Hitler is commonly referred to as one of the worst dictators ever. I do not disagree. However, mostly I read this in context to his Holocaust and World War II actions toward other nations. I’m curious about how he was to a German.
For this exercise, let’s leave out the Jews, Gypsies, gays and external enemies like the USSR and Poland. How bad was he to everyday non-Untermensch German citizens? Besides sending his citizens into a disastrous war, how was living under Nazism?
Was the Gestapo ruthless to Germans, like the NKVD or Kempetai to its own citizens? Did the Nazis suppress free speech and assembly (etc)? Did he do purges and gulags for speaking against him? For the average everyday German (family man, works 9-5, doesn’t plan coups, etc), how would Hitler’s dictatorship rate with Mao, Stalin, Saddam, etc?
My friend lives just outside of Hamburg. Instant Messaged him the whole question. I did not change his spelling or grammar.
Him: Yes, people had to suffer and live in fear too.
Me: That’s all you have to say about it? I would like to quote you if that’s okay.
Me: Like how it compares
Him: Well, that’s a very complex topic. If you didn’t fit into the picture of what they thought is German or if you spoke up, you had to live in fear. You could be arrested because of stupid accusations.
Me: Okay, thank you is that it?
Me: I’d really like to know more but I know it’s late for you
Him: I’m not sure what these site or people want to know. It’s all proofed that you can say yes to all these questions. There are a lot of books written, that the German people were victims as well. It’s hard to put that complex topic into some sentences.
Him: What kind of site is that?
Me: Straight Dope
Me: They try to find truth
Him: Then they should read books
Me: I’ll tell them that if you let me
Him: Yeah, if they need examples of suppression, I can give some from my own family
Me: I would be happy to tell if you wish
Him: For expample: My mother’s family had the name Freyberg. They had to change the y to an i, because they were told it would look too “jewish”
Me: that’s good, anything more?
Him: My uncle was beaten with a cane by a teacher. My grandmother went to the school to complain, but the teacher was a member of the Nazi party and threatend her that he could let her locked in. So she kept silent.
Him: Think about The Book Thief. There’s a lot of truth in it.
Abso-bloody-lutely. Dachau was the first concentration camp, opened in March 1933 for just this purpose, before the Final Solution started.
In 1935 conscription was introduced - with all members having to swear a personal oath to the Fuhrer. Your children were compelled to join either the Hitler Youth or League of German maidens and be indoctrinated with Nazi ideas about race and state. If you had any relatives who were disabled, you’d see them disappeared along with others the Germans considered “life unworthy of life” - which also included Jehovah’s Witneses, the mentally ill and interracial couples who polluted German blood. If you were a woman, the state say your primary role as pumping out babies for Germany - Kinder, Kuche, Kirche - Children, kitchen, church.
Even if you were German citizens and Aryans, speaking out against Hitler would have lethal consequences. Originally speaking out against the aforementioned policies of eugenics, a group of students were arrested by the Gestapo and executed by beheading.
Wiki has a broad overview of society in Nazi Germany. If you kept your head down and your mouth shut you might be lucky to be drafted and sent to die on the Eastern front while your family was bombed and coped with hardships due to shortages caused by Hitler’s war. The Nazis would broker absolutely no form of resistance whatsoever, what Hitler said was law and if you didn’t like that then you’d be silenced, permanently.
Somewhat ironically one group of Germans that went mostly unhindered was the small number of black-Germans, offspring from residents of their African colonies who moved back to Germany. They weren’t considered a threat so they weren’t persecuted, but they were also obviously viewed as inferior so they were exempt from compulsive military service.
My friend grew up in a very very small farming village in the south of Germany. All the men in her village, including her father and all her male relatives were conscripted. One day they were just all marched away and none of them were ever seen again. The German Army would come back and take younger and younger males so the women began hiding the boys. The German Army also took their livestock and made visits often to take whatever food crops they had grown. The village had very little food and hunger was a constant.
I had a friend whos wife had escaped Germany aged 14, she had no family alive as they had all been killed in the concentration camps for being the wrong political party, “Social democrats” she said though that might have been a poor translation.
+1 for him mentioning “The Book Thief”. A great book for anyone interested in the time and place.
I live in Germany myself, and have had a chance to talk with people who lived through those times. If you kept your mouth shut and didn’t belong to the wrong group, you probably were alright up until the war started. You got major bonus points for being in the Party.
As others have mentioned, things got steadily worse as the war progressed, and one of the major goals as the war progressed was to project a sense of normality. The film “Die Feuerzangenbowle” stands as one of the best examples of this policy: no mention of Nazi’s, war, or social problems. In fact, the film is quite good. It’s funny and easy-going, oddly unoffensive, and people still watch it while drinking Feuerzangenbowle, of course.
It’s hard to imagine that as this nostalgic film was playing, Germans and Russians were butchering each other on a westward-creeping east front, and the Allies were landing in Italy. Five months later was D-Day.
No, that’s the correct translation; and yes, this was definitely one of the ways to get a one-way train ticket. The Nazi’s did not tolerate dissent or competition.
As political prisoners, they probably were held in Dachau. Although this was not quite as bad as the other camps (at least they didn’t actively try to kill you), things got worse as the war went on. Poor hygiene, poor rations, lack of clean water, unethical medical experiments, and overwork meant that you only had a moderately better chance of getting out alive than at the other camps.
Mr. Kobayashi’s choice of words (“If you kept your head down . . .”) reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a man who had fought for Germany in WWI and left just before the outbreak of WWII (I got to know him through his grandson). He said that being a German in the Reich was similar to being in the trenches: if you kept your head down and followed the path that had already been dug, you were fairly safe; poke your head over the edge to see what was out there* and you were likely to get it shot off.
*Getting caught listening to the BBC or other foreign radio could get you a ticket to a Konzentrationslager — and once there, the length of your sentence was moot since hardly anyone ever got out. Even if you weren’t transported, it drew the attention of the Gestapo, something you didn’t ever want to happen.
Apropos of this subject, I recently learned about the story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose movement. This was a group consisting mainly of students from the University of Munich, most of them in their early twenties, that became known for distributing leaflets calling for resistance to the Nazi regime, during 1942 and 1943. Six members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo in and executed by guilliotine in 1943.
It’s a heartbreaking story, but inspiring too. A movie based on the story was released in 2005: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
The first camps were for the mentally ill and disabled Germans. The round up of the Jews started with German Jews. Then later Jews in occupied areas were taken.
I’ve read that the Nazis weren’t very tolerant of the Catholic church either. But, so many Germans were Catholic that they didn’t act. Thats why they didn’t occupy the Vatican and arrest the Pope. He was heavily pressured but never arrested. How much collaboration existed is still heavily debated about that Pope.
You added some of her sad history, she has now passed away and when alive never talked of it all much. she was a concert cellist in Germany and ended up in London selling leather belts on the street to keep alive. After the war she married my friend John who had fought up through Italy as a “very substandard” (his words) soldier. Thanks..
No, the first camps in 1933 were for political opponents, especially social democrats, socialists, communists and anarchists as well as union leaders and some liberals. After 1935, other “undesirables” like homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, career criminals and “antisocials” were imprisoned there.
My maternal grandfather was the local secretary and organizer of the Catholic Workers’ Movement (KAB), a church-affiliated (non-socialist) union. When the Nazis came to power, the union was suppressed, its funds and property confiscated and the leadership arrested. As a minor local celebrity and former member of the Prussian diet, he was never sent to a camp, but regularly imprisoned for interrogation. This maltreatment nearly destroyed his health - ironically, it probably saved his lfe, as he was listed among many others for arrest and deportation to a death camp after the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944, but he was deemed to ill for transportation.
No doubt millions had it worse, but he certainly hadn’t it easy - and technically, he was a “pure” German with generations of nothing but Westphalian rural ancestors.
My mom was born in 1944 in Germany, from what her family told her she always told me most people were just hoping to live to see the end of the war. Things were bad during the war including conscription of all males, and only got worse afterwards with food being scarce and rape a constant threat for women.
During the war she says people were just trying to keep their heads down and survive.
Not so. The disabled were often killed at the institutions they were residing (with the family often getting a letter saying the victim had succumbed to pneumonia).
That said, certain institution were designated as “killing centres”.
If you are interested, you may wish to read more about the Nazi’s T-4 Program which was the German’s code name for the euthanasia program for the sick and disabled.
Keep in mind that “Dissent” could often be interpreted as “not being sufficiently enthusiastic.” For example, everybody had to give the Nazi salute when a parade passed. Failure to do so got you beaten with a truncheon then and there by the SA. This was exactly the kind of thing that raised alarm bells internationally starting in 1933 or so when it would happen to tourists and other foreigners who didn’t know better.
Another good book for this is In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson 2011.
I recall reading an essay about war efforts years ago.
the author made the point that, contrary to impressions - the Nazis tried to give the impression of normalcy. The British got heavily into the war effort right away, collecting scrap metal, conserving fuel, giving their spare money to teh government as war bonds - general deprivation for the war effort. meanwhile, the author claimed that until the return bomber blitz began in earnest and things became desperate, the Germans ignored these issues and tried to carry on life as normal. They tried to pretend that all was well and extraordinary efforts were not needed.
Of course, as the major cities turned to rubble and the manpower needs got more deperate things became progressively worse.
As for repression, I guess the major point we can make about the Nazis is they were far more organized and systematic, but suppressing dissent was common around Europe.
is that it?