From reports of dreams collected in The Third Reich of Dreams, by Charlotte Beradt, a new translation of which will be published next month by Princeton University Press. Beradt gathered the reports in Germany in the Thirties. Translated from the German by Damion Searls.

a woman

Every night without fail I try to tear the swastika off the Nazi flag. I’m proud of myself and happy when I do it, but the next day it’s always sewn firmly on again.

a math teacher

It was forbidden under penalty of death to write down anything to do with math. I took refuge in a bar. I took an extremely thin sheet of paper out of my bag and wrote down a couple of equations in invisible ink, deathly afraid.

a factory owner

Goebbels came to my factory. He had all the employees line up in two rows, left and right, and I had to stand between the rows and give a Nazi salute. It took me half an hour to get my arm raised, millimeter by millimeter. Goebbels watched my efforts like a play, without any sign of appreciation or displeasure, but when I finally had my arm up, he spoke five words: “I don’t want your salute.” Then he turned around and walked to the door. So there I was, in my own factory, among my own people, pilloried with my arm raised.

a woman

I often dream about Hitler. He wants something from me, and I don’t say, “But I’m a respectable woman.” Instead I say, “But I’m not a Nazi,” and that makes him like me even more.

an eye doctor

I was summoned to treat Hitler, because I was the only one in the world who could. I was proud of myself for that, and felt so ashamed of my pride that I started crying.

a man

I dreamed that I had stopped dreaming about everything except rectangles, triangles, and octagons, which all looked like Christmas cookies. Because we weren’t allowed to dream.