Somebody somewhere in the community (it doesn’t matter who or why) is telling somebody else that I’m a liar or a cheater—or a Red. Tomorrow somebody whose closer acquaintance I should never have cultivated—I have never liked him, never really respected him—will pass me without saying “Hello” to me. […] My safety, unless I am accustomed to being a dissenter, or a recluse, or a snob, is in numbers; this man, who will pass me tomorrow and who, though he always said “Hello” to me, would never have lifted a finger for me, will tomorrow reduce my safety by the number of one.

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)