NAZIISM: THE THIRD REICH
Naziism: a specific version of fascism
characterized by extreme xenophobia, a determination to carry out an extreme
eugenics program by means of violence, megalomania, and organizational
confusion.
But the Nazis did not campaign on this program in the November 1932
(which brought them 33% of the vote).
What they promised the Germans was:
-
economic
recovery and putting people back to work
-
repudiation
of the demonization of
-
a
return to ‘traditional values’
-
German
expansion (Lebensraum) = outlined already in Hilter’s
Mein Kampf
-
the
removal of Jews from positions of power and authority
Hard-care Nazi supporters could be found among the small shopkeepers,
artisans, and peasant farmers. By 1932, about 25% of the urban working class
supported the Nazis. Many women were attracted to the Nazi Party because of its
promise to provide help to families and to restore ‘traditional values’. The
Nazis fared better among Protestants than among Catholics, who largely remained
loyal to their confessional parties: the Catholic Center
Party and the Bavarian People’s Party. Economic discontent was widespread, with
unemployment in January 1933 estimated at more than 8 million.
The Nazi economic program relied on 3 instruments to revive the economy
and solve the unemployment problem:
1.
government
– funded public work projects
2.
the
establishment of economic self-sufficiency, using a system of clearing accounts
to promote trade with smaller states in Central and
3.
expansion
of the military
In fact, in the short term,
the Nazi economic program seemed to be remarkably successful: by the end of
1938, unemployment had been slashed to just 300,000. By the end of 1935, industrial
production had increased almost 50% since 1933 and
Although the Nazis did not abolish
private enterprise, they did introduce economic planning (September 1936: the 4
– year plan). They used governmental investment to drive research, development,
and production into the armaments industry and electro-chemical industry, and
set up retraining programs to train workers for employment in these industries.
In the years 1936-40, about 50% of all industrial investment in the German
economy went into the arms industry. But the Nazis did not achieve all of their
economic objectives:
-
they
failed to become self-sufficient in raw materials
-
as
of 1939, rearmament still fell short of targets and
Moreover, the average work week increased steadily form 43 hours in 1933
to 47 hours by 1938 and 48 hours in 1939.
Textbooks and curricula were overhauled, to place stress (especially in
history textbooks) on nationalism, militarism, the legitimacy of violence
against ‘enemies’, and differences in the ‘natural’ roles of women and men.
‘Race science’ was
taught as a subject and inculcated the message that some races were ‘superior’
and others ‘inferior’. Jews were treated especially harshly and even figured in
exercises in math books: e.g., to calculate how many Warsaw Jews could be
killed with a bomb. In the universities, the Nazi regime took over the
appointment of rectors, and removed more than 3,000 professors and lecturers,
for political or racial reasons. University students were required to perform 4
months of labour service in an SA camp.
Youth organizations
also played a role:
-
the
Hitler Youth: a range of leisure activities
-
the
Bund Deutscher Mädel:
offering an escape from the ‘traditional’ family-centered
female roles
But the highly regimented Hitler Youth, the efforts to force all young people to join, the discipline
and surveillance – all these elements kindled rebellion and deviance among
young people. By 1942, a high- ranking figure in the Reich Youth Leadership
admitted: “The formation of cliques, i.e., groupings of young people outside
the Hitler Youth, has been on the increase before and, particularly, during the
war to such a degree that one must speak of a serious risk of the political,
moral, and criminal subversion of youth”.
2 nonconformist groups stand out:
- the Edelweiss Pirates, who appeared at the
end of the 1930s
- the Swing Kids (Swing- Jugend)
The Edelweiss Pirates were grass root groups involving mainly persons
aged 14 to 18. Among other things they enjoyed singing songs about love and
adventure, or rewriting the lyrics for traditional hiking songs or youth
movement songs to give them an anti- Nazi orientation. The organizations
involved thousands of members. Some of them also beat up members of the Hitler
Youth or stuffed Allied propaganda leaflets (air- dropped in the woods) into
people’s letter boxes.
The Swing Kids began
with banned music, which came from countries with which
But the Swing Kids did
not merely sing and dance to forbidden hits of American jazz; they also
radicalized them, using them as a symbol of their rejection of Naziism. Untidy attire and long hair for young men were
also a mark of nonconformism. They also gladly
accepted Jews and ‘half- Jews’ into their groups.
The Nazis promoted an image of ‘clean- cut’ Aryans who dressed neatly
and conservatively, worked hard, and idolized the Führer.
The reverse side of this coin was a concerted Nazi policy to exterminate Jews,
Roma, homosexuals, and the mentally and physically disabled. Scholarly
consensus is that the Nazis exterminated about 6 million Jews, mostly through
gassing. To establish who should be considered ‘Jewish’ the Nazis had genealogy
traced back to the early 1600s: if a Jewish-sounding name showed up anywhere in
the family tree, all the descendants were considered racially Jewish, even if
they were practising Christians.
Initially, however, the
Nazi regime resorted to the compulsory sterilization of persons suffering from
illnesses thought to be hereditary. A Sterilization Law was issued on
In addition, the Nazis
began administering lethal injections to severely handicapped babies in the
first half of 1939. By the end of the war, about 5,000 infants had been killed
in this way or by deprivation of nutrition (e.g. starving them to death).
August 1939: Hitler
ordered that this program of extermination be extended to adults and set up a
secret agency to carry out this policy. Before the end of 1939 alone, about
200,000 mentally ill and handicapped persons were identified for extermination.
Gas chambers were actually constructed in six mental hospitals, and patients at
other hospitals were transferred to these for extermination.
People inevitably found out and
there were public protests: so insistent were these protests that Hitler was
forced to abandon the program of liquidating the mentally ill and handicapped
in August 1941, but by then some 72,000 persons had been liquidated.
Where Jews and Roma were concerned,
the Nürnberg Law for the Protection of German Blood
and Honor (issued on
One Nazi expert: “In the case of a
long period without work on the open road where he is entirely free to follow
his own desires and instincts, [the tramp] is in danger of becoming a freedom
fanatic…”
But race remained the central interest of the Nazis, who passed some 400
racial laws in law. The first action taken against Jews came in April 1933,
when Hitler ordered an official boycott of all Jewish-owned shops and services:
it was not widely supported and proved ineffective. But soon after came passage
of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which removed
all Jews from government posts.
September 1935: Jews
were stripped of their civil rights. By 1937 some municipalities were announcing
their desire to be ‘Judenfrei’. Nazi treatment of the
Jews became more violent in 1938. Among other things, all persons classified as
Jews were required to have Jewish-sounding first names. In November 1938 came Kristallnacht, a Nazi-led pogrom killing more than 100
Jews, destroying thousands of Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues, and rounding
up 25,000 Jews to be sent to concentration camps. By the end of 1938, almost ⅓
of
But in April 1939: the
Nazis confiscated all Jewish valuables, so that those who remained had lost the
means to get out. Nazi conquests of
In March 1933, Hitler gave a speech in which he assured Germans that
Christianity provided the foundation of “the moral and ethical life of our
people”. But this was a half- truth because the German Christian Movement set
up subsequently sought to insinuate Nazi notions into Christianity, and to
strip away the Judaic contribution to Christianity, e.g., by deemphasizing and
even delegitimating the Old Testament and by
‘discovering’ that Christ was Aryan.
Religion and culture
alike were to be controlled. This meant, among other things, the destruction of
art which the Nazis considered ‘degenerate’ and the burning of books with
liberal, left- wing, pacifist, or Jewish contents.
-
Major
book burning in
-
The
Nazis banned more than 20,000 titles.
The Nazis also turned their attention to plays (they liked musicals
which made Nazis look good) and dances. Indeed, the Nazis spend time
considering which dances should be approved. Here’s a report from the London Times (4 August 1933): “A meeting of
German dancing instructors, held under the enlightened guidance of a recognized
Nazi dancing expert, has decided that the proscription of certain popular but
un- German dances – to wit, the foxtrot, the tango, and the one-step – can no
longer be delayed. The decision marks another step in the campaign to eliminate
the demoralization of lower cultures upon German life. In a laudable attempt to
fill the big gap which will be left by the suppression of these popular dances,
the experts have compiled a list of dances recognized as German, which is
appropriately headed by the graceful ‘March Dance’. A special substitute, the
‘change step’, has been found for the foxtrot, and the list, which is forced to
rely mainly on variations of the waltz, is brought to a breathless conclusion
with the galop.”
Why should we care about this?
Because a regime which regulates whom you may marry, the content of
religious belief, and even the songs you can sing and the music you can dance
to does not recognize any boundary between public and private: in essence,
nothing was recognized as ‘private’ by the Nazis.
The Nazi state was not monolithic. Some pre- 1933 German institutions
continued to function, and even enjoy one or another degree of autonomy;
moreover, it was not until February 1938 that every ministry was headed by a
top Nazi. But shadow bureaus were sometimes set up to duplicate the work of
established government institutions.
In fact, Hitler never fully clarified what he thought the relationship
between party and the state should be. There was a Department for Affairs of
State, headed by Martin Bormann, which was supposed
to assume the party’s domination of the governmental apparatus. But in practice,
the autonomy of traditional power blocs, though increasingly limited,
especially after 1943, was never entirely destroyed.
There were also rivalries among
various Nazi leaders and institutions. What held the system together was
Hitler, who ruled by playing off one power bloc against another, and through
his control of the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst
(i.e., the use of terror).
Few regimes in history have caused as much suffering as the Third Reich;
indeed, in quantitative terms, only Stalin’s
Why?
Several answers suggested themselves:
1.
the
embrace of evil is the most extreme form of rebellion and some people are
driven by a need to rebel
2.
the
propaganda of the Third Reich projected strength and power, and some people are
drawn to power
3.
some
people are racists and find the racism of the Third Reich appealing
4.
for those craving extreme discipline and
regimentation, neo- Naziism seems to offer the
prospect of satisfaction.