\u201cThey stood out like skunks in their brown shirts, black pants, and jackboots.\u201d Rolf is upset to see the deteriorating relationship between his always-angry older brother, Romer, and their widowed father. But he\u2019s more disturbed by evidence that Romer is drifting toward sinister, spiderlike Hans and the squad of uniformed thugs behind him\u2014particularly after the distribution of recruitment leaflets is followed by arson and the beating of a local Jewish merchant as bystanders watch\u2026some approvingly. Matters come to a head when Hitler speaks at a mass rally; Rolf comes away from the experience firm in his conviction that the Nazi takeover must be resisted. This fast-moving, stirring tale is set in 1929, but along with a timeline that begins with Hitler\u2019s birth and ends in 1935, the author intersperses helpful flashbacks about the end of the First World War, the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, and other events presented as news stories. He also makes explicit the book\u2019s cautionary purpose: \u201cIt\u2019s common for us who live in democracies around the world to say, \u2018it can\u2019t happen here,\u2019\u201d he writes in his afterword. \u201cIt can.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThey stood out like skunks in their brown shirts, black pants, and jackboots.\u201d Rolf is upset to see the deteriorating relationship between his always-angry older brother, Romer, and their widowed father. But he\u2019s more disturbed by evidence that Romer is drifting toward sinister, spiderlike Hans and the squad of uniformed thugs behind him\u2014particularly after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}