Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich

Martyn Housden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415121330
• eBook ISBN: 9781134808465
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is a thematically arranged text illustrating popular resisitance to Nazism in Germany from 1930-1945, and the affect of Nazism on everyday life. The book combines a lucid, synthesized analysis together with a wide selection of integrated source material taken from pamphlets, diaries, recent oral testimonies, correspondence and more. Different chapters focus on social groups and activities, such as youth movements, religion, Jewish Germans, and the working classes.

	1
National Socialism what was its character and immediate appeal?

Fifty years on, whether we like it or not, all traces of Hitler and his political movement have not gone away. National Socialist insignia and slogans can still be used to shock and insult. Novels and films about the Third Reich can grip the imagination as much as ever. Glance at newspapers and you can confirm that the regime's crimes are still used as a yardstick against which to measure the worst atrocities from around the world. For both those who actually experienced life in Germany from 1933 to 1945 and their relatives, something personal remains at stake when Hitler is discussed. This is doubly so when those involved were somehow perpetrators or victims of the crimes and carnage he inspired. With every anniversary of some event from the Second World War, time and again people have to confront the dual question: what really happened and how should we understand it?

The community of historians which researches into Hitler's Germany cannot provide united answers to some of its most central problems. Why did Hitler and those around him decide to go to war in 1939? Tim Mason (1993, pp. 307–16) emphasised a crisis in the German economy; Gerhard Weinberg (1995, pp. 35, 148) says it was for reasons of ideology and cold political calculation. Why did this group bring about the Holocaust? Martin Broszat (1985, pp. 397–414) blamed the frustration of the German attack on the USSR experienced in autumn 1941; Christopher Browning (1992, p. 121) highlights the euphoria of military victory typical of the previous July. And yet, whatever the specifics of even the most shattering of policy decisions, sooner or later we encounter the unavoidable fact that the ‘radicalized, political desperados’ who ran Germany were not operating in a vacuum (Broszat, 1986, p. 81). Their policies both had implications for and made demands of average Germans. Inevitably we have to address the relationship between National Socialism and the German people. In our first document David Welch explains why this also presents a challenge to historians.

Document 1.1 The Riddle

The popular image of German society under Nazi rule is a confusing one, ranging from the adoration of crowds surrounding Hitler and other leading members of the hierarchy, to the bestiality of the concentration camps and fear of the Gestapo. It is a picture which raises questions crucial to our understanding of National Socialism. What, for example, were the respective roles of consent and coercion in sustaining the regime, and what was the nature of that consent? Behind the façade of national unity was there any dissent or even ‘resistance’, and, if so, was it terror alone that rendered it so ineffective?

Source: D.Welch, The Third Reich, 1993, pp. 2–3

To what extent and in what ways did Germans conform to or resist Hitler's politics? Here is the heart of this brief study. Our central chapters will discuss themes relating to several elements of German society: the working class, the churches, youth, members of the conservative élites and the Jewish community. Since racial policy was both the most distinctive feature of the Third Reich and raised issues which cut across most social divides, a further chapter is devoted to this in its own right. Naturally, when dealing with a society so very different to any which exists today, we must be sure that we think about it correctly. As a result, our conclusion takes the form of an investigation into what it meant ‘to resist’ in the Third Reich. Both to pave the way for the study as a whole and to balance the conclusion, it falls to the introductory chapter to investigate the character of Hitler's politics and to begin to explore how something so outlandish by contemporary standards could ever have had any appeal at all.

So what was National Socialism? Characteristically there is no simple answer. Former director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Martin Broszat, gave the following definition.

Document 1.2 Dynamism

The ideology and the practical political program of the NSDAP [National Socialist German Workers' Party] was from the very beginning not the result of an original, self-sufficient analysis of the present, or a rational proposal of a system for the future. Nazism was never an idea in the sense of intellectual penetration of political, national, social, or even biological conditions. The chain of ideological dissonances and disappointments which marked the party's path from the outset, are only the reflection of these basic logical disagreements in this so-called Nazi interpretation of life. As an ideology, Nazism is therefore basically different from Marxism with its inner logic. The vague, the accidental, and the conscious discrepancy from the time of the establishment of the NSDAP, belong to the characteristic of its presumed ideas. One could rightfully speak of Nazi ideology as a catch-all, a conglomeration, a hodgepodge of ideas…. Insofar as one can speak at all of a genesis of the Nazi conglomeration of ideas, it is less understandable from any one intellectual influence than from the conceptions, examples, sentiments, and resentments which began to form the taste of the masses and the intellectual world of the German nationalist bourgeoisie since the second half of the 19th century…. The philosophies of Fichte, Hegel, or Nietzsche did not contribute as much to Germany's pre-Hitlerian intellectual background for National Socialism as commemorations of the victory at Sedan (in the Franco-Prussian War), Bismarckian blood-and-iron quotations, the historical novels of Felix Dahn, and mass editions of sentimental ‘house and homeland’ poets. The bourgeoisie mistook the arrogant nationalism and race teachings of Paul Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, Count Gobineau, Karl Dühring, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain for knowledge of the world….

If one disregards Hitler's anti-Semitic obsession and the two or three notable fixations of his attitude toward the world, one sees that for Hitler ideology was nothing more than slogans…. His conception and description of the ideology and the program of the NSDAP consist of clichés which are hardly original. Hitler's real interest, his total concentration and the demoniacal fanaticism of which he was capable were applied, instead, to questions about effectiveness, timeliness, psychological calculations, tactics, organization, and propaganda. Hitler took a position on the details of ideology and the program primarily with reference to considerations of expediency, and not out of theoretical conviction….

Hitler was not very much concerned with the content of this so-called National Socialist idea and ideology, or with its explanation and consolidation, although he naturally assumed that it represented eternal, ‘immutable’ verities. His chief consideration was the creation of a movement in competition with Marxism, equally unified and fanatical, of the same discipline and submission, and, if possible, of even greater radicalism and aggressiveness. Hitler attempted to make up for the lack of reasoned ideology, such as that found in Marxism, through organization and manipulation….

…Hitler was not primarily a völkisch [radical nationalist] ideologist. What motivated him was not the missionary zeal of a man who wants to spread definite ideological theories as a new way of looking at the world. We have here the fanaticism of pure aggression, which receives its aims and activity from a fixed opponent-anti-dynamicism—without a substance of its own, guided by the expediency of political dogmas and the totalitarian fighting movement. It is, in the final analysis, an uncommitted fanaticism, without content, believing only in its own irresistible momentum.

Here we see the new element in the Nazi movement. The NSDAP formed by Hitler stood ideologically on the shoulders of the middle class, on the pan-German nationalist and the anti-Semitic völkisch sectarians of the prewar period. In style, organization, and propagandistic dynamism it was, however, avant-garde—formed by Hitler, Goebbels, and their helpers who consciously based it on the wartime and revolutionary experiences of the twentieth century. As a type of revolutionary movement, the NSDAP can be put much more easily on the same historical level as Sorel's teaching of ‘the use of force’ and on French syndicalism. This also influenced Mussolini and fascism. It also parallels the revolutionary theory and practice of Lenin, and is not on the same historical level with the völkisch or conservative nationalists or bourgeoisie. Hitler's true ‘idea’ lay in the attrac-tiveness of the presentation, the method of campaigning, and the appeal of agitation, all of which made it possible to cover the lack of an intellectual foundation.

Source: M.Broszat, German National Socialism, 1919–1945, 1966, pp. 32–59

To Broszat's mind, National Socialism was defined not by its ideology, but by its dynamism, its capacity for cynical manipulation, its aggression and its anti-Communism. Although the argument goes too far (see p. 10), there is still something important here. Right from its inception, throughout the Nazi Party there was always a singular expectation that good Nazis should struggle endlessly, by whatever means necessary, to achieve a stunning victory over their political opponents. It is not just chance that Hitler liked to refer to his political party as a ‘movement’ (Bewegung). He was moulding a political force that was to be nothing less than perpetual motion, constant mobilisation and infinite action.

Nor was this principle confined to the period during which the National Socialist Party was trying to win power. Josef Goebbels distinguished himself during the electoral period 1930–2 by his astute manipulation of Nazism's electoral propaganda. Once in power he became Reich Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda—his definition of the post is in document 1.3.

Document 1.3 Popular Mobilisation

We have established a Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. These two titles do not convey the same thing. Popular enlightenment is essentially something passive; propaganda, on the other hand, is something active. We cannot be satisfied with just telling the people what we want and enlightening them as to how we are doing it. We must replace this enlightenment with an active government propaganda that aims at winning people over. It is not enough to reconcile people more or less to our regime, to move them towards a position of neutrality towards us, we would rather work on people until they are addicted to us.

Source: Speech by Goebbels discussing the tasks of the newly created Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, 15 March 1933, quoted in D.Welch, The Third Reich, 1993, p. 24

These were no idle words. Organisations such as the German Labour Front (see Chapter 2) and the Hitler Youth (see Chapter 4) were set up and expanded to mobilise the whole German population. So even though National Socialism always dismissed Marxist ideas of class conflict, we have to agree that it was as ‘revolutionary’ as any other political force in history. Once again looking to Goebbels for an example, six months after Hitler had become Reich Chancellor, his minister made the following comments.

Document 1.4 Goebbels as Revolutionary

The revolution which we have carried out, is a total one. It has gripped all areas of public life and changed them from the foundations up. It has completley altered and formed anew the connections of people to each other, the connections of people to the state and to questions of existence. It was in fact the breakthrough of a fresh ideology [Weltanschauung], which had fought for power 14 years long in opposition, that with the help [of political power] gave a new feeling of state to the German Volk [people]. Whatever has happened since 30 January of this year is only the visible expression of this revolutionary process. But the revolution in itself began here. It has been led to its end point only by [its ideology].

…The system which we overthrew, was most deeply characterised in Liberalism [a doctrine of democratic parliamentarianism, economic freedom and individual rights]. If Liberalism was derived from the individual and placed the single person at the centre of everything, then we have replaced the individual by the Volk and the single person by the community…. No individual person, whether he stands at the top or bottom [of society], can possess the right to make use of his freedom at the cost of the national concept of freedom. For only the security of the national concept of freedom vouches for the continuation of his personal freedom.

Source: Speech by Goebbels at the opening of the Reich Chamber of Culture, 15 November 1933, Völkischer Beobachter, 16 November 1933

The National Socialist revolution demanded the abolition of individuality and the subordination of everything to the good of the nation. In practice it meant that the party's bosses claimed absolute power to legislate about and interfere in even the most intimate spheres of a person's life. Odilo Globocnik was regional SS leader for Lublin in Poland during much of the Second World War. In charge of death camps such as Treblinka and Maidanek he played a pivotal role in the implementation of the Holocaust. Even this position did not protect him from the total claims of the movement. On one occasion an anonymous letter was sent to his superior, Reichsführer-SS Himmler, concerning Globocnik's fiancée. The following is an extract from it.

Document 1.5 A Suitable Wife?

A few weeks ago during my stay in Zakopane I had the opportunity to get to know the fiancée of the SS- and Police Leader of Lublin. Due to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Editor's preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 National Socialism: what was its character and immediate appeal?
• 2 The workers: class action?
• 3 The churches: opposition born of belief?
• 4 Youth: rebels for which cause?
• 5 Conservative élites: successful opposition from the men of 20 July?
• 6 Germany's Jewish citizens: like lambs to the slaughter?
• 7 Exploring the inexplicable: what was the relationship between ordinary Germans and racial policy?
• 8 Opposition, resistance and German society: black and white, or grey?
• Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Index