As a former journalist and current novelist, two things have always intrigued me: Ponzi schemes and Nazis. I can’t get enough of either, in books or on the screen.

The Nazis are the gift that keeps on giving for fiction and nonfiction writers, even 75 or so years after Germany was crushed in World War II. There are several reasons for this.

First and foremost is the resurgence of fascism and dictatorships across the globe. You’d think we would’ve learned, but we haven’t. Second, some Nazis became “respectable” after the war, especially those who helped us win the Space Race. Erstwhile Third Reich scientist Wernher Von Braun titled his memoir I Aim at the Stars, which was true enough, although one Brit said he should’ve added, “But I Occasionally Hit London.”

The Nazis were so bad that they gave monsters a bad name. Most historical monsters before WWII were blood-sucking vampires, murderous werewolves, or clomping creatures with square heads and neck bolts. After the war, they were just misunderstood men.

Speaking of monsters, I just watched “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street,” which deals with Bernie’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme. (How’s that for a segue?) I’m familiar with Ponzi schemes, having myself blown the whistle on the Allen Stanford Ponzi, which only came to light after Madoff imploded. Newly nervous Stanford investors wanted to access their money, but like Madoff’s, the Stanford billions existed only on paper.

(The S.E.C. ignored both Madoff and Stanford for a decade despite ample proof that the returns both men claimed were mathematically impossible.)

But back to the Nazis. I’ve long wondered how people in the 1930s could’ve been so blind to Hitler and his designs of conquest. It turns out, some weren’t. They even wrote about it in books and letters. (With the internet, we really have no excuses for what’s going on today.)

Some of these books compile stories written prior to WWII. One I recently read is Travels in the Reich, 1933-1945: Foreign Authors Report from Germany. It’s edited by Oliver Lubrich and contains jottings from the famous and the not-so-famous. A few of the writers actually liked the way the Nazis did things, but even then, one gets a feeling of foreboding. Thought in Germany is stifled. Fear is pervasive. People are hauled off trains and disappear.

Another book I read is In the Garden of Beasts; Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson. It details the life of the U.S. ambassador and his family in Germany and contains contemporaneous writings from his spirited daughter, who has affairs with prominent Nazis until she realizes they’re just gangsters propping up a murderous regime. It’s a must-read, as is Mein Kampf, Hitler’s turgid but revealing tome about what he would do if he gained power. I read it and was suitable frightened.

As readers of this column must know by now, I loved The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer’s 1959 history of Nazi Germany. The Nazis were terrific record-keepers, which was probably a bad idea (as many of them realized at the end of a Nuremberg rope). Shirer was an American correspondent who barely escaped Berlin before we entered the war. He wrote several books about his experience, some of which contain his dispatches from the 1930s. Though his broadcasts were heavily censored at the time, one can still read between the lines about the growing Nazi depravity. Shirer was beside himself that America seemed to be asleep.

Back to Wall Street. My niece Larie Gibbons wants me to read 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation, the new book by Andrew Ross Sorkin. I will, since I’m certain another financial debacle is coming, thanks to tariffs and other 1930s policies now in vogue.

See? I told you we never learn.

Lawrence De Maria has self-published more than 35 thrillers and mysteries on Amazon. He was born just before Hitler killed himself. As far as he can tell, there is no connection. But he’s still looking for one.