German 1125 Page German 1125-FR: From The Holocaust to German Unification  WMC Page

Class Notes and Study Guides
compiled by Dr. Mohamed Esa
Sources: Hoffmeister, Tubach: Germany 2000, Internet and other materials
(Page numbers refer to Hoffmeister, Tubach)

Basic Terms

German:

• Non-Roman tribes in central Europe
• (Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Swabians, Alemani, Frisians)
• 8^th century use of "Deutsch" to refer to these people

• Reich: Holy Roman Empire of German Nation (962-1806)
• Reich: Wilhelmian Empire 1870-1918
• Reich: Nazi Germany (1933-1945)

• First German Parliamentary Democracy
• First democratic and Republican Parliament assembled in 1919 in the city of Weimar.

•  Great difficulties

• WWI exhausted Germany (financially, morally, humanly)
• Very harsh terms of the 1919 Versailles peace treaty
• Economic Crisis (1919 +1923)
• Mass unemployment
• Extreme inflation
• Devaluation of German Mark
• Large segments of Middle Class was ruined, i.e.
• 1918: 1$=4DM
• 1923: 1$=4.2 Billion DM
• World economic Crisis 1929
• Economic depression
• 6 Mio unemployed (1932)
• Great inflation

• Proportional Representation and weak democracy

• Many small parties
• Unstable coalition governments
• Lawmaking was often crippled
• Influence of small/ radical parties (Nazis and Communists)
• Party ideology was placed above effective government (helped the radical parties)
• No clear majority in the Reichstag (parliament)
• In 1932 4 major elections

• The Reich’s President von Hindenburg

• President’s emergency powers: rule and not the exception
• Very old and weak president (old General)
• Lifted ban on the SA and SS (1932)
• Appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933

NSDAP = National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party)

NSDAP advocated:

anti-Capitalism

anti-parliamentary government

anti-Marxism

blame of Germany's defeat in WWI on Jews and Communists

rejection of Treaty of Versailles

highly emotional appeal

combination of authoritarianism and populist movement

combination of nationalism and socialism: "Volksgemeinschaft" (National community)

The NSDAP focused on young people:

• Hitlerjugend (HJ = Hitler Youth)
• Bund Deutscher Mädchen (League of German Girls)
• It gave the youth the feeling that they are important and needed
• It offered them:
• organized activities
• uniforms
• sense of belonging
• Young people were asked to assume responsibility. This way, it gave them the feeling of contributing to the building of a "New Germany"

1. Event: January 30, 1933 - Hitler becomes Reich-Chancellor

• A minority in parliament
• A coalition of right-wing parties.
• Contradictions within the Weimar Republic allowed this.
• Very strong nationalist and loyalist forces were at work

2. Event: February 1, 1933 - Reichstag was dissolved (Election on March 3)

3. Event: February 27, 1933 - Burning of the Reichstag (German Parliament)

• Communists were blamed for the burning of the Reichstag.
• Extraordinary measures were taken to preserve order
• Political liberties were curbed to "protect the people and the state".
• Emergency Laws signed by the President (von Hindenburg)
• Detain people for unlimited time.
• Search homes
• Open private mail
• Ban or censor newspapers
• Dissolve parties
• Confiscate private property
• Result: Extreme power
• Elimination of rival parties (no SPD, KPD, Unions)

• 44% Nazis
• Emergency Laws: Rule without the consent of parliament

"Political parties have finally been abolished. This is an historic event, the significance of which many have not yet understood. Now we must abolish the last remnants of democracy, especially the methods of elections …." (Hitler)

• Demise of political center (Catholic Center Party)
• Hitler has an agreement with Pope Pius XII: Abandoning political parties in return for freedom of religious activities.
• Elimination of internal rivalries
• June 30, 1934: Ernst Röhm and prominent members of the SA were murdered to eliminate the influence of subgroups in the party. Röhm was accused of being homosexual.
• Elimination of the left wing under George Strasser
• Von Schleicher, his wife and Erick Klausener were executed (alleged subversive activities against Hitler)
• The Rise of the SS as an elite within the Nazi elite
• All police functions were combined:
• Crime Control
• Law enforcement
• Political Surveillance
• Execution of those deemed dangerous to the Nazi state
• From the SS came the SD (Sonderdienst = Special-Duties Section) under Heinrich Himmler, later in charge of extermination camps.
• Concentration of Power
• Expansion of its juristiction
• Maximum of efficiency
• Degree of secrecy for liquidation of people
• Becoming a Mass-Movement
• Increasing the membership (1928-32: 108 K - 1.5 M)

• Non-Political German
• Germany’s geopolitical position in the center of Europe
• Germany lacked an effective opposition to conservative and reactionary trends
• No representation for the workers
• Alienation and Resentment of the Petite Bourgeoisie
• Pressure from below (the workers) - Denial of access to political power by the elite
• Small merchants, shopkeepers, tradesmen, low-rank civil servants, white-collar workers.
• They could not cope with:
• disquieting instability of Weimar Republic
• a perplexing new architecture
• a new kind of music never heard before
• expressionism in literature and visual arts
• theater of the absurd
• Hitler promised a way out of these uncertainties
• German intellectual tradition helped prepare the ground for the Nazis
• Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche lend themselves to a Nazi interpretation.
• Hitler, Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg used ideas by Wagner and Nietzsche to promote their Germanic and Aryan Race-Theory. How?
• Wagner:
• "Wagner fused Myth of Germanic past with the pretentions of his own age on a stage filled with imposing figures and great historical events." (13)
• He mythologized the Germanic past.
• This aided the Nazis with their claim of racial superiority.
• Nietzsche:
• Profound critique of Western Culture:
• Shallow optimism of Christianity
• Mocking the rationalist tradition
• "Neither Christian optimism nor secular rationalism comprehended the tragic aspects of life." (13) His solution was: Radical transformation of values. The Nazis translated this into their "Herrenmoral" (Master Morality) è good equals strong; bad equals weak.
• Idea of Organic Wholeness
• The idea of harmonious organic Whole could be transformed into a social reality:
• This ancient idea (Greek antiquity, Goethe) served the Nazi "Theories of Race":
"A racially pure society could not tolerate racial diversity."
All these factors together made a witches brew of various ingredients.

• Gleichschaltung (coordination of institutions)
• "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" (One people, one empire, one leader)
• Transformation of all social, political, riligious and economic institutions into functions of the state
• Destruction of labor organizations
• Formation of a uniformed paramilitary unit: Arbeitsdienst (work-service-force)

"I no longer recognize employer and employee. I only recognize deputies of work and soldier." (Hitler)
Importance of Gleichschaltung:
• neutralized class interest and class differences
• bestowed prestige on the laborer without raising wages
• made Germany self-sufficient
• emphasis on military strength
• lowered the unemployment rate dramatically
• The Press:
• Controlling the means of communication was as important as the means of production
• Press became an institution of the state
• Effective tool for Nazi Propaganda:
• Shaping opinions
• Manipulating attitudes abroad
• Exposure to radio broadcasts: "Volksempfänger" (people’s radio)
• by 1935 70% of all households had a radio.
• Revolution in communication
• Readers became listeners and members of mass audiences
• The collective replaced the individual.
• The Arts: degenerate vs. pure art
• No individualism or liberty in the Arts
• No right to be different
"Art must be good, but beyond this it must be responsible, professional, close to the people (volksnah) and aggressive."(Goebbels to Furtwängler, p. 18)
• Book burning
• Culture must serve the state
"The artists creates for the people, and we will see to it that the people in the future will be called to judge his art." (Hitler, July 1937)
• Politics as Spectacle
• Theatrical mass events, speeches, marches, demonstrations
• Alliance between aesthetics and power
"Politics too is an art, perhaps the highest and most comprehensive there is, we feel to be artists who have been given the responsible task of forming out of the raw material of the mass the first concrete structure of a people." (Goebbels to Furtwängler)
See the Triumph of the Will as best example.
• Violence and Racial Mythology
• Glorification of war and heroism (Wagner)
• Link between nostalgia for an age of great deeds (Führer) and belief in social Darwinism (Survival of the fittest)
• Belief that nations are organic totalities. All parts should work together in harmony for the health of the whole.
• Violence was acceptable as an imperative of nature.
• Connection between nature, society and race

"The state has to place race in the center of existence. The state has to care for keeping the race pure."(Mein Kampf, p. 446)
• Organic view of society
• Purity of race (Aryan Race)
• Call for elimination of every person and group deemed alien to the new organism.
• Projection of the problems on "outside forces"
• Blame on a "different race"
• Finding scapegoats
• Nuremberg Laws for the "Protection of the German Blood and German Honor" (Sept.15, 1935)
• Himmler’s plans for the mass extermination of Jews (Oct. 10, 1943)

"We have exterminated a bactarium, because ultimately we do not want to be infected by it and die of it." (Himmler, Oct. 6, 1943)

• His Personality: Created and exploited a mass psychosis to serve his ends
• Control over the means of communication is a key to political power. He was master of this.
• As early as 1923, Hitler used speech as a political weapon.

"Every attempt at persuasion, whether in business or politics, must be made in the most simple form and also with frequent repetition over a period of time." (Mein Kampf, p. 105)

• Parallels to todays techniques of commercial advertisements
• His speeches consisted of series of declarative sentences; not based on logical cohesion but on principles related to music: repetition, crescendos, accelerandos, ritardandos, rhythms, pauses, body language,… which mesmerized the listener. How?
• organization of speech
• mode of their delivery
• theatrical events
• rallying of huge masses

1.  Listeners could hear their own fears, prejudices and resentments expressed and justified.
2. Participants were to be convinced that they were witnessing great historical events which will shape Germany’s future.
3. All rallies were held in soccer stadiums or old amphitheaters and arenas. People took off work to see and cheer the leader (on the streets, in the stadiums and beer halls).

• Alliance between aesthetics and power
• Perversion of aesthetic criteria into tools of political power
• Recorded events of the colossal 1934 party rally in Nuremberg

• individual fragments of daily life
• individual perception
• treasured symbols
• eagle, flags and swastikas
• clichés of German culture
• slow destruction of individual entities
• unity, equality, purity, discipline, wholeness

Nazi Culture
 

• The main Nazi symbol was the Swastika. It stood for "Volk-honor, living space (Lebensraum), national freedom, racial purity, regenerative fertility." (Rosenberg)
• The Nazis used visual symbols as propaganda tool
• The Nazis used carefully orchestrated:
• mass rallies
• torch light marches
• precision military parades
• flag displays
• political posters and pamphlets
• Visual arts/ effects suggested regularity, massiveness, discipline
• 3 ideological statements concerning the arts:
• All artistic creativity is rooted in a "racial collective";
• Uniformity of style (rejection of all foreign influence);
• Individualism and experimentalism are signs of decadence
• Art should come from the "blood":
• Return to Germanic roots
• German Heroes: Herman, Parzival, Siegfried
• "Blut und Boden" (blood and soil) a magic link between race and habitat.

• Nazi art was:
• nationalistic = German
• socialist = for all
• realistic = everyday life
• Many scenes of heroic past and idealized nature
• Everyday motifs of work and war predominated.
• Frozen gestures dominate over emotion and activity
• Nazi art was:
• totalitarian: Portraits of generals with uniforms and decorations
• full of romantic seascapes and landscapes
• depicted peasants working in the fields or saying their prayer at mealtime
• sculptures of beautiful bodies of youthful male and female nudes
• women holding a sheaf of wheat
• blond girls with a bouquet of flowers

July 19, 1937, the Nazis opened an exhibition in Munich with famous paintings and sculptures from 1920’s and 30’s (Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde).

This art was described as contribution to "political and cultural anarchy". It was called "Entartete Kunst" (degenerate art).

Because of its integrity: it was immune from political exploitation and been used for propaganda purposes.

It didn’t depict subjects dear to the Nazis.

It was not easy to interpret and comprehend.

It couldn’t reinforce clichés, standard perception and stereotyps

It was highly individualistic.

It was not repetitive.

History was a monument to great individual geniuses (Goethe, Shakespeare, George)

German literature should reflect Germanic tribal and regional pattern

blood-and-soil literature

"Literature should be filled with metaphors from nature and the heroic age." (Gundolf)

Goebbels was a trained Germanist under Gundolf in Heidelberg.

All literature should deal of the "great man" (Hitler, great leader) and "tribal origins" (soul of the people)

Literature should link the great man with the soul of the people.

It was meant to transform Germany into a great and powerful nation ready to fulfill its heroic destiny.

Literary Works:

• E.C. Kolbenheyer: Blood and Soil
• Historical Novels (Kleist, Fugger Family)
• Peasant Novels
• Wholesome community vs. evil of city life
• Simple girl seduced by a city slicker
• Clean cut peasant boy lured from the soil by a vice-ridden women from the big city
• The cause of evil were Jews, communists and deviants
• The teutonic folk symbol of goodness striving to find living space to build a mystical community free of cultural and class differences.
• The novels took place on borders to make peasants aware of alien invasion.
• The peasant literature glorified agriculture as a harmonious middle-class idyll in which social contradictions did not exist.
• It was a "mixture of primitivism cloaked in sentimentality".

Outer Exile: USA, GB, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Mexico, ..

Inner Exile: in Germany, they wrote for themselves or went into the underground and resistance.

• Alfred Rosenberg was an architect.
• Hitler wanted to become one.
• It was the ideal manifestation of the Nazi ideology: of culture and politics.
• Nazis used many architectural metaphors (" the notion of building a nation")
• Staging the Nazi ideology in visual terms
•   Colossal party rally grounds
•   assive frontal colonnade
•   eople were set in large blocks (like in "Triumph of the Will") in order to appear as a huge organized mass architectural frame)
• Cities were designed or redesigned with
• Big streets
• Colossal buildings
• Blocks
• Political monuments
• Stadiums, castles, churches, plazas were to be used for political purposes.
• Autobahn
• Aesthetics of a structural landscape
• Movement of people and military
• Olympic stadium in Berlin was  framed with a colonnaded façade to intensify the impression of total Nazi power.

Expressionist film was brought to an abrupt end.

No experiments any more

Film should serve the cause of the Nazis.

It should be simple and sentimental.

Propaganda films with anti-semitic orientation

All films were accompanied by the "Wochenschau" (Weekly Newsreel), to help manipulate public opinion during the war.

• Many political events.
• Radios
• were a link between general totalitarian objectives and subjective sentimentality
• had the function of reproducing in sound the total experience of a political happening for those who could not participate directly
• Speeches were accompanied with chants, marching boots, applause and background musical accompaniments.
• The Nazis’ ability to transform many elements of traditional conservative German cultural values into their own revolutionary context.This was one reason for the emergence of totalitarianism.

• Spoken rather than the written language. Why??
• You need a public.
• Encourage collective behavior: Integrating individuals into a collective framework
• Reading is done in private by individuals.
• "Mein Kampf" is mainly a collection of speeches and declarations.
• Language is reduced to a propaganda tool. How??
• Use of metaphors
• interracial marriage = "decomposition of blood"
• interplay between the cultures = "poisoning of folk soul"

Why use metaphors?
• Metaphors don’t require explainations.
• They can be used for the purpose of manipulation.
• As a speaker, you have a great flexibility. Example:

"We have exterminated a bactarium, because ultimately we do not want to be infected by it and die of it." (Himmler, Oct. 6, 1943)
• Use of exaggerations
• If you "changed your mind" you would have "a profound transformation of consciousness".
• Third Reich was described as the beginning of "das Tausendjährige Reich" (millenium)
• Why did the Nazis use exaggerations?
• It is one part of their "monumentalization" of culture.
• Use of extreme diminutives
• Enemies were "bugs", "maggots", "bacilli". Why??
• Sublime - disgusting, had profound effect on masses.
• Use of dualistic patterns
• Good vs. evil
• Aryan vs. non-Aryan
• Pure vs. mixed
• Creative vs. parasitical
• Honest vs. deceiving
• Why did the Nazis use dualistic patterns? To show:
• Superiority vs. Inferiority
• German vs. Jews
• Use of rhetorical questions - Why?
• To lull the listeners into believing
• Nazis speeches were open-ended.
• Nazis were searching for answers.
• Language as a propagandistic tool with dual role:
• They called forth great historical events and "immutable laws of nature".
• They appealed to the most primitive instincts of dominance and hatred in individual listeners.
This made the listeners feel part of great historical events which were given force and substance by the people. This is called "mutual reinforcement" between speaker and listener.

How did Hitler and the Nazis try to control Europe?

• First diplomatic and then military dominance. Explain!
• 1923: Hitler’s primary goal was “securing the existence of the race”
• The Nazis developed then racial and economic objectives: race war or control over raw materials?
• They decided for both: notion of the “Lebensraum” (living space)
• Hitler linked the belief in racial superiority with the dominance over raw materials.

Hoffmeister and Tubach list the following reasons (page 41):

• fascist response to unsolved problems of WW!
• ill-conceived Treaty of Versailles
• Germany lost all its colonies and one sixth of its territory
• Germany and Austria were not allowed to unite into one state.
• occupation of the left bank of the Rhineland
• internationalization of German rivers
• Germany was to pay huge amounts of war reparations
• Germany had to dismantle its factories and was forced to deliver vast amounts of “coal, livestock, and parts of the German merchant fleet to the victorious powers” (Hoffmeister 42).
• severe economic depression
• inability of weak democracies in West Europe to cope with the crisis
• no plans to prevent right-wing takeovers (Germany, Italy, and Spain)
• Most importantly in my opinion was the Nazi arrogance (“Hitler’s Hubris”)
• a determined regime with a Führer who wants to subjugate the world to an ideology of superiority of race
• Appeasement policy of the West toward Hitler
• No role of the USA in world affairs, Everything was too far away and there were still fresh memories of WWI

• too many Nazis controlling every aspect of normal life
• structure of authority and control (the pyramid structure)
• Golo Mann’s explanation: a combination of “patriotism, habit of obedience, fear, and cynicism”

• From their ideology
• Weakness of western democracies (GB was a weak global power; France had too many internal disputes, USA was too far to get involved. Russia itself had a dictator with own and similar ambitions like Hitler [East Poland])
• The Nazis wanted to challenge the “undefeated East” (remember what happened to Napoleon)
• Their goal was to divide and neutralize the West
• Attack the East (East was a threat to the West)
• Hitler’s peace speech in 1933: a peace loving people and they should wait to be powerful.

• a lightning-quick surprise military action
• France was defeated within five weeks
• In Russia, the Blitzkrieg strategy didn’t work. Russia was too big and the winter too harsh.

• unresolved problem of Danzig, an old German city under Polish control
• the Polish corridor to East Prussia
• Hitler demanded a revision of Germany’s borders to the East
• Hitler demanded the return of Danzig to Germany
• Russia had sanctioned a partition of Poland after the Nazis’ Invasion: Germany keeps the western half and Stalinist Russia takes the eastern part.