HI136 The History of GermanyLecture 11

Everyday Life and the Possibility of Resistance

Education and Youth• ‘Co-ordination’ of education

system– ‘Politically unreliable’ teachers

sacked.– Curriculum brought into line with

Nazi ideology.• Youth Organizations:

– Deutsches Jungvolk (German Young People, DJ) – Boys aged 10-14.

– Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) – Boys aged 14-18.

– Jungmädelbund (League of Young Girls) – Girls aged 10-14.

– Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls, BDM) – Girls aged 14-18.

Religion• The German population 75% Protestant and 25% Catholic in the 1930s.• National Socialism fundamentally anti-Christian.• Attempts to introduce a kind of völkisch neo-paganism, the German

Faith Movement.• However, Hitler recognized that, at least in the short-term, the

established churches had to be conciliated.• July 1933: Concordat with the Vatican promises religious freedom for

Catholics in exchange for a promise to keep out of politics.• Attempts to ‘co-ordinate’ the Protestant churches:

– The German Christians sought to merge Protestantism with Nazi ideology.– July 1933: new church constitution introduced and Ludwig Müller appointed

Reich Bishop.• The Nazis never fully succeeded in their aims, but while individual

Christians were among the opposition to Hitler, the churches took a more pragmatic view.

“I view the first task of the new ministry [of Propaganda] as being to establish co-ordination between the Government and the whole people . . . It is not enough for people to be more or less reconciled to our regime, to be persuaded to adopt a neutral attitude towards us, rather we want to work on people until they have capitulated to us, until they grasp ideologically that what is happening in Germany today is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”Josef Goebbels, 15 March 1933

Themes• Anti-Semitism• Anti-Bolshevism• Awakening of the German people• Superiority of the Aryan race• Mastery of Central Europe

(Lebensraum)• Volksgemeinschaft (People‘s

community)• Hitler myth

Broadcasting• 1933: Reich Radio Company

established – a single state broadcaster controlled by the government.

• 1932: Only 25% of German households owned a radio.

• Volksempfänger (People’s Receiver)

• By 1939 70% of German families have access to a radio, and announcements broadcast by loudspeakers in public places.

• ‘Radio Wardens’ make sure that people tune in to Nazi propaganda.

The Press• Control of the press harder

to achieve.• Germany had nearly 5,000

different daily newspapers in 1933.

• Eher Verlag (Nazi publisher) bought up papers – it owned 2/3 of the German press by 1939.

• The Government controlled news stories at source through the state news agency, DNB.

• ‘Editor’s Law’ (Oct. 1933) made editors personally responsible for content.

The lounge at the German press club inBerlin, with a picture of Hitler on the Wall.

The Nazi Calendar

• 30th January – The Seizure of Power• 24th February – The refounding of the Party (1925)• First Sunday in March – Heroes Remembrance Day• 20th April – Hitler’s Birthday• 1st May – National Day of Labour• Second Sunday in May – Mothering Sunday• September – Annual Nuremberg Party Rally• 9th November – Munich Putsch (1923)

The SS• The Schutz Staffel (SS) was set

up in 1925 as an elite bodyguard for Hitler within the SA.

• Heinrich Himmler appointed its leader in 1929.

• Membership grew from 290 in 1929 to 52,000 in 1933. By 1939 there were 240,000 members of the SS.

• Strict rules for admission based on racial purity and political reliability. Himmler saw the SS as the ‘new aristocracy’ of a Nazi dominated Europe.

• Power and influence grew after the Night of the Long Knives and it became one of the most powerful institutions in the Third Reich.

Group photo of an SS wedding in thegrounds of the Main Office for Race

and Settlement (1936). Himmler standsto the right of the bride.

Heinrich HimmlerReichsführer SS and

Chief of Police

SS

Leibstandarte Waffen SS Totenkopfverbände

Ordnungspolizei (order police)

Municipal police

SipoSecurity Police

(Heydrich)

KripoCriminal Police

GestapoSecret state police

SDSecurity Service

(Heydrich)

Foreign intelligence

Domestic intelligence

Organisational Structure of the Nazi Police Apparatus

Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler(1900-1945)

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942)

Opposition in the Third Reich • Organising a coup• Attempting to assassinate Hitler and other leaders• Going on strike• Helping victims of Nazism• Spying for foreign governments• Deserting from the armed forces • Committing suicide• Emigrating• Distributing anti-Nazi leaflets• Underachieving in the workplace• Publicly criticising the regime, telling anti-Hitler jokes• Listening to American jazz and the BBC• Not giving the Hitler greeting• Refusing to join Nazi organisations• Reading banned Nazi literature

“I swear by God this sacred oath: I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German nation and people, Supreme Commander of the armed forces, and will be ready as a true soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath”.

Military Oath of Allegiance

Plots against Hitler• May-September 1938: Army

plot to depose Hitler.• 13 March 1943: Attempt to

blow up Hitler’s plane.• March 1943-March 1944:

Various military plots to assassinate Hitler orchestrated by Colonel Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht.

• 20 July 1944: Plot to kill Hitler with a bomb planted in his military headquarters in East Prussia.

Helmuth von Moltke before the people’s court, July 1944

George Elser (1903-1945) Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Sophie Scholl (1921-1943) Hans Scholl (1918-1943)

The Historiography of Resistance

• Ongoing debate on the nature, extent and effectiveness of the resistance.• Used to legitimize post-war states

– East German historians presented Communist resistance as the only anti-Fascist force in Germany.

– West German historiography concerned with accusations of ‘collective guilt’ & presented resistance as based on high moral and ethical values, the individual standing up against tyranny.

• 1960s: Hans Mommsen – argued that national-conservative resistance rooted in the anti-democratic right of the 1920s.

• 1970s: Peter Hüttenberger & Martin Broszat – resistance in everyday life.• Broszat – Resistenz (immunity): people retain their moral & ethical values

without actively challenging the regime.• Mommsen – Widerstandpraxis (Resistance Practice): resistance was a

process encompassing different forms of dissent as individuals came to reject the regime in its entirety.

• Ian Kershaw – Two approaches to the study of resistance: Fundamentalist (dealing with those committed to the overthrow of the regime) and Societal (dealing with dissent in everyday life).

• The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler in Nazi Germany (2009)

• Available to buy/rent from iTunes