Sebastian Haffner

Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999), better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and historian. As an émigré in Britain during World War II, Haffner argued that accommodation was not only impossible with Adolf Hitler but also impossible with the German Reich with which Hitler had gambled. Peace could be secured only by rolling back history and restoring Germany to a network of smaller states. As a journalist in West Germany, Haffner's independence and penchant for provocation precipitated breaks with editors both liberal and conservative. His intervention in the Spiegel affair of 1962, and his contributions to the anti-fascist rhetoric of the student New Left, sharply raised his profile.

After parting ways with Stern magazine in 1975, Haffner produced widely read studies focussed on what he saw as fateful continuities in the history of the German Reich (1871–1945). His posthumously published pre-war memoir, Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933 ("History of a German", published in English as Defying Hitler: A Memoir) (2003) won him new readers in Germany and abroad. His novel Abschied ("Parting"), published in 2025 after Haffner's children found the manuscript in his desk, reached the top of Der Spiegel's best-seller list after its debut.