Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  In 1930 there were 129,583 Nazi Party members, but registration jumped in early 1933 to 849,009 until in May the Party itself called a (temporary) halt and would accept no new members. When the ban was later lifted, a steady stream from all classes signed on, and by the early war years there were more than 5 million card-carrying members.24There was a flood of joiners to the other Nazi mass organizations, such as the storm troopers (SA). There were nearly a half-million members in August 1932; exactly two years later that number approached three million.25

  Women joined the National Socialist Women’s Group (NS-Frauenschaft), which was more of an elite organization. At the end of 1932 it had a membership of 110,000, which grew to almost 850,000 a year later and increased to over 1.5 million in the course of 1934. The mass-oriented German Women’s Enterprise (Deutsches Frauenwerk) was founded in September 1933 as an umbrella organization for all other women’s organizations that had been dissolved. It had 2.7 million members by 1935, and by 1938, with nearly 4 million, it was the largest non-compulsory organization in the country.26

  Women adjusted quickly to the new regime and, despite some grumbling, became one of its pillars.27 In a few years they surpassed men in the degree of their support of the Third Reich.28 Hans-Ulrich Wehler points out that contrary to what many have been saying for decades, by 1938, if not earlier, the “consensus state” was attained in Germany.29

  LEGITIMIZING THE NEW REGIME

  Hitler had to address several areas of popular concern in order to combine power and popularity. The top priority was to solve the economic problems. As unemployment went down, support for Hitler went up. In fact, with few exceptions, the jobless rate declined every month after Hitler’s appointment to November 1938. The Depression had been beaten by 1936, when there even began to be labor shortages.30

  People in numerous government offices and many ministries were involved in decisions leading to this turnaround, but it all happened on Hitler’s watch, and he was given the credit. Jobs and incomes bounced back, and hope was restored, especially among young men and women, who were also offered new state-sponsored programs. In 1935 conscription was reintroduced, and that drew working-age men from the labor market and helped reduce unemployment.31

  Although there were special new contributions workers had to pay, these were more than offset by new programs. Vacation days went up steadily, from the usual three, to six, and eventually in some cases to fifteen, making German workers on that score the best off in the world. The social insurance schemes (old age, sickness, accident) were retained, improved, and extended to many not previously covered. The new Strength Through Joy organization offered holidays abroad that were heretofore unthinkable for people of the working classes. This became the most popular of all the Nazi programs. It played a role in helping to create “a durable popular legitimacy despite intermittent and deeply felt expression of discontent.” What impressed so many was “the attentiveness to the popular quality of life.” The regime even tried to clean up and brighten the workplace, and such measures were taken as showing respect for workers.32

  New government measures combined economics and ideology—for example, the marriage loan scheme brought in for racially fit couples as part of the law on the reduction of unemployment (June 1, 1933). Generous loans were provided on condition that female spouses leave their jobs; the expectation was that a position would be opened for an unemployed male. Women were of central interest to the regime, not simply as potential mothers, as in Fascist Italy, but as mothers of the German race.33

  Oral histories of the time invariably point to the importance of employment and order as the keys to support for Hitler.34 Grumbling did not cease but good times were on the way back.35

  Workers who were in the KPD were harassed. Of the 300,000 members in the KPD in 1933, about half would experience some form of persecution in the course of the Third Reich. The others either changed sides or resigned themselves to the facts and retreated from politics. The SPD and the organizations linked to it (such as the free trade unions) had many more members but, taken together, suffered far less persecution than Communists. Both parties continued to a limited extent in the underground but posed no threat to the regime.36

  The workers’ attitudes were influenced by the return to full employment and the successes Hitler chalked up in foreign affairs. By 1936, he had reached new levels of popularity, also among workers.37 A handful in the working-class movement engaged in resistance, but only deeply committed radicals continued their rejection of Nazism. Workers despised the Versailles Treaty, and as Hitler tore it up, he undoubtedly hit a nationalist chord among all classes. Recent studies of the resistance have underlined that there was “a great willingness for consensus with the NS-regime, also among the working class.”38

  Facing and defeating the Communist threat in itself gained Hitler a great deal of support. Many believed Communists had attempted to seize power illegally again when they (allegedly) burned down the Reichstag in 1933. Victor Klemperer, a German-Jewish professor who lived in Dresden at the time, noted in his diary on November 14, 1933, that “all Germany prefers Hitler to the Communists.”39

  LAW-AND-ORDER ISSUES

  Many citizens, and not just those in the conservative, religious, or Nazi camps, saw the liberal Weimar Republic as a degenerate society and believed their country was on the road to ruin.40 Hitler appealed to a longing among good citizens for a more disciplined society of the kind they identified with the era before 1914.41 From their point of view, the Third Reich marked a pleasant change from the days of disorder.

  Some civil servants had their reservations, but with rare exceptions they stayed at their desks. Hitler and others in the Nazi hierarchy feared the civil service might adopt a passive attitude, making their tasks more difficult. The concerns were unfounded; as Hans Mommsen puts it, “There can be no doubt about the willingness of the broad mass of civil servants to serve the new government loyally.”42

  In fact it was the Nazis who acceded to the wishes of the civil service when, on April 7, 1933, the government introduced the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service. Lurking behind the notion of “restoration” was the thought, shared by many in it, that the institution had been subjected to political tampering. What the civil service wanted was a return to an idealized past in which they served society through apolitical work, undisturbed by politicians. In order to achieve that, they were prepared to accept as a necessary evil that there would be some illegalities in the short term, but only to clean out the bureaucracy.

  In practical terms the new law came in handy to dismiss a few political appointees, but it was mainly used to get rid of the Jews. What happened in the Ministry of Justice gives a good impression of the broader developments. There were 45,181 tenured positions in the Prussian justice system in April 1933, of which 1,704 were filled by Jews. In March 1934, when the purge was largely complete, 331 Jews remained—mainly (and temporarily) because of Hindenburg’s intervention.43

  German judges do not seem to have been unusually concerned. While some tried for a time to keep up contact with dismissed colleagues, most were indifferent, as the Nazis calmly moved more “nationally reliable” judges into place.44 In a country where the civil service plays an important part in everyday life, the “restoration”—not revolution—of its rank and file conveyed the impression of “normality.”

  The Criminal Police, or Kripo, were given new powers to fight crime. In keeping with Hitler’s wishes, a Prussian decree and a federal law in November 1933 dealt with “dangerous habitual offenders.” The Kripo could put suspects in “preventive custody” almost at will, 45 and arrest quotas were set for each district.46 The federal law gave judges power to order the “preventive detention” of persons deemed likely to re-offend, as well as the sterilization of those defined as “dangerous morals offenders” or “dangerous habitual offenders.”47

  In 1934, the first year the new measures came into force, judges ordered the preventive detention of 3,723 ha
bitual criminals. The numbers fell slowly until 1938, when they picked up again.48 Between 1934 and 1939, judges alone used their new power to incarcerate 26,346 (without trials).49

  Life on the inside of prisons became far tougher, but this “legal terror” created little alarm among good citizens who generally believed that prisoners should do hard time. The days of “coddling” criminals were over. Police went after the loosely defined group called the “asocials”—or antisocial elements—whose way of life, or even unkempt appearance, offended middle-class values and “wholesome popular sentiment.”50

  Many who lived through the times recall that “specifically when it came to sharper policies toward criminals, there existed between the people and the National Socialist regime a consensus.” This conclusion comes from a man (born in 1925) who had a minor brush with the secret police but who later served in the Wehrmacht.51 There is overwhelming evidence that “fighting crime” and reestablishing “good order” won considerable support for Hitler and his regime.

  THE BLOOD “PURGE”

  One of the great contrasts between the Nazi and the Russian revolutions was the near absence of purges in Hitler’s Germany. His hold on the Party, the state, and the nation was such—and their identification with his ideas so strong—that there was little need to kill off opponents. In the early years, moreover, his ambitions, insofar as they were known, were modest and most Germans agreed with them.

  There was one purge of the SA. The organization’s unruliness and violence had been an advantage prior to 1933; thereafter such behavior ran up against citizens’ concerns about law and order. The nation did not appreciate the vigilante-style operations of the SA as deputy police, and the elites in the military and the economy pointed accusatory fingers at the SA for wanting to become part of the army or for being too “Socialist.”

  At a meeting on July 6, 1933, Hitler reminded the Reich governors (Reichsstatthalter) that revolution was “no permanent condition” and that the revolutionary current had to be “channeled into the secure bed of evolution.”52 In August the role of the SA as deputy police was abolished and funding cut off. This step helped reassure citizens but did not quench the thirst of some in the SA for revolution. But after six months or so in office, Hitler’s regime had nothing more to fear from organized resistance, and the immediate worry was how to curb its own radicals.

  On February 1, 1934, Ernst Röhm presented plans to the military that would have transformed his SA into an institution akin to a militia alongside the army. Minister of Defense Blomberg was completely opposed. To show his heart was in the right place, and without any pressure being exerted, Blomberg introduced both the swastika and the “Aryan paragraph” into the army—thereby forcing out seventy men presumably “suspect” for being Jews. Hitler informed the SA he would not accept Röhm’s plan, and at the same time he asked the secret police to begin assembling information on him.53

  The issues with the SA festered. On June 17, 1934, former chancellor Papen told an audience at Marburg University that inner peace in Germany had to be restored: “No nation can live in a continuous state of revolution, if it wishes to justify itself before history.”54 Papen may have wanted to mobilize conservative opposition to Hitler, but the chancellor avoided being hemmed in.

  Blomberg urged Hitler to do something about the SA when they met briefly on June 21. The most opportune time to act would be before the SA returned from leave on August 1. The planning was more or less complete on June 28, and early on June 30 Hitler flew from the Rhineland to Munich. He and his entourage went to the hotel on the Tegernsee where Röhm and other SA leaders were staying. Röhm and his men were arrested and not long afterward shot.55

  An assorted group of others were also executed during what was dubbed the “night of the long knives.” Hitler settled scores with former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, whose assassination was presented to law-abiding German citizens as necessary to stop an alleged revolt. This claim was baseless, but the killings put an end to any threat to Hitler’s near absolute power.

  This was the first mass murder in the Third Reich, and no effort was made to conceal the fact that the killings were without a semblance of a trial. Most Germans accepted that Hitler “sentenced” a hundred or so culprits to death.56 The SA was given a new leader, and while the organization continued to exist, its membership was allowed to dwindle.

  Reports on public opinion were unanimous in their approval.57 Hitler had managed to signal the arrival of political stabilization, and he granted a selective amnesty on August 10. Basking in the goodwill all around him, he used the occasion of Hindenburg’s death to publicize the “unification of the office of Reich president with that of Reich chancellor.”

  Citizens were given an opportunity to express their opinion on August 19, in a plebiscite on Hitler’s decision to unite the two offices. Voting in favor was 89.9 percent. The underground opposition was bewildered by the positive popular responses: “(1) The broad mass has not grasped the political meaning of the events. (2) Large, obviously very large sections of the population even celebrate Hitler for his ruthless determination, and only a small section has started thinking or been shocked. (3) Also large sections of the working class have fallen into an uncritical deification of Hitler.”58

  Although Germans could only guess at how many were murdered on the night of the long knives, Socialist underground reporters admitted that the event increased support for Hitler. The action no doubt undermined respect for the law but appealed to those who had “strong sympathies for ‘summary justice’ and as hard a punishment as possible.” As usual, the Socialists chalked up the reaction of the people to “false consciousness.”59

  FIRST FOREIGN POLICY MOVES AND POPULAR OPINION

  Hitler’s rivals on the international stage could not imagine how wide his ambitions ranged.60 On October 14, 1933, he took the country out of the League of Nations and used a radio address not only to explain the decision but to contrast the Nazi revolution with the French and Russian revolutions in which countless people were slaughtered. In his revolution, he said, there was so much respect for private property that “not a single pane of glass in a shopwindow was broken, no business was plundered, and no house damaged.”61

  Typical of this “plebiscitary dictatorship,” the decision to leave the League was put to the people exactly a month after the event. A resounding 95.1 percent were in favor. This was not a free vote, but even anti-Nazi observers agreed that the results reflected “genuine national enthusiasm.” To their chagrin they had to admit to themselves there was “real consensus.”62

  It is worth citing one of the first underground Socialist reports about the plebiscite. Here was what Hitler’s opponents had to say about the overwhelmingly positive result:

  Because of the extraordinarily high number of votes in favor of the regime even critical foreign observers were tempted to assume that the numbers had been faked or resulted from direct force and terror. Those assumptions, however, are based on a mistaken perception of the real and profound influence fascist ideology has upon all classes of German society…. Careful observations… show that the results of the election in general are a true indicator of the mood of the population. Particularly in rural districts and in small villages there may have been many “corrections.” The general result indicates an extraordinarily rapid and effective process of fascistization of society.63

  Another foreign policy success came in early 1935. At Versailles in 1919 the Saarland had been cut off from Germany in the expectation it would join France. The matter was to be decided on January 13, 1935, by a plebiscite among Saarlanders, including Communists from the area who were released from concentration camps to vote (they testified later they were allowed to vote as they wished). The election, run by Swedes to ensure fairness, showed that 90.8 percent favored rejoining Germany, even though they would have known what the Third Reich stood for. There may have been some pressure, but at worst it was moderate and indirect. The res
ult was an important symbolic victory. How bad could it be to live in the Third Reich when Saarlanders voted in such numbers to join it? The return of the Saar soon followed with great pomp and ceremony.64

  Another symbolically important decision that year was taken on March 16 to introduce the military draft; the expressed intent was to create an army of thirty-six divisions. Germans had felt humiliated at being limited by the Versailles Treaty to an army no larger than a hundred thousand men. Even former supporters of the SPD saw advantages of calling the men to the colors: it would free up jobs for the unemployed, and the expanding army would increase demand for goods and thus help the economy to recover.65

  Hitler’s reintroduction of conscription was greeted the next day by a spontaneous and massive demonstration in Munich. The underground Socialist report reeked of consternation: “The enthusiasm on March 17 enormous. All of Munich is on its feet. One can force a people to sing, but one cannot force them to sing with such enthusiasm. I experienced the days of 1914 and can only say that the declaration of war did not make such a great impression on me as the reception of Hitler on March 17The trust in the political talent and honest intentions of Hitler is growing ever greater, just as Hitler has again won extraordinary popularity. He is loved by many.”66

  Almost exactly a year later, on March 7, Hitler sent his army across the bridges on the Rhine into what was supposed to be an area free from the German military. France had hoped this part of the Rhineland would be a buffer zone between the two countries. Hitler now boldly broke the terms of the treaty, and the French did nothing. A Reichstag election followed on March 29—another exercise in plebiscitary dictatorship, in which 99 percent gave their support to Hitler. Even if the voting was rigged, there was no question that most of the country embraced the beginning of Germany’s return to great-power status. Numerous reports, even from the skeptical Socialist underground, saw nothing “artificial” about the reaction and thought the consensus in favor of Hitler massive.67