# How oppressive was Nazi Germany... to Germans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 7, 2012, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372 "2012-12-07T23:48:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/21 "2012-12-10T16:28:36Z")
I would take any recollections from Germans who were present during the regime with a grain of salt. The way they tell it, Hitler took over the whole country on his own accord by pointing a revolver at everyone and forcing them to comply. They also like to play up the extent of these “resistance movements”–the number of people who claimed to be fighting against the regime when the internal opposition was actually about twenty college students dropping leaflets on the ground strains credulity. Nazism was a mass movement with mass support, and a great deal of those who survived it did so because they did things that made them guilty. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/22 "2012-12-10T16:52:35Z")
For some reason, the Nazis tolerated RC chaplains in the Army-yet Hitler did make the RC youth organizations illegal. I also read that after the victory over Russia, the church would be totally supressed-and the chaplins gone from the armed forces-is this correct? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/23 "2012-12-10T17:00:32Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I was sort of under the impression they were Germans too. This. I was about to post a [nitpick]; it’s an easy and disturbing trap, but I’m sure OP fell in accidentally. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/24 "2012-12-10T17:17:23Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Apropos of this subject, I recently learned about the story of [Sophie Scholl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl) and the [White Rose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426578/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1). It’s hearbreaking, awful, and insignificant. Organized resistance to the Nazis was almost entirely nonexistent even before the war started, and wholly ineffective throughout. The White Rose movement was romantic because they were (almost immediately) martyred, but they were literally just a few college students distributing pamphlets a few times. > [@Shmendrik](#): > > Far less oppressive than the Soviet Union was to Soviet citizens during that time period. Eh. Stalin’s relocation of ethnic groups (a policy that predated Communism in Russian history) and [starvation of the kulaks](http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm) have no direct equivalents in Greater Germany, maybe, but Hitler wasn’t above [purging his paramilitary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_long_knives) with the same sort of thoroughness Stalin would apply to his own military, and neither dictator hesitated to kill or imprison based on rumor or innuendo. I might go so far as to say “_somewhat_ less oppressive,” but “_far_ less oppressive” is, I think, too kind to Hitler. > [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > Keep in mind that “Dissent” could often be interpreted as “not being sufficiently enthusiastic.” Right. Hell, you could be unabashedly pro-Hitler and get killed – see my link to the “Night of the Long Knives” above. > [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > I would take any recollections from Germans who were present during the regime with a grain of salt. The way they tell it, Hitler took over the whole country on his own accord by pointing a revolver at everyone and forcing them to comply. They also like to play up the extent of these “resistance movements”–the number of people who claimed to be fighting against the regime when the internal opposition was actually about twenty college students dropping leaflets on the ground strains credulity. > > Nazism was a mass movement with mass support, and a great deal of those who survived it did so because they did things that made them guilty. Yes, surviving Germans certainly downplayed their involvement as much as possible, and even during the war affected an almost comical blindness to the evils that were being done in their name; look at the footage of “shocked” citizens being forced to tour the concentration camps they pretended to know nothing about. And I completely agree that the size and effectiveness of resistance movements in general is wildly overstated and romanticized in most accounts, most of all those against Hitler inside Germany itself. ---
**Author:** ![Silence\_Lenore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@Silence\_Lenore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silence_Lenore)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/25 "2012-12-10T17:44:29Z")
My mother was a small girl, living in a farming village in southern Germany during the war. She has many stories - the Nazis taking their one horse so her father had to pull the plow - butchering a pig in secret in the basement for food, hoping no one outside would hear the pig squealing, because they were suppose to give most of their pigs to the war effort - her father burying his helmet from WWI in the garden so the Nazis would not know he served in the Kaiser’s army (I can’t remember why that was a dangerous thing to have done) - her two brothers, aged 15 & 16 being taken away into the army - and more. I’d like to record her talking about her childhood, but she has nightmares when she talks about it too much. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/26 "2012-12-10T17:50:36Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > I would take any recollections from Germans who were present during the regime with a grain of salt. And not just Germans, either. The ethnic cleansing of the occupied countries couldn’t have occurred without massive, enthusiastic local support. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/27 "2012-12-10T19:10:05Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > 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. I think this makes sense based on differing circumstances. The Germans were widely (& correctly) perceived as being the main instigators of the war. So in order for the Nazis to keep public support high, they needed to keep public sacrifices to a minimum. Because if they started asking people to collect scrap metal and so on, then people might wonder whether it was such a good idea to have gotten into all these wars to begin with. By constrast, the British public viewed the war as having been forced on them. So they could be stirred into making these sacrifices without undercutting support for the war and the government. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/28 "2012-12-10T19:26:44Z")
> [@HubZilla](#): > > Was the Gestapo ruthless to Germans, like the NKVD or Kempetai to its own citizens? Did the Nazis suppress free speech and assembly (etc)? [In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, a biography of William Dodd](http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Beasts-Terror-American-Hitlers/dp/030740885X) (who was Ambassador to Nazi Germany before the war) relates a story about this. When Hitler learned that there was an anti-Nazi protest planned in New York City, he called Dodd and demanded that the US Government disperse or break-up the protest. When Dodd explained that the US Government doesn’t have to right to do such a thing, Hitler was confused about how such a thing was possible, but he eventually conceded the point. The important part of the story is that Hitler’s mindset didn’t even imagine such a thing as “free association” that the Government couldn’t break-up could be possible. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/29 "2012-12-10T19:32:53Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > The Germans were widely (& correctly) perceived as being the main instigators of the war. So in order for the Nazis to keep public support high, they needed to keep public sacrifices to a minimum. Because if they started asking people to collect scrap metal and so on, then people might wonder whether it was such a good idea to have gotten into all these wars to begin with. Likewise, the Nazis believed that the war had to be carefully stage-managed or people simply wouldn’t put up with it. They didn’t really go into total war mode until very late in the conflict. However, in defense of many Germans - the Nazis controlled almost all communication and had a brutally effective internal security system, so that resistance was effectively doomed anyway. Like under the Soviets, rebellion requires communication, and the state controls communication, so that even if everybody hated the regime and knew everyone else hated it, they could never organize to stop it. > [@Jackmannii](#): > > I was sort of under the impression they were Germans too. ManyJews were not - the nazis wiped out far more than simply German Jews. Ethnically and culturally, the Gypsies were not, and many of the other, ahem, “undesirables” weren’t particularly German. Those categories definitely crossed the boundaries of the nation. > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > And not just Germans, either. The ethnic cleansing of the occupied countries couldn’t have occurred without massive, enthusiastic local support. Not true. This happened in a few cases, but if there was enough military power present to control the area, then the locals were unnecessary. The worst mass killings occurred in areas where the Nazi either had total control, or had just arrived and defeated the local defenders. In enither case was local support necessary. The areas were nonviolent resistence succeeded did so because the Germans lacked the time to deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/30 "2012-12-10T19:34:54Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Apropos of this subject, I recently learned about the story of [Sophie Scholl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl) and the [White Rose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426578/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1). [Relevant Subnormality strip.](http://www.viruscomix.com/page474.html) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/31 "2012-12-10T20:17:41Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > 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. I’ve read otherwise. Germany’s small black population was one of the first groups targeted by the Nazis. Germany had never had a major empire in Africa and there had been few Africans who traveled from African colonies to Germany. So the general sense in Germany was that black people were foreigners. There was also a political element - after World War I, many of the garrison troops stationed in western Germany were from France’s African colonies. So blacks were associated with the postwar occupation. And because of the small black population in Germany, many black people ended up marrying Germans rather than other blacks. The Nazis, of course, were horrified by these interracial marriages. As the Nazis gained power, they enacted policies directed at eliminating Germany’s black population. Many blacks were placed in internment camps as “foreigners”. There were laws passed against interracial marriages and restricted black people from holding many professions. And there was a program of forced sterilization for black and biracial people. There are obvious similarities between these policies and the policies directed against Jews during the same period. And being treated like a Jew in Nazi Germany was not a good situation. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/32 "2012-12-10T20:33:04Z")
My overall understanding is that the Nazis didn’t have any special love for the German people. But they realized they needed the German people to carry out the Nazi plan. The Nazis were certainly prepared to sacrifice however many Germans it would take to advance Nazi interests. You can find many cases of Nazi leaders telling their subordinates to repress any feelings of “sentimental” attachments they might feel for the German people. Of course, these weren’t public statements. The Nazis, as I said, needed the German people so they had to present a public image that the Nazi regime served the German people and hide the real belief that it was the other way around. The long-term Nazi plans for after the war, when Germany had controlled all of Europe, was for a pretty much complete transformation of Germany itself. All non-Nazi aspects of German culture were to be eliminated and Germans would be changed into pure Aryans. Those who objected or couldn’t make the change-over would be eliminated. But those were long-term plans that never got much past the drawing board. During the twelve years when the Nazis were in power, they were willing to let the average German be - as long as he did not resist Nazism in any way. Say or do anything that the Nazis saw as disloyalty to the Nazi regime and you’d be arrested. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2012, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/33 "2012-12-10T21:24:19Z")
Two comments: (a) I read [this very interesting book](http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Hitler-text-only-Rosenbaum/dp/B004FIOJZA/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355173954&sr=1-2&keywords=explaining+hitler) a few years back, and one of the things that really struck me was the part about how the Nazi political party operated during Hitler’s rise to power… before they controlled the actual state apparatus and thus could obviously pretty much go arrest or kill anyone they wanted to they were already incredibly thuggish and evil. They did pretty much anything they could possibly think of to gain any kind of political advantage, from murdering journalists or political opponents to any kind of legal or quasi-legal political maneuvering. Right before the election where Hitler finally more-or-less-legitimately came to power it actually looked like maybe his opponents were finally making headway and his popularity was starting to decline before one final dirty trick (I’ve forgotten the details, something involving pressuring some respected elder statesman (Hindenburg?) to throw his support to the Nazis) allowed them to win the big election by a fairly narrow margin. There’s a pretty heartbreaking description of some surviving correspondence between Hitler’s opponents starting to finally sound optimistic before having the rug yanked out from under them. My point being, we tend to focus so much on the genocide (for obvious reasons) that it’s easy to overlook the many other ways large and small in which Hitler was just cold blooded and evil. He wasn’t just another national leader who had an insane hatred for Jews… (b) I’ve always been curious about what it would have been like to grow up in Germany during the war, psychologically… particularly for someone out on a farm in the countryside who could go without actually witnessing much of the horror first-hand. To go from the misery of the depression to this new national unity (and how many 10-year-olds wouldn’t get swept up in that?) to this string of incredible military triumphs and empire, through the slow collapse (with propaganda constantly trying to hide it, but obviously not succeeding in the long run), to total defeat, to learning the full details of the evil your country was responsible for; and then suddenly the enemies you’ve been fighting for so long become your best friends and protectors (assuming this takes place in West Germany). And that’s all in approximately a 10 year span… someone 10 years old in 1937 or so would be 20 in 1947. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/34 "2012-12-11T04:59:26Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Two comments: > (a) I read [this very interesting book](http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Hitler-text-only-Rosenbaum/dp/B004FIOJZA/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355173954&sr=1-2&keywords=explaining+hitler) a few years back, and one of the things that really struck me was the part about how the Nazi political party operated during Hitler’s rise to power… before they controlled the actual state apparatus and thus could obviously pretty much go arrest or kill anyone they wanted to they were already incredibly thuggish and evil. They did pretty much anything they could possibly think of to gain any kind of political advantage, from murdering journalists or political opponents to any kind of legal or quasi-legal political maneuvering. Right before the election where Hitler finally more-or-less-legitimately came to power it actually looked like maybe his opponents were finally making headway and his popularity was starting to decline before one final dirty trick (I’ve forgotten the details, something involving pressuring some respected elder statesman (Hindenburg?) to throw his support to the Nazis) allowed them to win the big election by a fairly narrow margin. There’s a pretty heartbreaking description of some surviving correspondence between Hitler’s opponents starting to finally sound optimistic before having the rug yanked out from under them. My point being, we tend to focus so much on the genocide (for obvious reasons) that it’s easy to overlook the many other ways large and small in which Hitler was just cold blooded and evil. He wasn’t just another national leader who had an insane hatred for Jews… True. When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, it’s likely the Nazi Party had already peaked in public support and was beginning a decline. The Nazis had received a bump in popular support from the Great Depression but that appears to have begun fading as people started to realize the Nazis weren’t capable of delivering on all the promises they had made when they were seeking votes. 1932 was a turning point. Hitler decided to challenge Hindenburg for the Presidency - and Hindenburg won. The Nazis tried to play this off as a symbolic victory because Hitler had done better than expected but the undeniable reality was that Hitler had lost the election. The Nazis were able to win the largest number of votes in the July 1932 election but they didn’t have a majority and refused to join with any other parties in a coalition government. So a second election was held in November. The Nazis again won the most votes - but their total dropped from what they had received in July. It appeared the public might be starting to get tired of the Nazis. So Hitler and the Nazi leadership got a little less obstinate and agreed to form a coalition with other conservative parties. Hitler became Chancellor and two other Nazis - Hermann Goering and Wilhelm Frick - were named as cabinet ministers. The remaining majority of the cabinet belonged to other parties, who figured they could keep Hitler under control. Hitler, of course, had other ideas. Now that he was the Chancellor, he planned all centralizing all power into his office and removing any parliamentary checks on him. It’s no coincidence that Frick and Goering were named to the two cabinet posts they were - they controlled the German police, which they then filled with Nazi loyalists. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2012, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372/35 "2012-12-12T00:55:05Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Not true. This happened in a few cases, but if there was enough military power present to control the area, then the locals were unnecessary. The worst mass killings occurred in areas where the Nazi either had total control, or had just arrived and defeated the local defenders. In enither case was local support necessary. The areas were nonviolent resistence succeeded did so because the Germans lacked the time to deal with it. I dunno. I’m going on memory of a book read long ago, but it gave examples of places where the Germans arrived to find the locals already killing the jews and looking to the Nazis for advice on how to do it better. It also pointed out that the geography of the holocaust is telling in that it would have been harder to stage in areas without endemic anti-semetism. Again, I read that long ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-oppressive-was-nazi-germany-to-germans/643372.md?page=1)