In his personal diary, he noted that the memorandum issued from the Propaganda Ministry justifying the invasion of the Low Countries set up ‘a new record, I think, for cynicism and downright impudence’. He was also struck over the ensuing days by the apathy shown by Berliners for the offensive. Most Germans he had talked to were sunk deep in depression at the news. ‘The question is,’ he noted, ‘how many Germans support this final, desperate gamble that Hitler has taken?’ Discussing it with fellow correspondents at the Adlon, they agreed that most did, yet that did not mean they had to like it.
Of course, Shirer, as an educated middle-class, democratically raised American, would find the totalitarian Nazis offensive. Yet despite the undoubted gloom within Germany about the war, Hitler’s approval rating and popularity were still massive. He had brought employment, prosperity and pride. The turn-around in such a short period of time was truly astonishing. And he had started to make Germans feel secure once more. Without a shot fired, he had built up her armed forces, and expanded the Reich, bringing former German peoples back into the nation. Most Germans thought the claims on the Danzig corridor, which would link the Baltic outpost of East Prussia to the eastern border and make Germany whole once more, were entirely justified – after all, it was mainly German people living there anyway.
There was also another benefit from absorbing the eastern half of Poland: it created a buffer against the westward expansion of the Soviet Union. Bolshevism was painted as an evil and Stalin a bloody tyrant in much the same way that Nazism and Hitler were perceived in Britain and the West.
Else Wendel’s attitude was typical of many Germans. Raised in Charlottenburg, an affluent part of Berlin, she was an educated and intelligent young mother, but with little interest in politics. Although not a Party member, her ex-husband, Richard, was, and indeed, when he fell in love with the lead violinist of the Brandenburg City Orchestra, of which he was conductor, the Nazi ideology that denigrated church and religion made a divorce from Else far easier and more acceptable than it would have been before Hitler had come to power. Nor did he make any further financial contribution to either Else or their children, which was also acceptable according to Nazi law. ‘There are lots of women left for younger girls today,’ a kindly doctor had told her. ‘I know it’s part of the superman idea.’
As a result, she had been forced to go back to work and to place the older boy, Wolfgang, in the care of her cousin and his wife, and baby Klaus with foster parents until she could afford to look after them herself once more. Both could have been placed in a Kinderheim – a state children’s home – but the thought of having them raised by party members and becoming institutionalized did not appeal to her at all.
Else worked in the Department of Art in the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) – Strength Through Joy – organization, based at the Headquarters of the German Labour Front, in two large, four-storeyed houses in the Kaiserallee in west Berlin. She worked directly for one man, Herr Wolter, and their job was to organize art exhibitions in factories – part of the Nazi cultural plan to make workers more interested in art. Else had been lucky to get a job in a government institution without being a Party member, but because of a shortage of suitable staff she had been given a temporary post and then proved so adept they kept her on. Her boss was a Party man, however, although this did not stop him making numerous jokes about the leading Nazis. Nonetheless, like Else, Herr Wolter was a great admirer of Hitler and all his achievements and he certainly believed that the German invasion of Poland had been entirely justified.
‘But up until now,’ Else had retorted, ‘Hitler has done everything peacefully. I do admire his foresight and diplomacy, as long as it means peace. But this is war!’ In this she was reflecting the view of the vast majority; very few wished to risk a repeat of the disastrous 1914 – 18 war. There was certainly no euphoria as there had been in 1914. Herr Wolter had laughed, however. The war, he assured her, would be over in a flash.
A few days later, Else had been at her parents’ house with her younger sister, Hilde, and brother Rudolf, helping her mother fit blackout sheets across their windows. Hilde had worried that the war might last longer than they all thought.
‘Nonsense,’ said their mother. ‘Of course it will be over. Surely the Führer knows what he is talking about.’
Most people, on the whole, tend to accept the decisions of their leaders, assuming, as Else’s mother did, that they are informed by a great deal more information than a member of the public can ever know. Faith in Hitler remained widespread through the first nine months of the war. When in September there had been a particularly fine spell of little rain and sunshine, Else and her fellow Berliners referred to it as ‘Führer weather’, as though Hitler’s magic could even influence the skies above them.
Of Else’s circle of friends and family there was only one person who was vehemently anti-Nazi, and that was her Aunt Fee, who lived in the country to the east of Berlin. Else had visited her at Christmas and while she was there Fee openly admitted to her that she listened to foreign radio broadcasts, something that was strictly verboten in Germany. Else was appalled, and horrified when her aunt accused the Nazis of repeatedly lying to the German people. ‘This wicked man,’ Fee said of Hitler, ‘will lead Germany to her doom.’
Else was genuinely shocked; she felt sure her aunt was wrong.
‘You are supposed to be an educated woman,’ her aunt fumed, ‘and you have two sons. Why don’t you find these things out? You’re hopeless. You are just as childish as the rest of Germany. You have a leader and that is all you ask. Can’t you ever take any individual responsibility at all?’
‘We were so young,’ says Hilda Müller of those early months of the war, ‘we didn’t really understand the political background.’ In May 1940, Hilda was not quite seventeen, but had already left school, done her compulsory year’s service in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), and had just begun her first proper job, working for Siemens, the world-renowned electrical engineering company. Her father was deeply wary of Hitler and the Nazis, but since he was something of a drunkard, Hilda had learned not to take his views too seriously.
In fact, Hilda had a lot to be grateful for to the Nazis. She was from a working-class family from the Hohenschönhausen suburb of east Berlin, and lived in a very small house her father had built on their allotment back in the early thirties to save money. Hilda was an intelligent girl but before the Nazis took power she would not have been able to stay at school, and would have left at thirteen. However, in Nazi Germany, she had been able to take an exam to remain a further two and a half years and because her family could not afford it, the State paid. Now, because of her education, she was being trained by Siemens and paid 75 marks a month, a good wage at the time for someone of her age.
Siemens had supported the Nazis, and their two factories in Berlin – Siemens Schuckert and Siemens-Halske – were both producing war material, yet Hilda thought little of it. As far as she was concerned, the Nazis had brought employment and prosperity. There were great celebrations too; Hilda had taken part in the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, and had enjoyed the festivities to mark the 700th anniversary of Berlin in 1937. The following year there were the ‘Happy Folk’ celebrations, then in June 1939 there had been a festival to mark the summer solstice. The Nazis liked such public celebrations.
Yet there was also no doubting that a lot of the gaiety had gone out of life since the beginning of the war. From the outset, there were nightly blackouts, for example. Cafés, bars and dance halls were no longer allowed to remain open all night either. For someone like Hilda who loved dancing, this was a great blow. At night, the lights had all gone out and Berlin had become a place of darkness. During her year’s service with the RAD, Hilda had been helping in the house of well-to-do Nazi members, looking after their children. They had a number of rehearsals for air raids, despite Göring’s repeated assurances that no enemy bombers would fly over German air space. ‘I would pr
actise taking the children down to the cellar,’ says Hilda. ‘We always had to have a pail of water in the cellar in case of fire.’ Gas masks were also issued.
There was rationing, too, introduced the previous August, and it was far more stringent than it was in Britain. Each person was issued with colour-coded ration cards – such as a red one for bread – which were valid for twenty-eight days. This meant the authorities could alter the amounts rationed at short notice. Bread, cereals, meat, fats, butter, cheese, milk, sugar, and eggs were all rationed from the outset of war, and the amounts permitted depended on age and the kind of work someone did. Clothing was also rationed, with further different coloured cards – brown for teenage girls, for example, and yellow for men. Germany’s lack of resources had a big impact on the amount of clothes available. ‘The truth is,’ noted William Shirer, ‘that having no cotton and almost no wool, the German people must get along with what clothing they have until the end of the war.’ A great deal of what they did have was devoted to making incredibly elaborate and over-tailored uniforms for the armed forces; there was nothing like the simple and spare British battledress in the Wehrmacht.
Rationing was relaxed over Christmas – everyone was given an extra quarter-pound of butter, a hundred grams of meat and four eggs – but many of the shops were tantalizing, displaying wonderful pre-war goods that were no longer for sale. Germans – even under the irreligious Nazis – loved Christmas and any town would normally have been twinkling with festive cheer, but the first Christmas of the war had been notable for the lack of lights and gaiety. Else Wendel, forced to spend it without her children, found it a particularly depressing time.
There was also a real shortage of coal, which, combined with the dark, the reduction in food, the menfolk being away and the uncertainty of Germany’s future now that she was at war, made life very tough for many people. ‘1939 to 1940 was very hard,’ says Hilda Müller. ‘My toes were frozen a lot of the time. I often went hungry.’
Of less concern to most Germans were the lurking presence of the secret police or the strict regulations decreed by a totalitarian party like the Nazis. William Shirer may have resented the fact that his room was bugged, but so long as you were not foreign, Jewish, overtly homosexual, communist, or mentally or physically handicapped, the majority were left to get on with their lives without too much interference. The more unsavoury aspects of life under the Nazis were tolerated because most recognized that National Socialism had brought very obvious and rapid improvements. Hilda’s father, for example, had resented the swastika and portrait of Hitler that had to be put up in the block of flats in which they used to live. ‘We had to have them,’ says Hilda, ‘we had them at school too.’ It didn’t bother her particularly; it was simply a fact of life.
And, of course, now that it was early summer, life began to improve once more for most; certainly Hilda believed she had reached a turning point. She was greatly enjoying her time with Siemens, being trained to do something and being paid a decent wage. It also gave her a chance to escape from her moody, volatile father. ‘It enabled me to be independent,’ she says. And with the days lengthening and the weather warm, and with Berliners getting used to wartime life, the city no longer seemed quite as drab, cold, and lifeless as it had just a few months before.
One of the reasons why William Shirer had found Berliners so calm and subdued on 10 May was that Josef Goebbels, Reich Propaganda Minister, had insisted that the start of the offensive should not be marked by any great fanfare. There should not be excessive optimism; nor should initial successes be exaggerated.
Goebbels held a ‘ministerial conference’ every morning at the Propaganda Ministry just off Wilhelmstrasse – a stone’s throw from the Reich Chancellery. His closest collaborators would attend, and the minister would brief his team and issue instructions for the forthcoming day. It was here, above all, that the image of the mighty Third Reich was created. In Goebbels, Hitler had found one of his most effective and loyal acolytes.
Despite the jokes that went around about Hitler and the Nazi leadership, Hitler remained phenomenally popular. Much of this was due to the enormously effective Nazi propaganda machine. Propaganda had been an integral part of Nazi politics from the outset, and was to a large degree the responsibility of the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, under its chief, Josef Goebbels. The son of a shop assistant and clerk, Goebbels had proved himself an intelligent pupil at school and despite his humble upbringing had attended the universities of Bonn, Freiburg and Heidelberg. At first he had had thoughts of becoming a teacher, but then turned to journalism; however, it was a career path that led nowhere. Instead, he turned to politics, joining the Nazis in 1922. Rising steadily up Hitler’s party hierarchy, by 1928 he had been elected to the Reichstag. Marriage in 1931 to Magda Quant, a society divorcee, gave him the kind of money and status he had always yearned for but never attained. Doors now opened, with his elegant home in Berlin’s west end becoming a regular Nazi meeting place before their ascendency to power. When that happened in 1933, Goebbels was given the post of Propaganda Minister, a position he had held ever since. Almost immediately, he announced that his prime goal was to achieve a ‘mobilization of mind and spirit’ in Germany. The traumatic end in 1918 could never be repeated; the Germans of the future had to be mentally tougher, which was where propaganda could play a large part. ‘We did not lose the war because our artillery gave out,’ he said in a speech in 1933, ‘but because the weapons of our minds did not fire.’
Goebbels faced several challenges. The first was to mobilize the German people towards military expansion and war and to maintain morale. This had been achieved, although most Germans had needed little convincing that those lands lost by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles should quite rightly be part of Germany once more. However, they had all been achieved peaceably; war was a different matter. More thorny was the sudden volte face over the Soviet Union. Having spent the pre-war years ratcheting up anti-Bolshevism to fever pitch levels he had been faced with a particularly tough PR task trying to convince Germans of the wisdom of such a move whilst at the same time ensuring that belief in the Führer remained as high as ever. ‘He must be very busy this morning,’ Herr Wolter had told Else Wendel on 24 August, ‘burning all the leaflets and books in which he thundered against the Russians, and told us so carefully why and how they were such barbarians. This morning they are our blood brothers.’ Else had laughed as hard as her boss. From that moment on, Goebbels had had to try to persuade the nation that it was, after all, necessary to go to war.
The second main task was to present to Germans and potential enemies alike an aura of ever-increasing military strength and invincibility, with the aim of, first, persuading Germans that a war could and would be won and, second, trying to cow these enemies. At the same time, it was the Propaganda Ministry’s job to ensure the population received practical advice about rationing, possible gas attacks, air raid protection and other wartime considerations, whilst at the same time maintaining morale.
Although Goebbels was one of the best-known Nazis both at home and abroad, he did not have complete domination of propaganda by any stretch of the imagination. It was very much Hitler’s divide and rule style to encourage jealousy and back-stabbing amongst his senior acolytes, so he decreed that foreign propaganda should be handled by von Ribbentrop’s foreign office and that military reporting be left to the OKW’s propaganda department. Meanwhile, Hitler’s Reich Press Chief, Otto Dietrich, although officially subordinate to Goebbels, was very much a part of the Führer’s inner circle and produced daily directives to the press. Needless to say, Goebbels repeatedly tried to persuade Hitler to bring all propaganda under his control but the Führer refused to be budged.
Even so, Goebbels was able to get round most of these frustrating blocks to his control. The Propaganda Ministry maintained a large foreign section despite von Ribbentrop’s separate role in that area. Dietrich’s authority, for example, bizarrely only ever exte
nded to the press, not the radio and news services. Unlike in Britain, however, there were few national newspapers – nearly all were regional, and although newspapers continued to be read widely, it was the radio, above all, that was used to convey the message of the Third Reich; the Nazis had, from the outset, been particularly radio-conscious.
Although radio saw a world-wide expansion in the 1930s, the Nazis, particularly, had made sure that radio sets were both cheap and accessible. In 1933, the Volksempfänger (‘people’s receiver’) had been put into mass production, and this was later followed by the DKE (Deutscher Kleinempfänger – ‘German little receiver’), which was even more affordable. While across Germany some 70 per cent of the population owned radios by 1940, this was still not considered enough, so communal listening points were set up: all restaurants, cafés and bars had radios, while many were installed in blocks of flats, factories and other workplaces. There were radios at the Siemens factory where Hilda Müller was being trained, for example. Loudspeakers were also erected on pillars in towns and cities. The density of radio coverage was greater in the Third Reich than in any other country in the world. Radio wardens coaxed people into listening to key speeches and programmes, while propaganda broadcasts were broadcast between a heavy diet of light music and popular entertainment to ensure people kept tuned in.
Goebbels also went to great lengths to develop his foreign-language radio. By May 1940 his propaganda broadcasts were going out in twenty-two different languages. English-language broadcasts targeted the British working classes, while the broadcasts of the Irish national, William Joyce – or Lord Haw-Haw, as he was known – had millions of regular listeners. French broadcasts equally aimed to undermine morale – ‘Why die for Danzig?’ was an oft-repeated refrain. It was also up to Goebbels to release newsreel footage to foreign press and media organizations. Again, repeated film of panzers, burning villages, waves of bombers and, of course, the appropriate sound effects of Stukas dive-bombing, their ‘Jericho trumpet’ sirens wailing, ensured that most in the west duly believed Germany to be the military power-house it liked to make out. Goebbels had a simple dictum that he always stuck to: ‘Propaganda means repetition and still more repetition!’ And on the whole, it seemed to work.
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