Charlotte Beradt,
The Third Reich of Dreams
Princeton University Press, 2025
The dreams of ordinary people under Nazism, revealing how totalitarian power makes its way into the minds of its subjects. When a Nazi official claimed that “the only private individuals left in Germany are people sleeping,” it turns out he was actually underestimating the regime’s power…
“A spare but haunting compendium… a concise but powerful exploration of well-trod history that feels remarkably new.” — Publishers Weekly
“Damion Searls’s new translation revives this almost forgotten but hugely insightful text.” — Financial Times
“How does one become a totalitarian subject? What—aside from the threat of violence—are the necessary conditions? These are questions Beradt’s dreaming people daren’t ask themselves in the cold light of day, but the queries reappear under cover of night.”
— Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books
“After decades out of print, a new English translation has now been reissued, reaffirming [the book’s] relevance for a contemporary readership.... The Third Reich of Dreams defies categorization, blurring the lines between historical document, sociopolitical study, and literary anthology.... Beradt’s project is an unprecedented record of how the Nazi regime extended its grip beyond the public sphere into the innermost recesses of private existence.” — TLS
“Beradt reveals how terror infiltrates not just public life but the depths of the subconscious. Vividly rendered in Damion Searls’s crisp and haunting translation, The Third Reich of Dreams illuminates the profound vulnerability of life under systems of surveillance, domination, and racism.” — Roger Berkowitz, founder and director of the Hannah Arendt Center
“What happens when your dreams are no longer your own? This new translation of Charlotte Beradt’s terrifying look into the collective unconscious appears as a warning in our age of ideology, foreshadowing what happens to the inner life of a person who is forced to live under conditions of dictatorship. Fascinating and unsettling, Beradt’s collection of dreams reveals what happens when the distinction between fact and fiction ceases to exist.” — Samantha Rose Hill, author of Hannah Arendt