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“I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”
― The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
― The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
“It was in Nino’s Catholic education that he encountered, for the first time, a setback: he failed the entrance exam for Regis, the prestigious Catholic high school in Manhattan he was eyeing. A classmate from this period, who”
― Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986
― Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986
“Scalia, in a Catholic school, was in an atmosphere that causes students to feel superior to begin with. As the school was Jesuit, the atmosphere was also one of being superior to all other Catholics. And then since Xavier was a military school, its students were aggressively superior.”
― Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986
― Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986
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A place for booktokers to interact with each other and share the love
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We're fans of Rowling's series because we know that it is more than just a children's fantasy story. ...more
Spencer’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Spencer’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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