Chapter5-Holocaust_Human_Behavior_revised_edition.pdf

The Scope and Sequence

Individual
& Society

We & They

The Holocaust

Choosing to
Participate

Judgment,
Memory &

Legacy

Chapter 5 The National
Socialist
Revolution

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Overview

On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf

Hitler chancellor of Germany. Within days of Hitler’s appointment,

the Nazis began to target their political opposition and those they

considered enemies of the state, especially Communists and Jews.

Within months, they had transformed Germany into a dictatorship.

This chapter chronicles the National Socialist revolution that swept

through Germany in 1933, and it examines the choices individual

Germans were forced to confront as a result.

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222 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Chapter 5

Essential
Questions
• What made it possible for

the Nazis to transform
Germany into a dicta-
torship during their first
years in power?

• What choices do individ-
uals have in the face of
an emerging dictatorship?
What can they do to nur-
ture democracy and help
it survive?

• What roles do institu-
tions—such as the media,
law enforcement, schools,
churches, and indus-
try—play in sustaining
democracy or enabling its
destruction?

Introduction

Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933, thrilled some Ger-
mans and horrified others. Writing in 1939, journalist Sebastian Haffner said
that when he read the news that afternoon, his reaction was “icy horror”:

Certainly this had been a possibility for a long time. You had to reckon with it.
Nevertheless it was so bizarre, so incredible, to read it now in black and white.
Hitler Reich Chancellor . . . for a moment I physically sensed the man’s odor of
blood and filth, the nauseating approach of a man-eating animal—its foul, sharp
claws in my face.

Then I shook the sensation off, tried to smile, started to consider, and found many
reasons for reassurance. That evening I discussed the prospects of the new gov-
ernment with my father. We agreed that it had a good chance of doing a lot of
damage, but not much chance of surviving very long . . .

. . . How could things turn out so completely different? Perhaps it was just because
we were all so certain that they could not do so—and relied on that with far too
much confidence. So we neglected to consider that it might, if worse came to
worst, be necessary to prevent the disaster from happening . . .1

Few people expected the Nazi leader to remain in office for long. After all,
in the 14 years since the creation of the Weimar Republic, Germany had had
14 chancellors, most of whom served for less than a year. Only two were in
office longer, and not a single chancellor had held his post for three consec-
utive years. Therefore, many Germans, like Haffner and his father, set about
the task of adjusting to life under a regime they thought would soon pass.
The readings in this chapter, which focus on the Nazis’ first two years in
power, have been chosen to help answer the question Haffner asked several
years later: How could things turn out so completely different?

The Nazis’ swift actions in early 1933 began to establish a new in
German society, taking advantage of the weakness of the Weimar Republic
to create a dictatorship. Individuals and institutions across the country
were forced both to navigate the dangers the Nazis posed to dissenters
and to weigh the incentives they offered to encourage acceptance of the
new government. Each person had to figure out how to live in a society
under National Socialism, and even whether that would be possible at all.

How did they do it? Some were true believers in Nazism, some calculated
that the benefits to them of Nazi government outweighed the parts they
found unsettling, some who could do so left the country, some learned to
stay quiet and retreat into “internal exile,” and some protested openly. All
of these choices had consequences for the individuals who made them, for
their neighbors, and for their nation.

1 Sebastian Haffner, “Street-Level Coercion,” in How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader, ed. Peter Hayes (Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press, 2015), 118–19, excerpt from Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
2002), 106–08.

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223CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

This chapter deepens the investigation of democracy begun in Chapter 4
by examining how the Weimar Republic crumbled in Germany and how
the Nazis created a dictatorship to replace it. By focusing on Germany
during the Nazis’ first years in power, the readings in this chapter invite
students to also think deeply about what it takes to sustain democracy in
our own time. Teachers should select the readings and questions that seem
most appropriate for their curricula and classrooms.

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224 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Reading 1

The Night of
Hitler’s Triumph

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. That
evening, members of the Nazi Party carried fiery torches as they paraded
through the streets of Berlin. They were joined by thousands who had
gathered to cheer for Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany, and
Hitler. The two men responded to the crowd from separate windows—
Hitler at the chancellery and Hindenburg at a hotel next door. Nearby was
the French embassy, where Ambassador André François-Poncet watched
from a window, later writing:

The torches . . . formed a river of fire . . . over the very heart of the city. From these
brown-shirted, booted men, as they marched in perfect discipline and alignment,
their well-pitched voices bawling war-like songs, there rose an enthusiasm and
dynamism that were extraordinary.1

Melita Maschmann, then a 15-year-old Nazi supporter, watched the parade
that evening. As an adult, she recalled, “Some of the uncanny feeling of
that night remains with me even today. The crashing treads of [booted]
feet, the somber pomp of the red and black flags, the flickering light from
the torches on the faces and the songs with melodies that were at once
aggressive and sentimental.”2

Many Germans followed the parade by listening to the radio. Bernt
Engelmann was struck by the voice of a new announcer:

[His voice] was entirely different from the ones I was familiar with: no longer calm
and objective, but full of fanatic fervor. . . . Many years later, when the Third Reich
was a thing of the past, I dug around in the archives of the Cologne broadcasting
station and found the very text read by the announcer that evening of January 30.
As I perused it, I felt that same amazement and disgust that had filled me as a
twelve-year-old boy.

There it was, in black and white, and the announcer had spoken the text as an
overwhelmed eyewitness might describe the finish of the Monaco Grand Prix auto
race. . . .

“And there, at his window, high above the cheering throngs and the sea of flaming
torches stands Reich President von Hindenburg, the venerable field marshal. . . . He
stands erect, stirred to the depths by the moment. And next door in the Reich
Chancellery, the Führer—yes, it is the Führer! There he stands with his ministers,

1 André François-Poncet, The Fateful Years: Memoirs of a French Ambassador in Berlin, 1931–1938, trans. Jacques LeClercq (New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1949), 48.

2 Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: A Dossier on My Former Self, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1965), 9.

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225CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

Adolf Hitler . . . the unknown soldier of the World War, the unyielding warrior, the
standard bearer of freedom . . . !”3

Max von der Grün also heard the news over the radio. Two days later, he
and his family listened as Hitler spoke to the nation on his first day in office.

Hitler proclaimed his new government officially in power. He did not do so before
the Reichstag, the elected Parliament, but over the radio. The meaning was clear
enough. . . .

Were the people clearly aware of his contempt for the parliament? I doubt it. In any
case, my family considered it quite proper that Hitler had ceased to address . . . the
deputies of the Reichstag, and had turned directly to the people.4

Connection Questions
1. Many of the people quoted in this reading wrote many years later about the day

Hitler took office. Why do you think these people, as well as many other Germans
alive in 1933, never forgot the events of that day? What clues can you find in the
way they express their memories that indicate how they felt about those events as
they looked back on them?

2. In learning about the past, what might be the benefits and the drawbacks of using
sources that were written many years after the events they describe?

3. How did the Nazi leadership communicate with ordinary Germans? What
messages were the leaders trying to send?

4. What tools do today’s leaders use to communicate with citizens?

3 Bernt Engelmann, In Hitler’s Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich (New York: Schocken, 1988), 21–22.

4 Max von der Grün, Howl Like the Wolves: Growing Up in Nazi Germany (New York: William Morrow, 1980), 59.

On the night of January 30, 1933, SA men paraded with torches through Berlin to celebrate
Hitler’s appointment as chancellor.

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226 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Reading 2

Hitler’s First
Radio Address

On February 1, 1933, two days after he was appointed chancellor, Hitler
spoke over the radio to the German people about his vision for the future
of the country:

Over fourteen years have passed since that unhappy day when the German people,
blinded by promises made by those at home and abroad, forgot the highest values
of our past, of the Reich, of its honor and its freedom, and thereby lost everything.
Since those days of treason, the Almighty has withdrawn his blessing from our na-
tion. Discord and hatred have moved in. Filled with the deepest distress, millions of
the best German men and women from all walks of life see the unity of the nation
disintegrating in a welter of egotistical political opinions, economic interests, and
ideological conflicts.

As so often in our history, Germany, since the day the revolution broke out, pres-
ents a picture of heartbreaking disunity. We did not receive the equality and frater-
nity which was promised us; instead we lost our freedom. The breakdown of the
unity of mind and will of our nation at home was followed by the collapse of its
political position abroad.

We have a burning conviction that the German people in 1914 went into the great
battle without any thought of personal guilt [for the start of the war] and weighed
down only by the burden of having to defend the Reich from attack, to defend the
freedom and material existence of the German people. In the appalling fate that
has dogged us since November 1918 we see only the consequence of our inward
collapse. But the rest of the world is no less shaken by great crises. The historical
balance of power, which at one time contributed not a little to the understanding
of the necessity for solidarity among the nations, with all the economic advantages
resulting therefrom, has been destroyed.

The delusion that some are the conquerors and others the conquered destroys the
trust between nations and thereby also destroys the world economy. But the mis-
ery of our people is terrible! The starving industrial proletariat [working class] have
become unemployed in their millions, while the whole middle and artisan class
have been made paupers. If the German farmer also is involved in this collapse we
shall be faced with a catastrophe of vast proportions. For in that case, there will
collapse not only a Reich, but also a 2000-year-old inheritance of the highest works
of human culture and civilization.

All around us are symptoms portending this breakdown. With an unparalleled ef-
fort of will and of brute force the Communist method of madness is trying as a
last resort to poison and undermine an inwardly shaken and uprooted nation. They

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Hitler’s First Radio
Address
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227CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

seek to drive it towards an epoch which would correspond even less to the promis-
es of the Communist speakers of today than did the epoch now drawing to a close
to the promises of the same emissaries in November 1918.

Starting with the family, and including all notions of honor and loyalty, nation and
fatherland, culture and economy, even the eternal foundations of our morals and
our faith—nothing is spared by this negative, totally destructive ideology. . . . One
year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany. The richest and most beautiful areas
of world civilization would be transformed into chaos and a heap of ruins. Even the
misery of the past decade and a half could not be compared with the affliction of a
Europe in whose heart the red flag of destruction had been planted. The thousands
of injured, the countless dead which this battle has already cost Germany may
stand as a presage of the disaster.

In these hours of overwhelming concern for the existence and the future of the
German nation, the venerable World War leader [President Paul von Hindenburg]
appealed to us men of the nationalist parties and associations to fight under him
again as once we did at the front, but now loyally united for the salvation of the
Reich at home. The revered President of the Reich having with such generosity
joined hands with us in a common pledge, we nationalist leaders would vow be-
fore God, our conscience and our people that we shall doggedly and with determi-
nation fulfill the mission entrusted to us as the National Government.

It is an appalling inheritance which we are taking over.

The task before us is the most difficult which has faced German statesmen in living
memory. But we all have unbounded confidence, for we believe in our nation and
in its eternal values. Farmers, workers, and the middle class must unite to contrib-
ute the bricks wherewith to build the new Reich.

The National Government will therefore regard it as its first and supreme task to
restore to the German people unity of mind and will. It will preserve and defend
the foundations on which the strength of our nation rests. It will take under its firm
protection Christianity as the basis of our morality, and the family as the nucleus
of our nation and our state. Standing above estates [groups that make up society’s
social hierarchy] and classes, it will bring back to our people the consciousness of
its racial and political unity and the obligations arising therefrom. It wishes to base
the education of German youth on respect for our great past and pride in our old
traditions. . . . Germany must not and will not sink into Communist anarchy.

In place of our turbulent instincts, it will make national discipline govern our life.
In the process it will take into account all the institutions which are the true safe-
guards of the strength and power of our nation.

The National Government will carry out the great task of reorganizing our national
economy with two big Four-Year Plans:

Saving the German farmer so that the nation’s food supply and thus the life of the
nation shall be secured.

Saving the German worker by a massive and comprehensive attack on unemploy-
ment.

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228 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

In fourteen years the November parties have ruined the German farmer. In fourteen
years they created an army of millions of unemployed. The National Government
will carry out the following plan with iron resolution and dogged perseverance.
Within four years the German farmer must be saved from pauperism. Within four
years unemployment must be completely overcome . . .

. . . Our concern to provide daily bread will be equally a concern for the fulfillment
of the responsibilities of society to those who are old and sick. The best safeguard
against any experiment which might endanger the currency lies in economical ad-
ministration, the promotion of work, and the preservation of agriculture, as well as
in the use of individual initiative.

In foreign policy, the National Government will see its highest mission in the pres-
ervation of our people’s right to an independent life and in the regaining thereby of
their freedom. The determination of this Government to put an end to the chaotic
conditions in Germany is a step towards the integration into the community of
nations of a state having equal status and therefore equal rights with the rest. In
so doing, the Government is aware of its great obligation to support, as the Gov-
ernment of a free and equal nation, that maintenance and consolidation of peace
which the world needs today more than ever before. May all others understand our
position and so help to ensure that this sincere desire for the welfare of Europe and
of the whole world shall find fulfillment.

Despite our love for our Army as the bearer of our arms and the symbol of our
great past, we should be happy if the world, by restricting its armaments, made
unnecessary any increase in our own weapons.

But if Germany is to experience this political and economic revival and conscien-
tiously to fulfill its duties towards other nations, a decisive act is required: We must
overcome the demoralization of Germany by the Communists.

We, men of this Government, feel responsible to German history for the reconsti-
tution of a proper national body so that we may finally overcome the insanity of
class and class warfare. We do not recognize classes, but only the German people,
its millions of farmers, citizens and workers who together will either overcome this
time of distress or succumb to it.

With resolution and fidelity to our oath, seeing the powerlessness of the present
Reichstag to shoulder the task we advocate, we wish to commit it to the whole
German people.

We therefore appeal now to the German people to sign this act of mutual reconcil-
iation. The Government of the National Uprising [the Nazi-led government] wishes
to set to work, and it will work. It has not for fourteen years brought ruin to the
German nation; it wants to lead it to the summit. It is determined to make amends
in four years for the liabilities of fourteen years. But it cannot subject the work of
reconstruction to the will of those who were responsible for the breakdown.

The Marxist parties [political parties including the Social Democrats] and their fol-
lowers had fourteen years to prove their abilities. The result is a heap of ruins. Now,
German people, give us four years and then judge us.

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229CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

Let us begin, loyal to the command of the Field-Marshal. May Almighty God favor
our work, shape our will in the right way, bless our vision and bless us with the
trust of our people. We have no desire to fight for ourselves; only for Germany.1

Connection Questions
1. What picture does Hitler paint of Germany? What words does he use to describe

the country?

2. What does he say about the past? How does he describe the future?

3. How does Hitler describe the work that must be done? What words or phrases
does he use to describe it?

4. Why might people in Germany in 1933 have found his message attractive?

5. Based on this speech, who does Hitler place inside and outside of Germany’s
universe of obligation? Why do you think Hitler chose not to mention Jews in
this speech?

1 Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, vol. 1: The Rise to Power 1919–1934
(Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1998), 131–34.

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230 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Reading 3

“The Ba�le for Work”

The Nazi Party’s popularity increased in the early 1930s partly because of
its pledge to do what no other political party had been able to accomplish:
pull Germany out of the Great Depression and put Germans back to work.
In his first radio address as chancellor, Hitler promised to overcome unem-
ployment in Germany within four years. This would be no small task. From
mid-1929 to January 1933, the number of Germans who had full-time jobs
fell from 20 million to 11.5 million; by the start of 1933, at least 6 million
Germans were unemployed.1 Could Hitler make good on his promise?

According to historian Richard Evans, “Hitler’s government was lucky in its
timing,” because a variety of economic programs begun under previous
chancellors were finally starting to put more Germans back to work by
the time of Hitler’s appointment.2 In addition, the Nazis manipulated the
official statistics about unemployment in to convince the public of
their progress.3

Hitler’s government also put in place several new plans that would put
Germans back to work. In 1933, the government announced two Laws for
the Reduction of Unemployment, devoting millions of marks to encourag-
ing the creation of new businesses and funding public-works construction
projects, such as the highway system. Another policy encouraged working
women to leave their jobs and stay home, lessening competition for jobs
and improving unemployment statistics (see Reading 18, “Breeding the
New German ‘Race’”). The Nazis also encouraged, and often coerced, un-
employed workers to join the nation’s Volunteer Labor Service, where they
were put to work on public land and construction projects.

But, as Evans explains, the Nazi job creation program was about more than
economic recovery; it focused on rebuilding and rearming the nation’s
military arsenal. By explaining rearmament as “job creation,” the Nazis
attempted to conceal this violation of the Treaty of Versailles:

In 1933 Germany was more or less without an air force, without capital ships,
without tanks, without the most basic items of military equipment, and restricted
to an army of no more than 100,000 men. Already in February 1933 Hitler set a
programme of rearmament in motion, where possible disguised as job creation . . .

The army drew up a register of 2,800 firms to which arms s could be sent;
in 1934 these accounted for over half of all iron and steel, engineering and motor
vehicle inspection. . . . By 1935 there were 72,000 workers employed in aircraft
construction, compared to fewer than 4,000 at the beginning of 1933. Similarly,

1 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin, 2005), 328.

2 Ibid., 329.

3 Ibid., 334–35.

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231CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

Krupps embarked on the large-scale production of what were coyly described as
“agricultural tractors” in July 1933; in reality they were tanks. In 1934, the Auto
Union company launched another military vehicle production department. . . . In
November 1933 the navy ed over 41 million Reichsmarks’ worth of military
equipment and another 70 million Reichsmarks’ worth of ships. Major firms such
as Borsig, in Berlin, and the Bochumer Association, in Hanover, started up produc-
tion of rifles and guns. All this had an immediate effect on employment. Already in
January 1933 the Mauser rifle factory increased its workforce from 800 to 1,300;
in the first four months of 1933, the Rhine Metal Company, which made howitzers
and machine guns, took on 500 new workers too. Similar developments could
be observed in hundreds of companies across Germany. All this feverish activity
inevitably had a knock-on [secondary] effect on industry more broadly, as iron and
steel, engineering, coal and mining companies stepped up production and hired
additional labour to cope with the new and rapidly rising demand from the arms
and arms-related sector.4

By the end of 1934, the government was touting its own statistics that
claimed that the unemployment level was less than half of what it had
been when Hitler was appointed chancellor. While rearmament certainly
did create thousands of jobs, it also advanced the Nazis’ longer-term goal
to re-establish Germany as a European military power. All in all, the pro-
gram helped to increase public support for the Nazis, as Evans explains:

Hitler’s boast that he would solve the unemployment problem within four years of
taking office seemed to have been triumphantly justified. Incessant Nazi propaganda
boasting that the “battle for work” was being won gained widespread credence. It
helped win over many doubters and sceptics to the government’s side from May
1933 onwards, and pumped new euphoria into the Third Reich’s supporters.5

Connection Questions
1. Why do you think Hitler focused on unemployment in the beginning of his time

as chancellor? What factors do you think helped make the economy a priority?
Base your answer on evidence from both this reading and previous ones.

2. Summarize the strategies Hitler used to improve employment in Germany. Which
actions seem most justified, given the hardship caused by the Great Depression?
Which actions are most troubling?

3. How might difficult economic times affect a person’s universe of obligation?
How might a bad economy affect a person’s priorities when deciding which
political leaders and parties to support?

4. Why do you think the Nazi “battle for work” might have convinced some who
previously opposed the Nazis to change their minds?

4 Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 338–41.

5 Ibid., 333.

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232 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Reading 4

Outlawing
the Opposition

While the Nazis were focusing on putting Germans back to work in the
midst of the Great Depression, they also unleashed attacks on their political
opposition as soon as Hitler became chancellor. On the evening of February
27, 1933, alarms suddenly rang out in the Reichstag as fire destroyed the
building’s main chamber. Within 20 minutes, Hitler was on the scene to
declare: “This is a God-given signal! If this fire, as I believe, turns out to be
the handiwork of Communists, then there is nothing that shall stop us now
from crushing out this murderous pest with an iron fist.”1

Marinus van der Lubbe was the man the Nazis captured that night. He
confessed to setting the building ablaze but repeatedly insisted that he
had acted alone. Adolf Hitler paid no attention to the confession. He saw
a chance to get rid of what he considered the Nazis’ most immediate ri-
val—the Communists—so he ed the arrest of anyone with ties to the
Communist Party. Within days, the Nazis had thrown 4,000 Communists and
their leaders into hastily created prisons and concentration camps. By the

end of March, 20,000 Commu-
nists had been arrested, and by
the end of that summer more
than 100,000 Communists,
Social Democrats, union offi-
cials, and other “radicals” were
imprisoned.2 Were any of them
responsible for the fire? The
question was irrelevant to the
Nazis. They had been given an
opportunity to get rid of their
enemies, and they took it.

The day after the fire, February
28, 1933, President Hindenburg,
at Hitler’s urging, issued two
emergency decrees designed to
make such arrests legal, even

those that had already taken place. Their titles—“For the Defense of Nation
and State” and “To Combat Treason against the German Nation and Treason-
able Activities”—reveal how Hitler used the fire to further his own goals. The

1 D. Sefton Delmer, London Daily Express, February 28, 1933.

2 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin, 2005), 11.

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Germans look on as the
Reichstag building burns on
February 27, 1933.

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233CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

two decrees suspended, until further notice, every part of the constitution
that protected personal freedoms. The Nazis claimed that the decrees were
necessary to protect the nation from the “Communist menace.”

On March 5, 1933, the govern-
ment held an election for con-
trol of the Reichstag. The Nazis
won 288 seats (43.9% of the
vote). The Communists won
81 seats (12.3%), even …