First published in 1933, and swiftly translated into English and several other languages thereafter, Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel The Oppermans depicts a German Jewish family during the Nazi rise to popularity and then to power. While it remained influential in Germany after World War II, the book has largely been forgotten in the U.S. A newly published and revised English translation seeks to remedy the situation. Ari Hoffman writes in his review:

Reading The Oppermans is like riding a Ferrari into a slow-motion car crash; the ride is a pleasure if you can ignore the wheels spinning out and look away from what’s coming around the bend. . . . The Oppermanns shines when it aims a spotlight on the small-scale gains that made Hitler possible. A Nazi schoolteacher bullies [one young member of the family] and changes the curriculum, and both students and staff are too morally supine to stop it. “The boys,” we are told, “quickly come to terms with their first Nationalist teacher.” The Oppermans believe that “they had won a place for themselves in this country.” They hardly stood a chance.

The signs are everywhere, but so are the misreadings. A salesman notices that a gang tries to push a Jew in front of a train, but reassures himself that they were stopped in time. The butler at a private club turns up for work one day wearing a swastika. . . . Hitler, “the Leader,” is dismissed because his prose is turgid.

It is to Feuchtwanger’s credit that we like and respect his characters enough to resist blaming the Oppermans for their own misfortune. The novel is populated with major and minor characters who are allowed petty anxieties and grandiose dreams. They yearn for more marks, or a plate of piping hot schnitzel, or a joyride through Berlin. They try to keep the Nazis in the background because their foreground is full of life.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.