It’s a chilling thought. Most people assume that if a society slides into tyranny, there will be a specific "moment"—a loud bang, a dramatic decree, or a clear line in the sand that everyone notices. But Milton Mayer’s 1955 masterpiece, They Thought They Were Free, argues something much more uncomfortable. It suggests that for the average person, the end of liberty feels like... nothing. It feels like normal life, just slightly more convenient or focused.
Mayer was an American journalist of German-Jewish descent. After World War II, he didn't want to talk to the monsters or the high-ranking officials at Nuremberg. He wanted to talk to the "little fellows." He went to a small German town—given the pseudonym "Kronenberg"—and befriended ten "average" Nazis. These weren't the guys pulling the levers of the Holocaust in Berlin. They were the local baker, the tailor, the bank clerk, and the salesman.
What he found was terrifying because it was so mundane.
The Slow Boil of Kronenberg
The men Mayer interviewed didn't feel like they had lived through a nightmare. Honestly, they remembered the years between 1933 and 1939 as the best time of their lives. They had jobs. They had pride. They had a sense of community.
When you read They Thought They Were Free, you realize that tyranny doesn't always look like a boot on a face. Sometimes it looks like a government-subsidized vacation or a cleaner street. These men told Mayer that they "felt free." They weren't being ironic. They truly believed they were more empowered under the Third Reich than they had been during the chaotic, hyper-inflated years of the Weimar Republic.
It’s a gradual process.
One of the most famous passages in the book describes the "step-by-step" nature of losing one's soul. Mayer’s subjects explained that each individual change was so small that it didn't seem worth a protest. One day, a new regulation is passed. It doesn't affect you, so you ignore it. The next week, a neighbor you didn't like anyway gets in trouble. You look the other way. By the time the "big" things happen—the things that would have made you scream a year earlier—you are already so far down the road that you’ve lost the vocabulary for resistance.
Why the "Little Fellows" Stayed Silent
These weren't necessarily evil men in the way we like to imagine villains. Mayer describes them as decent neighbors. They were "good" fathers. They were hard workers. That is the point.
The baker in Kronenberg didn't join the party because he hated his Jewish neighbors; he joined because the party promised to fix the economy. He joined because it felt like everyone else was doing it. He joined because it was the easiest path to a stable life. Once he was in, the psychological cost of admitting he was wrong became too high to pay.
It’s easy to judge them from 2026.
But Mayer pushes the reader to ask: What would you do? If your business was failing and a political movement promised to save it, would you read the fine print of their ideology? Or would you just be happy to put bread on the table? Most of these men didn't even read Mein Kampf. They listened to the radio, went to the rallies for the music and the spectacle, and ignored the "unpleasant" parts of the news as if it were just partisan noise.
They Thought They Were Free and the Illusion of Choice
A core theme of the book is that the people felt they were making choices. They weren't being dragged into the streets at gunpoint to support the regime. They were opting in.
Mayer’s interview with a colleague—a German philologist—is perhaps the most haunting part of the entire text. This professor explained that the regime kept everyone busy. There was always a new crisis, a new celebration, a new "emergency" that required immediate attention. This "busyness" prevented people from sitting down and thinking about the trajectory of their country.
"To live in this process," the professor told Mayer, "is absolutely not to be able to notice it."
It’s like the boiling frog analogy, though Mayer uses more sophisticated language. He describes how the transition from a semi-free society to a totalitarian one is masked by a veneer of legality. Everything was done by the book. There were decrees, there were votes, and there were courts. To the average citizen, the system appeared to be functioning normally.
The Problem of "The Others"
The men of Kronenberg were able to feel free because the repression was targeted at "The Others." As long as you were part of the "in-group," you didn't feel the walls closing in. In fact, the walls felt like they were protecting you.
- The baker saw the removal of Jewish competitors as "economic reform."
- The salesman saw the suppression of labor unions as "stability."
- The tailor saw the censorship of the press as "national unity."
They didn't see these things as a loss of freedom because it wasn't their freedom being lost. They failed to realize that once a government has the power to silence one group, it fundamentally possesses the power to silence anyone. They traded universal rights for group privileges, thinking the privilege would last forever.
The Modern Relevance of Milton Mayer
Why are people buying copies of They Thought They Were Free decades after it was written?
Basically, it’s because the book functions as a mirror. It forces us to look at how we engage with our own societies. We live in an era of massive data collection, polarized media, and rapid social change. The "busyness" Mayer’s professor complained about is now amplified by 24/7 smartphone notifications and algorithmic feeds.
We often think of freedom as the absence of a dictator. Mayer argues that freedom is actually a muscle. If you don't use it—if you don't actively participate in the difficult, often boring work of maintaining a pluralistic society—the muscle atrophies.
Many readers find the book’s description of "self-deception" to be the most relatable part. The Nazis in the book weren't brainwashed in the sense of being programmed robots. They wanted to believe. They chose to believe that the rumors of concentration camps were just foreign propaganda. They chose to believe that the leader had their best interests at heart despite the mounting evidence of corruption.
They weren't lied to as much as they lied to themselves.
Breaking Down the Psychological Barrier
Mayer notes that by 1938, even if someone wanted to speak up, they felt isolated. The regime had succeeded in breaking the horizontal bonds between citizens. You didn't know if your neighbor, your co-worker, or even your child would report you.
When trust evaporates, freedom is impossible.
In Kronenberg, people stopped talking about anything that mattered. They talked about the weather. They talked about sports. They talked about work. This "internal emigration," as some called it, allowed the regime to operate without any friction from the public. The silence wasn't agreement, but to the government, silence and agreement look exactly the same.
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Lessons for Today’s "Little Fellows"
If you’re looking for a takeaway from They Thought They Were Free, it isn't "Nazis were bad." Everyone knows that. The takeaway is that "ordinary people are susceptible to gradualism."
We often wait for a "Gettysburg" moment to defend our principles. But the battle for liberty usually happens in small, boring committee meetings, in the way we treat our neighbors who vote differently, and in our willingness to speak up when something feels wrong, even if it’s "not our business."
The men Mayer interviewed were not monsters. That is the scariest part of the book. If they were monsters, we could just say "I’m not like them." But they were people who loved their dogs, worked hard, and just wanted a better life for their kids. They just didn't realize that the price of that better life was their humanity.
Actionable Steps for Civic Awareness
Understanding the mechanics of how freedom is lost is the first step toward preserving it. Here is how to apply the insights from Mayer's work to the modern world.
1. Practice the "Small Stakes" Resistance
Don't wait for a national crisis to stand up for a principle. If you see a small injustice in your workplace, your school, or your local community, address it then. The men of Kronenberg failed because they waited for a "big enough" reason to protest, and by the time it came, they were paralyzed.
2. Audit Your Own "Busyness"
Take time to step away from the digital noise. The "busyness" described by the German professor in the book was a tool for distraction. Ask yourself: Am I following the news, or am I just following the outrage? Deep reading and quiet reflection are the enemies of manipulation.
3. Build "Horizontal" Trust
Totalitarianism thrives on isolation. Make a conscious effort to know your neighbors and build relationships with people outside your political or social bubble. When you have a strong social fabric, it is much harder for a centralized power to turn citizens against one another.
4. Diversify Your Information Sources
One of the reasons the "little fellows" were so easily misled was the monopoly on information. Even in a world with the internet, we often live in "echo chambers" that function like a monopoly. Actively seek out credible viewpoints that challenge your assumptions to ensure you aren't falling into the trap of self-deception.
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5. Study the Process, Not Just the People
Instead of focusing only on the personalities of political leaders, look at the processes. Are institutions being weakened? Is the language of "emergency" being used to bypass checks and balances? They Thought They Were Free teaches us that the "how" of tyranny is often more important than the "who."