The Fuehrer Myth and Consent in Everyday Life (Part B)
Source: D. J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany (Yale, 1987), pp. 67-80.
A SOPADE report compiled as early as April/May 1934 noted: 10
'A general phenomenon that has been noticeable for some time is still evident: Hitler is generally exempted from criticism'.
A report from Bavaria says, 'One cannot ignore the fact that many of those who grumble and complain still have faith in Adolf Hitler's strength and his honourable intentions, but believe that even he cannot prevail single-handed.'
A correspondent for Berlin puts the point in more detail: 'In general we can say that Adolf Hitler is exempted from criticism, his aims are conceded as honourable and people think that he cannot be blamed for the mismanagement of his subordinates. This is partly the result of the systematic Fuehrer propaganda, but it is also undoubtedly the effect of his personality. His personality impresses simple people, and Hitler still has a lot of personal support among the workers.'
It was particularly the Fueurer's public appearances, covered nation wide on the radio that won approval. The approval began to crumble only when Hitler's optimistic forecasts were all too clearly given the lie by wartime realities. This oscillation between belief and scepticism emerges forcibly from an SD report on popular reaction to Hitler's speech on Heroes' Memorial Day (Heldengedentag) in 1942, following the winter of 1941-42 when German troops outside Moscow had suffered their first defeat: 11
'On the basis of reports non available from all parts of the Reich on the Fuehrer's speech on Heroes' Memorial Day, it can be said that the Fuehrer's words have found a powerful echo among the population.'
The sentence in the Fuehrer's speech which left the strongest and assuredly most lasting impression was: 'But we can already be certain of one thing today: the Bolshevist hordes which failed to conquer the German soldiers and their allies this winter will be beaten by us next summer and will be destroyed!' The Fuehrer's words have enormously strengthened the hopes entertained by the greater part of the people that Bolshevism will be destroyed this year. In this connection, numerous national comrades expressed views to the effect that the Fuehrer would never have spoken in these terms if he himself had not had the utmost conviction and certainty that his forecast would be borne out. Only a few individual comrades voiced doubts - in view of the imponderable size of potential Soviet strength and in view of similar forecasts made by the German military command last year - whether it would in fact be possible to bring the eastern campaign to a victorious and definitive conclusion during the coming year.
The Fuehrer's statement that 'the eventual frontiers of the Bolshevist colossus will prove to be far removed from the sacred fields of Europe' also attracted considerable notice. Many detected a certain contradiction between these words and the Fuehrer's statement closely preceding it, that the 'Bolshevist hordes will be beaten by us next summer and will be destroyed'; and a few even felt that they implied the view that it would never be possible to smash Bolshevism entirely.
The intensity and the wide currency of the Fuehrer myth can scarcely be explained, however, if it is seen simply as the result of National Socialist propaganda or as the product of mass yearnings and wishful thinking. So artificial a construct would inevitably have shattered on making impact with real experiences and real disappointments. For the Fuehrer myth to be effective, two conditions were indispensable.
First, the 'Leader' had to remain well distanced from sources of criticism and discontent in everyday life. Hitler's reluctance to get mixed up in disputes involving rival state and Party authorities contributed to the image of the 'Leader' as the disinterested final source of authority and court of appeal. So did the role he was supposed - quite wrongly - to have played in the so-called Roehm putsch of 30 June 1934. Hitler's intervention was perceived as securing 'order' in response to the threat of SA terror; in the process, the population accepted the unlawful killings of SA leaders as well as the accompanying murders of several other politicians (for example, the former Reich Chancellor Schleicher).
Secondly, the personal charisma of the 'leader' had to be held up as respect for all domestic and foreign-policy achievements which promised to fulfil people's yearnings for security, progress and national greatness. This much is in evidence in the morale reports. Goebbels's propaganda fell on fertile ground here; this indeed was the basis of its effectiveness. The propaganda was believed as long as Hitler could point to a string of successes and soothe any discontent by prophesying new ones. Correspondingly, the ending of military success caused the Fuehrer myth to fade. It is true that the SD reports indicated that even after the turning-point of the war there was still a widespread desire for a while to hear the Fuehrer speak over the radio again. But the enthusiasm became progressively more short-lived after each radio address, and Hitler held back more and more from making personal public appearances, correctly gauging the decline in his powers of persuasion. For most Germans, the Fuehrer myth was dead before Hitler physically took his own life.
Active consent - popular approval of Nazi policies - was conditional upon the regime's ability, by invoking a constant fresh supply of genuine or ostensible achievements, to meet people's basic everyday needs for security, progress and a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Its initial asset was the fact that the Weimar Republic, by virtue of defeat in world war, inflation and world economic crisis, had created a deep-seated feeling of insecurity and made many Germans grasp thankfully even at pseudo-solutions. It was only through the ever more hectic pursuit of real or spurious successes that the charismatic Fuehrer myth was able to withstand the disillusioning impact of ordinary everyday actuality.
The mechanism whereby contrary but genuine experiences were repeatedly repressed called for the construction of adversarial images and scapegoats. The 'forging' (a popular fascist term) of the 'national community' or Volksgemeinschaft required, as a complement, the strict marginalising of 'community aliens' or Gemeinschaftsfremde - not only Jews, but gypsies and the so-called 'asocial'. The beliefs that Hitler's draconian measures really put a firm curb on crime, that he educated the 'work-shy' into doing productive work in camps, (in the Reich Labour Service, in the police Work Education camps and in the concentration camps), and that he saw to it that women could walk unmolested through the streets at night, are among the hardiest popular myths about Hitler. The approval of the manifest use of force against outsiders also revealed a readiness to countenance latent force within the ostensible 'national community' itself, if this was in the interests of 'order'. Putting it perhaps over-forcefully, we can say that an aspect of consent to the Nazi regime was not so much the often-cited fear of terror as the emotional approval of terror when it was directed against 'community aliens' and hence served the supposed restoration of 'order'.
Here we plumb the most deep-lying reason for the consent given by the majority of the population to the Nazi regime. The real appeal of the Fuehrer myth was to the longing for normality felt by a population which had been shaken by crisis and whose social reference-points had been thrown into disarray 12 . The recognition that National Socialism was constitutionally quite incapable of restoring normality could be kept repressed as long as new campaigns and partial successes preserved expectations and a sense of promise; and as long as the regime's 'restoration of order' conveyed an impression, however spurious, of efficiency and strength of will. Within the 'national community', 'order' was upheld by appeals for discipline, by ranking the people into hierarchies and by obtaining self-imposed participation; at the margins, 'community aliens' faced outright violence. The 'normality' that people craved thus embraced both regimentation and subservience, and was underpinned by the overt use of force.
Active consent and sympathy with the goals and actions of the regime, however, are not sufficient on their own to explain why National Socialism remained politically unchallenged within Germany, even after the turning-point of the war. Here we must ask why it was that those who had not subscribed to the promise of National Socialism were not roused into positive acts of opposition. This widespread passive consent - accepting the regime as a given, and being prepared to do one's day-to-day 'duty' - rested on a process, which the Nazi regime simultaneously combated and fostered a retreat from the public sphere into the private 13 . As National Socialism penetrated traditional social milieu and institutional structures, partly breaking them up, partly taking them over, so it drove their former members into the private domain. Views that had become politically taboo or criminal could be maintained only within the family circle or among close friends, if at all. Even politically minded people withdrew into privacy in face of the constant pressure to conform, the perpetual need to demonstrate loyalty, the thought control and the bureaucratic routine that marked public life under National Socialism. But the withdrawal into the private sphere was not only a mass retreat from the Nazi pressure to conform: it was also the product of long-term socio-cultural trends. The development of German industrial society into a modern mass consumer society on the American model, which had first come to expression in the 'golden twenties', was reactivated by the economic recovery of the 1930s, after the hiatus caused by the world recession.
Although the manifestations of modernity had provoked the censure of the fascist 'blood and soil' Romantics, the Nazi regime was only selectively hostile to these developments. 'Degenerate art' disappeared from the galleries, but the modern designs of countless consumer goods remained. 'Judaised' and 'Nigerised' jazz was officially combated; but up to the outbreak of war jazz records not only remained on sale in Germany but were actually produced in large quantities. Even during the war, watered-down versions of modern dance, spectacular revues and lavish film musicals were among the forms of entertainment expressly promoted by Goebbels. The Third Reich was actually the great age of the 'un-political' films of the UFA (the biggest German film production company).
Even Coca-Cola consumption rose significantly in Germany in the thirties. Agrarian romanticism notwithstanding, the Nazi regime fostered enthusiasm for modern technology, not only because it needed it as part of its armoury for conquering Lebensraum, but also because the toughness, frictionless functionality and efficiency of the machine matched the ideal of the fighter and the soldier, the man 'hard as Krupp steel'. The mass adulation and star treatment accorded to German racing drivers in the thirties is a case in point.
Especially important was the growth of broadcasting, which achieved a breakthrough with the cheap mass production of the 'People's Wireless Set' (Volksempfaenger). Leaving aside the question of political propaganda, the result was a pronounced shift whereby people found their daily (or rather, evening) leisure entertainment within the family. Radio, and particularly television - the development of which was accelerated during the Third Reich, both technically and as regards program-making, though the decision to go ahead with mass production of sets was blocked by the outbreak of war - were media which in fact positively emphasised the individualised private sphere.
In addition, until the outbreak of war it was not illegal to listen to foreign broadcasts, apart from Radio Moscow. German radio magazines published the details of programs from neighbouring countries. Even during the war, when listening to so-called enemy stations carried the risk of severe penalties (including death), radio remained a much-used medium, and people could check improbable German military reports against, say, the BBC within their own homes.
These examples also show, not just that there was an increased desire during the Third Reich to into the private sphere, but that the demand for non-political entertainment was met by plentiful offerings from the repertoire of modern leisure culture and mass. The Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels, in particular, made it quite clear that he assumed that a broadcasting policy based on 'non-political' relaxation would have a more positive effect on the population, given the likely demoralising realities of the war, than programs filled with dogmatic Nazi ideology and die-hard slogans. In his inaugural speech at the 16th Broadcasting Exhibition in Berlin - held from 28th July to 6th August 1939, when preparations for the invasion of Poland were in full swing - he declared: 14
Broadcasting has certain quite definite tasks to perform, particularly in view of the times in which we are living at this moment. What is needed is not heavy, serious programs which, after all, only a fraction of the people can grasp; we must provide the broad masses and millions of our people, engaged as they are in a struggle for existence, with as much relaxation and entertainment, edification and improvement, as possible.'
By contrast, National Socialist dogmatists were certainly zealous in recommending a return to old 'German values'. But their practical efforts to stem the flow of 'Americanised' modernity had patchy results. Even the massive wartime police operations directed against jazz and swing, which culminated in young swing fans from Hamburg being sent to the youth concentration camp at Moringen, were not strikingly successful.
The 'double life' that was led by a large section of the population - in the public domain, delivering the required pledges of loyalty and quotas of economic output; in private, pursuing non-political spare-time pleasures with minimal possible interference - certainly ran contrary to National Socialist mass mobilisation, but it can in no sense generally be reckoned as opposition or resistance (although the dividing lines between these notions were fluid, as the case of the young swing fans shows. See Chapters 8, 10 and 11.) The very retreat into privacy crippled possible resistance and weakened people's sense of concern at the excesses of the regime. It led to self-absorption and self-sufficiency, to the mixture of 'apathy and pleasure-seeking' 15 described by one war-time diarist: 16
And the world? The best thing is to shut your eyes to it and to stop hearing and seeing all the dreadful fuss and bother that is getting more and more confusing and difficult to sort out. No one has any idea where it is all going. Most people have completely stopped even asking, and are just sticking to the tiring daily business of shopping and thinking about food. The emptiness inside one is getting more and more noticeable . . .'
Paradoxically, then, even the population's counter-reaction to the National Socialist pressure of mobilisation served to stabilise the system.
It is clear, if we follow the everyday-life approach, that the experiences of separate individuals cannot be neatly and mechanically categorised under labels of 'dissent', 'passive consent' and 'active participation'. This very fact, however, seems to me to be a vitally important result of the everyday-life approach, since it shows that the Third Reich cannot have failed to leave its mark on all members of society: on the common people, who some would allege to have been basically in opposition; on the middle class, alleged to have been basically non-political. It serves as a warning against a facile recourse to percentages: what proportion of Nazis in the population was opposed by what proportion of nonconformists and what proportion of people prepared to resist? It is heartening in a socio-political sense because it demonstrates that even fascist fellow-travellers or active participants could undergo liberating experiences from which a democratic outlook was capable of emerging. It is dispiriting, on the other hand, to those who would like to think that 'another Germany' remained intact through twelve years of fascism: a Germany not integrated into the system, not caught up in the system's functioning - maybe only a minority of the regime's political opponents, but in its essence undamaged. Even the resistance fighters who did not conform were weighed down by the experience of persecution, by the sense of their own impotence and of the petty compromises that were imperative for survival. The system did its work on the anti-fascists too; and often enough it worked despite the shortcomings of the fascists themselves.
References:
10. Deutschland-Berichte , op. cit., vol. 1, p. 10.
11.Boberach, Meldungen aus dem Reich , op. cit., p. 239.
12.The role of the concept of 'normal times' in everyday consciousness and in autobiographical memoirs has been examined by Uli Herbert in the Essen project, 'Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930ΓÇô1960'.
13.Essential reading here is: Schaefer, Das gespaltene Bewusstsein , op. cit., from which the subsequent examples are taken.
