV presentation of Sebastian Haffner's "The Story of a German: An Individual against a Thousand-year-old Reich" (video)

According to Mariam Gurzadyan, "The Story of a German" was discovered among the author's papers by his children after his passing and was published posthumously. Haffner began writing it in 1939 but set it aside: "While the book is grounded in historical facts, it adopts a fictional narrative style rather than a strictly documentary one. The author uses it to illustrate the rise of fascism and its impact, tracing events from the outbreak of the First World War to the subsequent defeat, capitulation, and oppression of the Germans. Haffner presents this narrative through annotations, framing it as the recollections of a child living during that era. Through this perspective, he sheds light on the unfolding realities that emerged particularly after 1928".

According to the translator, when the author says "individual", he means all those who were against the state system because they could not tolerate it and did not resist it. The author also touches on how it happened, how a country with such a well-mannered, developed, spiritual culture reached such a level of madness. "The defeat, and what happened in general, forced the Germans to accept their guilt".

According to Tatev Nalbandian, the editor of the book, although historical facts are written from the eye of an eyewitness, the book is written in an artistic style. "It is a really good book to read. Although the book was written 100 years ago, about Germany, you can find many similarities with our reality".

Haffner passionately questions how such an illiterate individual could grasp power, how a culturally rich nation like Germany could fall prey to propaganda and mass deception, and how its people could rally behind and sustain such a regime. He delves into the perplexing unraveling of societal sanity, pondering how a government could construct policies based on the most primal and ignoble human instincts.

Political scientist Hovsep Babayan noticed that the book is more about Nazism than Fascism. "The Germans were not the first people to lose the war. Here several circumstances should be considered. Apart from the defeat, many conditions were dictated to Germany, territorial losses, etc.

There were forces in Germany that paid attention to this and tried to build their political capital on it, we are talking about the Nazis, the Nazi forces played on that nerve, to show that the defeat was unfair, the defeat could not have happened because other circumstances affected on it, and that Germany did not deserve the situation in which it found itself. Exploiting this, they began to gather people around them, to generate the desire for revenge among the majority."

According to the speakers, the book can be considered as a warning. After all those disasters and considering the global trends today, nothing can be excluded. Similar books aim to warn people: "Be cautious, don’t lose your mind, and don't lose your sanity."