Quitting the Master Race

Book excerpt: How do otherwise decent people become mesmerized by a doctrine of hate? How can its grip be broken? In seeking answers to these pressing questions for our times, Barbara Leimsner confronts the past to discover how one ordinary man—her adored German papa—became thoroughly indoctrinated with Nazi ideology during the Hitler years. Its hateful tentacles reached into her young life as he filled her head with beliefs about Aryan superiority, racist stereotypes, and conspiracy theories. Leimsner sweeps the reader from immigrant working-class life in 1960s suburban Ontario, back to fascism’s rise in her father’s former Sudeten homeland and into war. As she weaves together the roots of her shameful inheritance, she also discovers deeper truths about herself—and the cure for hate. This thoughtful, compelling story will appeal to anyone concerned about the resurgence of racism, nationalism, and far-right ideologies today, and those interested in the Nazi legacy and Second World War. It will speak to all readers with German ancestry grappling with the past, and those interested in the immigrant experience, issues of inter-generational memory, identity, and trauma.