Source: D. Bankier, The German and the Final Solution (Oxford, 1992), pp.14-27.
As can be seen from the surveys, the public adopted two main forms of response. One was to refrain from reading several newspapers daily, since, in the words of Oldenburg's Minister of the Interior, '[In the public's view] all newspapers say the same thing' 34 . The other response was to search out alternative information sources. Once a gap had been opened between their sense of reality and the picture presented by the media, people quickly learned to rely on foreign newspapers or on church periodicals, which managed to get round the Gleichschaltung policy to some extent. As a result the church press experienced a great surge of popularity. The Aachen Gestapo report for September 1934 indicates that people thought church periodicals more reliable than their competitors 35 .
In the space of three months, the local church weekly increased its circulation from 65,000 to100,000 copies 36 . The yearly summary for the same region is equally revealing. It states that this same periodical more than doubled its circulation during the year: from 38,000 to 90,000 copies on av. The Nazi who reported the success of this non-Nazi paper correctly attributed it to the ordinary reader's lack of trust in the party press 37 .
The foreign press enjoyed increased circulation in Germany for the same reason. The Swiss Basler Nachrichten was especially popular, and the Aachen Gestapo reported an increase of almost 100 per cent in the number of foreign newspapers found and confiscated by the security services 38 . While the actual number of foreign papers in circulation remained relatively small, the Duesseldorf Gestapo reported that the readership far outstripped the available copies:
We are aware that apart from constantly tuning to the foreign stations, [the public] is intensely reading the foreign press. The latter is sold as soon as it appears and is passed from hand to hand among friends and acquaintances until it is completely illegible, while with the local press an attempt is made to read between the lines' 39 .
Of course, geography affected the availability of foreign papers: they were easier to come by in border regions such as the Rhineland, which received newspapers direct from Belgium and Holland. At the same time, many foreign papers penetrated further into the Reich, as the reports from such regions prove. After voicing the familiar claim that the population was critical of the press and complained of its one-sidedness, the governor of the Kassel district stated that the public was turning more and more to the foreign press 40 . The situation in the Minden district in August 1934 was described in the following terms: (Reading the foreign press is becoming increasingly widespread, a fact which unequivocally shows that the population does not agree with what is written in the German newspapers' 41 . The same reporter noted that 'The people listen avidly to news broadcasts on foreign radio stations, and read the foreign press, chiefly from Switzerland' 42 . It could be argued that this was not so surprising in a district that, with industrial centres such as Bielefeld and Herford, had a high concentration of voters who had previously supported the leftist parties. However, in Protestant eastern regions known for their support of Nazism a similar picture prevailed, as may be seen from a Gestapo report from Frankfurt-on-the-0der 43 .
Even on the Jewish question, the official version of events was not accepted as reliable. With regards to the anti-Semitic riots in Berlin in July 1935, it was reported from Aachen that (The vague official news printed in newspapers on what is happening in Berlin is not deemed reliable by the public.' The same Gestapo station added that the public had lost all trust in the party press, and relied on foreign papers and broadcasts to find out what was really happening 44 . This rejection of, and alienation from, official propaganda by large sectors of the population explains the steady decline in the circulation of the party press. Casual statements in various reports at the start of Nazi rule already point to this trend. To begin with, the Gestapo commentators noted the phenomenon but dismissed it as a local aberration since they were unable to see the picture for the Reich as a whole. A case in point is the governor's account from the Aurich district for the month of September 1934. The report states that the circulation of the only party paper in Emden, the Ostfriesische Tageszeitung, had decreased and that the public was searching for alternative information sources 45 . As in Protestant Friesland, so in the Catholic west: the governor of the Koblenz district, in his report for October-November, complained that the public was gradually cancelling its subscriptions to the local party paper, the Koblenzer Nachrichtenblatt 46 .
The vacuum produced by the declining circulation of the party press was quickly filled. Side by side with this decline, all reporters noted a steady rise, or at least no decline, in the circulation of church-connected papers. The governor of the Wiesbaden district wrote in his survey for February 1935 that, parallel to the decline in circulation of the party press, there had been a 100 per cent rise in sales of the St Georg Blatt, a church paper 47 . The situation in Aachen was much the same. Here the Nazi press enjoyed wide popularity in 1933, but in September 1934 the public, particularly the rural population, was switching to newspapers which took a bourgeois or Catholic line 48 . Even the most important Nazi newspaper in the west of the country, Robert Ley's Westdeutscher Beobachter, was injured by the rise in circulation of competing newspapers 49 . Indeed, Goebbels' own paper, Der Angriff suffered in the same way: its circulation fell from 94,200 in January 1934 to 82,996 in July, and to 61,000 in January 1935 50 . The decline was unsurprising. Der Angriff was sold only in the streets and not by subscription, and it was therefore more difficult to coerce people to buy it. Again, the process was not confined to a few regions. A Gestapo station in Protestant Lower Saxony, a stronghold of Nazism, reported that, 'Despite the pressure of the party, and despite the financial support extended through advertisements, the circulation of the National Socialist press is constantly declining' 51 . He went on to describe the fate of the local party organ, the Hanoverian Niedersaechsische Tageszeitung. Similarly a survey from Speyer shows that there the party press had declined by one quarter 52 . This state of affairs was well known to exiles, who apparently had access to very reliable and accurate information sources 53 .
The changing fortunes of the press in the Cologne area is illustrated by the following table, which compares the circulation figures of a Nazi paper, the Westdeutsrher Beobachter (WB); a bourgeois paper, the Koelnische Zeitung (KZ); and a Catholic newspaper, the Katholische Kirchenzeitung (KK) 54 .
WB KZ KK
Jan. 1934 202,657 104,190 80,939
Apr. 1934 191,416 99,181 83,822
July 1934 184,450 99,825 84,193
Oct. 1934 186,620 92,061 84,715
Jan. 1935 186,029 93,127 88,000
The increase in circulation of the foreign and church press, and decline in circulation of the party press, was accompanied by another manifestation of the reading public's resistance to indoctrination: conscious de-politicisation. This found expression in a growing interest in strictly local events, and unwillingness to consider country-wide topics. Thus, for instance, we learn from the Gestapo in Hanover that people there wanted the press to increase coverage of local events at the expense of national affairs 55 . This is typical of public reaction to the press in dictatorial systems. While in regimes with a free press the individual can voice criticism of, or express his own views about, events of which he has no first-hand knowledge, in totalitarian regimes his personal experience necessarily becomes the most reliable information source, and it is by this that he judges what he reads. The reader assumes that reports on local events cannot be distorted, since he has some first-hand knowledge of them and has no need of an official commentary 56 .
From the point of view of the Nazi regime, distrust of the party media reached crisis level in early 1935. The Duesseldorf Gestapo report for February states in this connection, 'The National Socialist press is facing extremely serious difficulties and is hardly holding its ground. The number of readers is steadily declining for the newspapers do not interest them at all. Only an economic blow or the total destruction of the bourgeois press can change the situation' 57 . In March the Bielefeld Gestapo reported that in Padeborn the latest edition of the Voelkischer Beobachter had sold only forty-five copies 58 . A month later the district governor announced that the local Nazi paper had closed down due to financial difficulties, and that the public was reading the Catholic press 59 . In the same month the Aachen Gestapo complained that the Westdeutscher Beobachter was losing its readers and that even party members were criticising it 60 . There is no reason to suppose any inaccuracy here, since broadly the same picture surfaces from statistical data for other areas. The SD survey of the Bavarian press, and circulation statistics for the Rhineland and Stuttgart, confirm the trend 61.
It would appear that, despite the blows dealt to the non-Nazi organs, the circulation of the party press did not improve. And, given that the regime could not afford to have propaganda weakened or contradicted by rivals, it could not remain indifferent to the situation. This type of regime, based on a delicate balance between coercion through terror and persuasion through propaganda, relies on the press to instil its message and encourage political conformity. It is therefore important that it should possess a reasonable level of credibility.
There seems little doubt that the decline of the Party press was the chief motive for the measures adopted by the authorities in the spring of 1935 to curtail the freedom of the press. The notorious 'Amann regulations' of 24 April 1935 were directed at (Revoking the license of any publisher whose newspapers are detrimental to the honour of the press because of their sensationalist character or because of the moral harm they constitute to the public. Shutting down newspapers to stamp out unfair competition. Ensuring the independence of the newspaper industry' 62 . The un-stated purpose behind these regulations was undoubtedly that of bridling the competition and halting the decline of the party press, in an effort to repair the widening credibility gap between the regime and the public. Beyond these regulations, the party did all it could to strengthen its own newspapers, weaken the competition and restrict the influence of papers, which represented a non-Nazi stand. Along with the 'legal' and financial damage inflicted on the non-Nazi press came a vigorous propaganda effort to get more people to subscribe to the party papers.
On the face of it, the regime's measures worked. The Augsburg police reported that the local party paper had 3,000 new subscribers 63 . Police elsewhere in the same region inform us that, although the church press continued to be popular in rural areas, the party press managed to maintain its circulation rate as a result of the increased propaganda." Statistical figures for the first and second quarters of 1935 in the Munich area reveal that, while the circulation of the church press remained stable, and that of the non-Nazi papers declined, the party press increased its sales 65 . It appeared that the regime had persuaded thousands of readers to switch to the party papers. We learn from Gestapo reports, however, that this was not the whole story. A careful comparison of statistical data from different regions of the Reich shows that the Amann regulations by themselves were unable to increase the readership of the party press. The regime knew very well that any rise in circulation was achieved mainly by coercing the public, not through any propaganda successes. The governor of Potsdam, for example, reported improved sales of the Voelkischer Beobachter, but went on to admit that, in deciding to take the paper, people had been responding to pressure rather than exercising their choice 66 . From Aachen, too, we hear of readers taking out subscriptions to the party paper because of threats, and out of fear of reprisals. The reporter noted that the situation had come to light through the censors' reading of letters being sent abroad. The writers candidly revealed that they had taken out subscriptions under duress, and planned to cancel them at the first possible opportunity 67 . In July the same Gestapo station indicated that the central party organ in the Rhineland, the Westdeutscher Beobachter, had been unsuccessful in obtaining new subscriptions on its own merits, and that those it had secured had been obtained through coercion 68 .
It is safe to say that the central government in Berlin was well aware of this state of affairs and so of the inadequacy of its attempts at indoctrination. The governor of Bielefeld district commented that the authorities knew the danger of trying to activate the public during ae crisis of confidence, and that in view of this the party's organisations had better stop soliciting contributions. Many refused to contribute, thereby dissociating themselves from the party's activities, and the exercise as a whole helped lower the party's popularity still further 69 . Given that in only one month people in Muenster, for example, were asked to give to the Hitler Youth, to the youth hostels, to the mother and child fund and to the Red Cross, and to buy posters for Navy Day, for Handicrafts Day and for the Gnu rally, it is small wonder that people refused and that the order to stop canvassing from July to October was widely welcomed 70 . This picture, however, should not lead us to ignore three things. First, criticism was limited to certain aspects of the political and social reality and not to the system in principle. Secondly, in the last analysis the disaffection found no practical expression and the regime was not seriously challenged. Thirdly, most of those who manifested dissent appear to have belonged to the 'other Germany'. Vast numbers did identify ideologically with the Nazi regime and consent to its policies. Radical Nazis criticised the government for being too moderate and for not proceeding fast enough with the Nazi revolution. The revolutionary potential of these elements is evident from the contemporary anti-fascist literature, both leftist and conservative; far from disappearing in 1934 with the purges of the SA leadership, which apparently laid to rest the idea of a 'second revolution', they remained a dynamic political force. At the same time, the regime subordinated these elements to its political objectives, when their growing activism endangered the very basis of the social and political order. In the next chapter we turn to this issue and its consequences for policy on the Jewish question.
References:
34.Minister des Innern, Oldenburg, report Nov. 1934, BA, R 18/1568.
38.Gestapo Aachen, report July 1934, HStA D, RAP 1049; Vollmer, Volksopposition , p. 48.
39.Gestapo Duesseldorf, report March 1935, BA, R 58/381.
40.RP Kassel, report Sept. 1934, BA, R 18/1561.
41.RP Minden, report Aug. 1934, BA, R 18/1566.
42.Ibid.
43.Gestapo Frankfurt ad. Oder, report Apr. 1935, GStA, REP/90 P; RP Osnabrueck, report Apr. 1935, BA, R 18/1569.
44.Gestapo Aachen, report July 1935, BA, R 58/662; Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 255.
45.RP Aurich, report Sep. 1934, YVA, JM/2834.
46.RP Koblenz, report Oct.ΓÇôNov. 1934, BA, R 18/1564. During 1934 the total circulation of the party press decreased by a million copies and the trend continued in 1935. This assessment is based on the Nazi sources themselves: see O. J. Hale, The Captive Press in the Third Reich (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1964), pp. 57, 145ΓÇô6, 231.
47.RP Wiesbaden, report Feb. 1935, YVA, JM/2834.
48.Gestapo Aachen, report Sep. 1934, BA, R 58/660; Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 94.
49.Gestapo Aachen, report Mar. 1935, BA, R 58/514; Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 186.
50.For a detailed report on the German press see Sopade, June 1936, B 10ΓÇô55.
51.Gestapo Hannover, report Mar. 1935, BA, R 58/386. Sopade, Feb. 1935, A 72.
52.RP Pfalz, report Mar. 1935, BHStA, MA 106675.
53.F. Morstein Marx, State propaganda in Germany', in Harwood L. Childs (ed.), Propaganda and Dictatorship (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1936), pp. 11ΓÇô34. Gestapo Koeln, report Jan. 1935, BA, R 58/681.
54.Gestapo Koeln, report Jan. 1935, BA, R 58/681.
55.Gestapo Hannover, report Mar. 1935, BA, R 58/386.
56.Ibid.
57.Gestapo Duesseldorf, report Feb. 1935, BA, R 58/1127.
58.Gestapo Bielefeld, report Mar. 1935, BA, R 58/100; RP Minden, report Apr. 1935, BA, R 18/1566.
59.RP Minden, report Mar.ΓÇôApr. 1935, BA, R 18/1566.
60.Gestapo Aachen, report Apr. 1935, BA, R 58/661.
61.SD Oberabschnitt Sued, May 1935, NAW, T 175 R 271 F 2768198; Gestapo Aachen, report Dec. 1934, HStA D, RAP 148; Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 159; Sopade, June 1936, B 28.
62.Hale, The Captive Press , p. 143. On the limited effect of this measure see Gestapa Sachsen, report Jan. 1935, StA N, Polizei Direktion Nuernberg-Fuerth 430.
63.Polizei Direktion Augsburg, report Mar. 1935, BHStA, MA 106675.
64.RP Pfalz, report Apr.ΓÇôMay 1935, BHStA, MA 106675.
65.Polizei Direktion Muenchen, report Sep. 1935, BHStA, MA 106677.
66.Gestapo Potsdam, report May 1935, GStA, REP/90 P.
67.Gestapo Aachen, report Marc. 1935, BA, R 58/100; Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 181. Gestapo Aachen, report June 1935, HStA D, RAP 1029, Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 237; Sopade report, June 1936, B 29.
68.Gestapo Aachen, reports on June and July 1935, BA, R 58/662; Vollmer, Volksopposition, p. 255.
69.RP Minden, report JulyΓÇôAug. 1935, BA, R 18/1566.
70.Gestapo Muenster, report May 1935, BA, R 58/510.
