Hitler
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In fact, Hitler positively encouraged such actions. On 15 February, he announced at an election rally in Stuttgart that it would be ‘our task to cauterize these manifestations of decadence in literature, in the theatre, in schools, and in the press, in short in the whole of our cultural life, and to remove the poison that has flowed into our lives during the past fourteen years’. And, in the government announcement introducing the Enabling Law, he had promised ‘a thorough moral purge of the national body’, which would cover ‘the whole of the education system, theatre, film, literature, press, radio’.152
At the beginning of April, in response to complaints from Germany’s star conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, about attacks on his Jewish colleagues, Goebbels tried to create the impression that artists ‘who are really talented’ would be allowed to appear in public under the new regime.153 In fact, however, the new rulers used the recent Professional Civil Service Law to confirm officially dismissals that had already been enforced by the mob. In addition to numerous conductors and general music directors, as well as directors of art galleries, by the autumn of 1933 seventy-five theatre directors had been dismissed. The remaining forty-seven were under strict observation by the new cultural establishment,154 who also, in April, subordinated all those involved in the theatre to the German Theatre Employees’ Cooperative.155 All these measures had a negative impact on theatre repertoires: works by Jewish authors, or by those who were politically undesirable, were removed from the German stage. The result was that almost the whole of modern drama, hitherto making up some 40 per cent of the repertoire, disappeared. It was replaced by ‘nationalist’ and ‘völkisch’ plays.156
In the middle of February, the acting Prussian Minister of Culture, Bernhard Rust, intervened in the Prussian Academy of Arts by forcing the novelist Heinrich Mann to step down from the chairmanship of the German literature section. From the middle of March onwards, increasing numbers of ‘Republican’ or ‘non-Aryan’ writers were obliged to leave the Academy and were replaced by loyal Nazis.157 Finally, on 7 June, the Nazi poet, Hanns Johst, took over as chairman of the Academy.158 The German section of the International PEN Club was coordinated at the end of April; the Association of German Bookshop Owners submitted to the regime in May; and the various writers’ associations were integrated into the Reich Association for German Writers, which had been re-founded in June.159
Lists of official bans issued by the Prussian Culture Ministry now appeared in the book trade’s paper, the Börsenblatt des deutschen Buchhandels; the Gestapo and self-appointed culture guardians issued other blacklists.160 From April onwards, ‘eyesore exhibitions’ were organized in a number of German towns, attacking every style of modern art as ‘corrupting’ or ‘decadent’, using examples from public galleries. Although there were a number of Nazis who defended Expressionism against attacks by Rosenberg and his supporters, claiming that it was ‘German’ art worthy of encouragement, Hitler officially condemned these trends at the Party rally in September 1933.161
In many places the Nazis celebrated their recently acquired control over cultural life in a barbaric ritual: the public burning of books. During March and April, such ‘actions’ were more an offshoot of the general terror attacks on cultural institutions organized mainly by the SA. However, from the beginning of April, the Deutsche Studentenschaft, the umbrella organization for all the student representative bodies at German universities, which had been under Nazi control since 1931, began to take the matter systematically in hand. The Studentenschaft responded to its official recognition by a law of 22 April (which, significantly, excluded Jews from membership)162 by launching an ‘action’ against ‘un-German’ ideas. From mid-April onwards, its members started a four-week operation, sorting out ‘smutty and trashy literature’ from public libraries, private lending libraries, and bookshops. The high point of this ‘purge’ was the public burning of books that took place on 10 May in numerous German cities. Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, could not resist presiding over the main event in the Opera Square in Berlin, where, with the flames leaping up in the background, he announced that ‘the age of exaggerated Jewish intellectualism’ was over.163 Among the authors whose works were being burnt on that evening (and during the coming months)164 were Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Heinrich Mann, Erich Kästner, Sigmund Freud, Emil Ludwig, Theodor Wolff, Erich Maria Remarque, Alfred Kerr, Kurt Tucholsky, and Carl von Ossietsky.165 Mann, Tucholsky, Remarque, and Wolff, like many other left-wing or Jewish intellectuals, had by this time already left the country. The public condemnation of artists and the coordination of cultural institutions did not fail to make an impact. Many of those involved in the arts, who had hitherto kept their distance from Nazism, now declared their support for the regime.
During April and May 1933, Nazi students at various universities also demanded the dismissal of Jewish academics and those who were politically unacceptable, even organizing disturbances and boycotts against them.166 At the same time, the autonomy of university institutions came under growing pressure from the state. From April onwards, the culture ministries of the states demanded new elections for rectors and university committees.167 Whereas the vast majority of the conservative professors were either uneasy about or hostile towards the ending of university independence, a number saw it as a promising departure. In his inaugural address on 27 May 1933, the new rector of Freiburg University, the internationally respected philosopher Martin Heidegger, for example, contrasted conventional, allegedly merely superficial, ‘academic freedom’ with the positive future integration of students in the ‘national community’, the nation, as well as ‘the intellectual mission’ they had been given by the ‘German nation’.168 A few months later, universities lost the right to elect their rectors altogether; in future, they were appointed by the ministries and senates were reduced to mere consultative bodies for the rectors.169
As in the cultural field, many employees in the universities fell victim to the Professional Civil Service Law. By autumn 1934 614 university academics had been dismissed; by the end of the dictatorship it was one in five (1,145), 80 per cent of whom were Jewish or married to ‘non-Aryans’.170 The extensive ‘purge’ of German cultural and intellectual life resulted in an irretrievable loss of talent. During the Third Reich, more than 10,000 intellectuals turned their backs on Germany: around 2,000 academics, 2,500 from the world of journalism, 4,000 from the theatre, and 2,000 from the film world, a substantial number of whom were Jews.171
Stage 5: Labour market and rearmament
By the beginning of May, the new regime had become secure enough to move against another major organization, the trade unions, although by now they did not present much of an obstacle to the Nazis’ drive for absolute power. Since February, they had been increasingly distancing themselves from their traditional ally, the Social Democrats, and endeavouring instead to appear as loyal organizations purely concerned with looking after the social and economic interests of their members. The Free [formerly Social Democratic] Trade Unions won a clear majority in the works council elections in March and April. This prompted the regime to postpone further works council elections for six months – de facto to stop them altogether – and to ensure that workers’ representatives who had already been elected and were regarded as ‘politically or economically hostile’ (that is, members of the Free Trade Unions), were replaced by members of the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization. Tough dismissal procedures for employees suspected of being ‘hostile to the state’ soon ensured that employers were able to assert their authority.172
As compensation for these drastic measures, the regime declared 1 May to be a public holiday. Since the end of the nineteenth century, in many countries 1 May had been celebrated by socialist parties and trades unions as the ‘The Day of the Struggle of the Working Class’. However, the labour movement had not managed to secure 1 May as a paid public holiday in the Weimar Constitution of 1919, and so this move represented a remarkable gesture by the new government of �
��national concentration’ towards the working class, most of whom had not hitherto voted for the NSDAP.173 The celebrations, which were organized at the last minute, the Cabinet having only made their decision on 7 April, were planned to be suitably grand and elaborate.174 On the morning of 1 May, Goebbels and Reich President Hindenburg spoke at a large youth rally in the Lustgarten in Berlin. Following Hindenburg’s speech, Hitler stepped up to the podium and asked the young people to give three cheers for the President.175 In the afternoon, according to official figures, 1.5 million people assembled on the Tempelhofer Feld, among them delegations of workers from all over the Reich. The rally was broadcast so that everyone in the Reich could listen to Hitler’s emotional declaration that the ‘symbol of class struggle, of eternal conflict and discord’ was being transformed into being ‘once again a symbol of the nation’s great coming together and revival’.176
The General German Trade Union Federation had expressly welcomed the designation of 1 May as a celebration of ‘national labour’, asking its members to take part in the festivities; the trade union offices put up black-white-red flags on the day.177 The trade unionists were unaware that, on 7 April, Hitler had decided forcibly to coordinate their organizations straight after the 1 May celebrations.178 On 2 May, SA and NSBO squads occupied the trade union offices, confiscated trade union property, and arrested numerous functionaries.179
On 12 May, the trade unions were replaced by a Nazi organization, the German Labour Front (DAF ), under the leadership of Dr Robert Ley, the chief of staff of the NSDAP’s political organization. At the DAF’s founding congress Hitler claimed to be someone who, from his own experience as a building worker and as an ordinary soldier, understood the lives of workers and of ordinary people.180 But, in fact, the regime was mainly concerned about preventing the DAF from becoming a kind of substitute trade union. Right from the start, the DAF was intended to be an organization for ‘all productive Germans’; in other words, it was not intended to represent workers’ interests but rather to unite employees and employers. On 19 May, the Labour Ministry blocked the DAF’s attempt to take responsibility for future wage agreements by appointing ‘Trustees of Labour’, whose job was to impose compulsory wage agreements.181 The DAF now concentrated primarily on ‘supervising’ [Betreuung] and disciplining employees and, using the resources of the trade unions, it constructed its own services operation.
The Trustees of Labour acted in the interests of the regime by imposing wage freezes at the low levels prevalent during the economic crisis.182 It was only possible for employees to increase their wages by working longer hours, although many plants were on short time. At the same time, the prices of consumer goods were going up, particularly as a result of the state’s agricultural policies, which were aimed primarily at improving the profits of the agrarian sector. Although the Hitler government continued Brüning’s price controls, in July 1933 it decided to transfer the powers of the Reich Prices Commissioner, who had been appointed to control prices (the post had not been filled since December 1932), to (of all people!) the Minister of Agriculture, with the result that there was effectively no prospect of a reduction in food prices.183
As far as the grave unemployment situation was concerned – in March 1933 there were almost six million people without jobs184 – the new government focused less on directly financed work programmes and more on trying to kickstart the economy through tax breaks. Although, in February, it distributed the funds for work creation left over from Schleicher’s government to various individual programmes, it did not launch any new initiatives. Hitler liked to project an image of being keen on technology and looking towards the future and, on 11 February, at the opening of the Berlin motor show, he announced the first stage of an elaborate programme designed to encourage motor transport, which the cabinet soon put into effect.185 On 7 April all new vehicles were freed from motor vehicle tax, a measure which, together with other tax breaks,186 stimulated the already growing motor industry. In the second quarter of 1933, one and half times as many four-wheeled motor vehicles were produced as in the same quarter of the previous year and the revival of the motor industry had a positive and rapid effect on the supply industry. In fact, however, the recovery in the motor industry, as in other key industries,187 had already begun at the end of 1932, in other words before Hitler’s appointment. Thus, the significance of Hitler’s support for the motor industry was exaggerated, thereby increasing his prestige.188
In March Hitler took the first steps towards launching a comprehensive road-building programme. At the end of the month he met Willy Hof, the managing director of Hafraba, which since the mid-1920s had been preparing the construction of a motorway from the north German Hanseatic cities to Basel, via Frankfurt am Main.189 When, at the beginning of April, Hof had the opportunity of putting his plans for the first section of the planned road to Hitler, the ‘Führer’ responded enthusiastically, making many concrete suggestions, and encouraging Hof to ‘start planning the whole network straightaway and to go full steam ahead . . . with this terrific idea’. In the middle of May, therefore, at a meeting with Hitler, attended also by transport experts, Hof presented a plan for a Reich-wide motorway network. On this occasion, Hitler spoke at length in favour of privileging the construction of motorways over the existing road network. The number of motor vehicles in Germany, currently around 600,000,190 must be increased to between three and five million. ‘The development of motor traffic was also necessary for social reasons, while strategic factors were also important’. According to Hitler, ‘for military reasons the new roads must be built of reinforced concrete’, in order to limit the impact of enemy bombs. When the head of the road traffic department in the Transport Ministry, Ernst Brandenburg, pointed out that implementing the plans for repairs to the existing road network would have an immediate impact on unemployment, while the new roads would first have to go through the planning stage, Hitler rejected these objections, making further ‘fundamental’ statements.191 Finally, in June, the cabinet agreed to the Law concerning the Establishment of a Reich Autobahn Concern, and, on 30 June, Hitler appointed Fritz Todt, an engineer, to be General Inspector for German Roads. Todt was an old Nazi, who in December 1932 had sent Nazi headquarters a detailed memorandum on road construction.192
The effect of the autobahn programme on the labour market was in fact initially limited; the necessary planning had not been done, and work on the first section began only in September. At this point, Hitler estimated that 300,000–350,000 workers would be required to construct the autobahns; in fact, during 1934 an average of only 54,000 each month were employed on autobahn construction. Thus its contribution to the reduction of unemployment was relatively insignificant.193 Its military significance, which Hitler had emphasized, was also limited. The autobahn network was not designed in accordance with strategic priorities; instead, up until the end of the Third Reich, the extensive railway network remained the backbone of military transport. The measures taken to support car production were also of secondary strategic importance, above all because a range of cars of very different types was built. Looked at from a long-term perspective, the expansion of civilian car ownership was the prerequisite for an increased number of mobile divisions, but in 1933 such considerations were overshadowed by other priorities. ‘Social’ and propaganda factors were much more decisive for Hitler’s support of a large-scale programme of motorization. In his regime, owning one’s own car was intended to be a standard part of middle-class life and, as a gigantic construction programme, the autobahn network was to symbolize the new regime’s efficiency and modernity.
At the end of April, the government abolished the Reich Commissariat for Work Creation established by Schleicher and transferred its powers to the Reich Labour Ministry. Reich Commissar Gereke represented the policy of employment programmes financed by credit, which Hitler’s conservative partners, in particular, considered suspect. At the end of March, he was arrested on the pretext of embezzlement.194 Yet, Sel
dte’s Labour Ministry sympathized with the idea of a large-scale programme for combatting unemployment,195 such as had been demanded by Gregor Strasser from the summer of 1932 onwards. This view was shared by the Finance Ministry, but regarded with scepticism by super minister Hugenberg.196
Hitler showed little interest in all the various concrete plans that were being discussed within the government from April onwards. In his view additional employment should be achieved through a combination of directly financed programmes and tax breaks. On 29 May, accompanied by Reich Bank President Schacht, Transport Minister Julius Dorpmüller, high-ranking civil servants, and senior Nazi Party officials, he sought the support of leading industrialists for this programme. Significantly, in addressing this audience, Hitler initially spoke of impending German rearmament and the risk of a preventive war, which during the early years would require massive rearmament. Hitler placed the measures envisaged for work creation in this context of the revival of Germany as a European power. This would involve a focus on two points in particular: first, on the renewal of private housing. Since the First World War, many houses had not been maintained and renovated, and this would now be rectified through the provision of subsidies. This represented a remarkable change of political emphasis in the direction of the lower-middle class; in the summer of 1932 the NSDAP had considered the construction of ‘workers’ flats’ as the most urgent task of work creation.197 Secondly, the construction of motorways: Hitler outlined in detail the advantages of a road network that was designed exclusively for the use of modern motor vehicles, emphasizing in particular its ‘strategic’ importance.198