The German Homefront Experience

hi everybody my name is transmitted s and I am member of the Dole Institute student advisory board the official student group of the Dole Institute first of all welcome to the dole Institute of Politics and thank you for attending today's program presented by the department of military history at the command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth the Dole Institute would like to hear from you about today's program please let us know your feedback by contacting us on social media or via email at dole Institute at Ko edu to view past programs visit our online video archive at WWDC to tour Gavi do today's presentation will be available on our website soon we would like to encourage each of you to consider becoming friends of the dole Institute our friends help keep our programs free and open and support archived research and our Student Activities please contact us if you're interested after the presentation we will have some time for questions from the audience if you have a question please raise your hand and a student worker with a microphone will come to you please stand if you were able and asked just one brief question before we do begin I'd like to remind you to please turn off your cell phones and now please join me in welcoming dr. Tom Hanson [Applause] good afternoon everybody and really this is an incredibly nice crowd thank you so much for taking time out of this one of the first nice days we've had in a while to spend it with us I'm dr. Tom Hansen I'm the director of a stable of really really quality military historians probably the largest single conglomeration of military historians at least in the Western world at least we like to tell ourselves that and we have enjoyed a long partnership with the Dole Institute for which we are very grateful and this is the second iteration of this year's program which looks at the home front and the war fronts and so we're kind of alternating from months and month on what we look at last month we had dr. mark Burgess talk about the British home front during the Napoleonic Wars and this year or this month we have dr. mark hull to talk about the German homefront during the Second World War and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of people are here because it does seem to be a perennial interesting topic for people mark is a retired Army officer a retired Intel specialist but he's also a lawyer don't hold that against him and he is also a trained historian as a PhD from the University of Cork is that right in Ireland and so without further ado please welcome dr. mark hall [Applause] good afternoon everybody hear me okay I should tell you up front just as kind of a housekeeping thing that I really look forward to the question Wow better look forward to the question-and-answer session after I get finished but I'll tell you in advance if that starts going south meaning that you asked me a question I can't answer dr. Hanson is going to pull the fire alarm so don't don't get concerned about that this has been a kind of an interesting topic for me to think about talking about I've spent the better part I grew up in Germany in large measure and I have spent a lot of time there but it's difficult and I'm going to try to hit five or six or seven areas that I think are relevant to the topic but at the same time it means I'm going to leave out hundreds or maybe thousands of different things that we probably should talk about at some point and let's go ahead and first start by tackling some of I think what are some of the images of wartime Germany if you've seen Laney refinish tiles film triumph of the will which many Hollywood directors apparently have because it's been an everything from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings this idea of masses of highly disciplined marching soldiers is a pretty scary image it's supposed to be scary and that that's part of the reason the film was made the way that it was made this idea that you in Germany at least one of the popular slogans was if you know how to imitate the Fuhrer is always right so I think the way that we conceptualized Nazi Germany in the war I want to get away from that a little bit because I think the truth is much richer and and and more informative I think that some of the images but this is what we know thousands of again very disciplined very proficient gymnasts in this case at one of the party rallies at nürnberg or la endless lines of marching soldiers or throngs of in their tens of thousands waiting for Hitler to appear but let's go ahead and talk about some things too that I think that people think that really are not right in a real and a circus as a stage setter for example Hitler was elected as Chancellor of Germany you didn't vote for Hitler you voted for the party Hitler's hit about in the sort of the mid 30s in terms of his percentages for the last free election before he assumed the chancellorship so I think one of the interesting questions is is what can a 35 percent market share do when it's turned loose on our country in a very horrendous way most Germans were Nazis they weren't Nazi Party membership about six and a half million out of a population of about 70 million Nazi Party membership is mandatory again not so much there were a lot of Nazis difficult question to answer and it depends on whether or not you mean card-carrying members of the party or people who sympathize with the party's ideas either way I think you're looking at a huge section of the German population or at least a healthy section that did not support Nazi Germany and just as a Hollywood thing Nazis always wore black uniforms and I have extra points for anybody that can tell me what film this is from oh come on we're equals dare because the Gestapo guys always wear black uniforms even in Hogan's Heroes no they didn't after 1939 this is Germany this is actually to include some wartime territory larger than today's version of Germany and to quickly review sort of some of the things that get a set for the stage of the home front during World War two Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by paul von hindenburg the president of germany on the 30th of january 1933 from almost the moment that he's appointed Chancellor things have started to change in Germany the pace of this is accelerated after the Reichstag fire in early 1933 they arrested a probably guilty dutch arsonist for the fire but hitler quickly used this as a pretext for having the communists it declared illegal so effectively you've taken communists which was the second third large largest party in germany out of the equation so is a very sort of gradual step-by-step thing you're removing people from positions where they can threaten Nazi Germany and Hitler specifically soon thereafter the Hitler initiates and this new Reichstag the German parliament is going to pass and President Hindenburg is going to sign what's called the enabling act it is the essentially the last legal piece that allows Hitler to rule completely by his his whim between 1933 and 1945 with these sort of accelerated powers that he gives himself you would have to be an idiot after really mid 1933 to decide that you want a voice opposition to Hitler part of the thing with Nazi Germany is an emphasis placed on something called glide Shelton which means really ordination getting with the program it is a holistic effort to make sure that every aspect of daily and public life is moving along the direction that Hitler wishes it to go meaning that if you were an attorney in Nazi Germany or you're a doctor or you're a teacher or you're an accountant or any other position you can almost think of both in the professions and outside the professions you have to be a member of a Nazi affiliate organization to continue your work it's not the Nazi Party per se but it is it's still a Nazi controlled organization that is going to quickly remove Jews and anybody else that they think might be a problem from practicing in public life in Nazi Germany Hitler's aim he says is to create what's called a Volks command shaft it's a people's community and this is both your internal life as well as your external public life and there are various slogans in movements and different things that go along with this but the this is something that is is quickly imprinted on Germany after 1933 and deviation from the plan is not really something that that's going to be possible in 1934 the nuremberg laws are passed the nürnberg law is defined racially who is a german citizen and who is not it's specific it's it's the first one of the first legal things that starts the process of cutting off the Jews from the German community it's going to end at places like Auschwitz and Treblinka but it's there's a weird compulsion almost that even when when Nazi the Nazi government is doing things that are abhorrent and criminal there's a driving need to make sure that all sort of the legal T's are crossed and I's are dotted so it's it's a weird two things that almost you wouldn't think would be associated together starting in 1935 german conscription is back so young German men of conscription age are going to be obligated on up sort of a in a draft system to serve two years in the Armed Forces the law in Nazi Germany is is I wish we had longer to talk because it's fascinating but law Nazi Germany really has to two main purposes one of them is political in other words the law rather than punishing and achieving justice the laws aimed at sort of making political deviation impossible so if that wasn't already accomplished by things like the Enabling Act or the Nuremberg Laws that the courts and the judges themselves are going to be responsible for doing this and the other thing is to put an emphasis on stopping criminal activity that could be a threat to the regime new courts are created on top of the existing regular courts specials and people's courts to prosecute these new sort of offences that Nazi Germany is going to promulgate sentencing which had been fairly standard through the vomer period is going to be something which the judges sentence is no longer final that the SS or the Nazi Party or even one of the chief judges says that there is no sentence higher or there can be no sentence greater than that that Hitler pronounces so if you are convicted of a crime in your sentence let's say two five years or ten years in prison Hitler can override that personally and give you whatever sentence he desires and by the way it's never gonna be less than what the judge gives you to give you an idea of how things have changed in 1938 which is just in the first couple years of some of these judicial reforms there are 38 people who were executed in Nazi Germany by 1943 that total has grown to 5336 and these are all four cases that frankly otherwise would not have probably been criminal acts before the Nazis came to power the worst crime you can commit once the war starts is ver Kraft says that's on it means you're undermining the war effort and it can be anything that you like there is no bit of conduct that you can't you can commit that cannot be shoehorned into this offense and the penalty for ver Kraft says that song is death so when trying to kind of get you get a handle on what people are living with in the 30s and through the 40's through forty five you we need to keep this in mind it's it's a cloud it's around people know about it and again you understand the penalties for stepping out of line this is just kind of a quick list of the different sort of detention facilities and prisons that are available to you as an offender under Nazi Germany so it goes from the low end of a workhouse to the upper end of a concentration camp and after 1942 the the idea that there are camps that are designed that are purely extermination camps weirdly especially in movies you see you know the sort of ominous leather coded Gestapo agent in Nazi Germany at its height there are about 30,000 Gestapo personnel most of them are clerical or administration but you're depending on that 35 percent of the people to to inform on others so even things that you say that you think are private even things that you say to a relative or to a child or to a grandparent if they take a dislike to that all they have to do is get on the phone and report you to the Gestapo office and the Gestapo will show up it where you live to tell the story today I want to let's make it a little bit personal this is the Meyer family they live in Berlin mid-1930s husband wife two children and as we go through the different parts of the German homefront I'd like you to sort of keep them in mind and try to consider like what sort of things they would have seen what sort of things they would have read what sort of things they would have heard what they would have eaten when and will come back to them here in a bit food in Nazi Germany is is interesting you you go from a period really where food is readily available and that's not an issue but then the war comes and the not Nazi government does what every other government including the United States and Great Britain do which is food gets rationed depending on your level of as a worker if you are working in a light duty or a mid-level duty or a heavy workload you're allowed either twenty four hundred and thirty five hundred or forty two hundred calories per day weirdly at first in some cases people a better under rationing than they did before because this is a you know fair amount of calories I mean an average person today twenty two twenty three hundred calories probably but then rationing starts once the war begins in 1939 in Britain you did a point system and in Germany they didn't do that they did a point system for clothing but not for food so by the way I forgot to tell you something that's important I have some Show and Tell items for you I mean who doesn't like show and tell so if you were to kind of pass these around as I go please don't take them home and eBay them but you know just enjoy this is the first thing when I pass around is a series of rationing sheets soap meat and if I could actually read and figure out what this other one else something else restaurants were originally when the government is thinking about restaurants especially after the war starts there and the war goes on and situations get tighter one of the ideas that the government has and starts to implement is clothing closing restaurants entirely but they decide that's a really bad idea because it makes people unhappy so restaurants at least most of them will remain open for most of the war one of the things that the government is also very creative with is its what's called air Zots it's a substitute for something that you would otherwise be able to get before the world so for example substitute coffee because Germany is cut off from any sources of coffee beans are made often from grain my plan was this morning today actually I brought a there's a product you can still why it's called karo it's a green coffee and I was gonna let you try it out except I thought there was hot water and there's not and I don't think you want to do karo and cold water but if you do just come see me afterward and we can you know we'll get you set up and interestingly at least to my mind is one of the things that they come up with as a substitute because again dairy products are very heavily ration and there's a priority system dairy products going to mothers and children at least in terms of milk Germany lacks a lot of raw materials one of which is oil but the thing that they have a lot of is coal and German chemists in the 1920s and early 1930s came up with a a chemical catalyst for coal which produces among other things synthetic fuel which is you know nice and the other thing weirdly is margarine that you get can get from coal so the next time you go to the store and you see that Land O'Lakes butter thing that may go through your mind even subconsciously so what's one of the other things that the German government did to sort of encourage rationing and say is there were a couple of days each week and then usually on Sundays it was called ein taupe it's Stu so I'm tough like one you know cauldron worth of stuff and the idea was that you don't waste right you you make a point of having it with whatever it is you have leftover or stir stir stir stir and that's how you one of the things how you ration food Tuesdays and Fridays were designated as meatless your weekly allowances for food as of nineteen forty twenty ounces of meat 12 ounces of fat nine ounces of sugar different amounts for Jam and this is that karo product I mentioned a minute ago and this is what the rationing sheets look like weirdly the two up here one of them is is legitimate and one of them is not because when the British government decides to very sort of cleverly see if they can mess with the German economy British bombers will drop fake German ration sheets over Germany so worst case it's gonna mess up the whole food rationing thing or but you know in case maybe you just go up there and they realize it's a fake and you just look kind of stupid when you're presenting your fake ration sheet this is the fake by the way on the right hand side music is a big deal and so is the cinema in wartime Germany from 1933 to 1945 Germany specifically or mostly the Roofus studio in Berlin produces of more than a thousand movies feature-length films they range from very very good even still to some that are just just horribly awful and the tone of the film's changes depending on what period we're talking about so in the 1930s before the war you get a lot of sort of variety there's a lot of comedies there's a lot of romantic comedies but as the war goes on the tone of the film starts to perceptibly change the both the time you get to 1940 through 1944 we're making films that are trying to adjust to the new reality of just getting hammered by the US Air Force and the idea that the war may not be going in a very good direction so in 43 and 44 you you start to see some epic German films one of the more famous series was talking about the life of Frederick the Great and the movies talk about the king is in desperate situation the war looks lost times are hard and people are deserting him but the King believes and the king has faith and even though it looks hopeless Frederick the Great wins at the end and it's a not very subtle message that even though the world looks like it's really taken a bad turn for us you know just hang in there a little bit longer and it's it's gonna work out just the same for us Joseph gurbles is the propaganda chief of Nazi Germany he is also in charge of what films are made and how they're distributed he controls the money to make the films and some of his people encourage him to do more sort of ideological patriotic Nazi themed message films and he says no that's not what we're going to so weirdly during most of the war his it that the vast majority of German films made have really almost no political content at all some of them certainly do but his point here is keep people entertained rather than focusing on the war news as it continues to get bad and so the most popular film luffa ever made is a 1942 film called der grosse Oliva right the great love and it's a story of a singer and a fighter pilot and they fall in love but they just keep missing sort of each other it's the wrong time or the wrong place and the star of the film is a Swedish actress in singer who makes a big hit in in wartime Germany named Zara Lee under the most famous song from the film becomes the most famous most popular song but one in wartime Germany davon gate developed under means the world is not going to end and you know I think maybe there could be a concert starting now so maybe we should listen in [Music] [Music] [Music] that's pretty catchy right the other famous song from the war is one you may very well know is came actually the German radio the German armed forces radio station and Belgrade Yugoslavia started playing I think just for a lack of other records to play a song by a German there a number of German artists that have recorded it but a song that was very popular in North Africa called Lili Marleen the Germans loved it the British loved it weirdly but gurbles the propaganda minister hated it because the lyrics in German are very suggestive of its the soldier and he's thinking about this lamppost where he met his girlfriend the lyrics are suggestive of the fact that he's going to get killed and gurbles thought that is absolutely the wrong message to be sending to the troops and he or did pulled and the complaint was so large from German forces serving all over in both in Russia and Africa that he had to put it back on so there's a lot of different versions of it the German version wartime version the most powerful is by singer named Lally Anderson personal opinion the best version is Marlena Dietrich who had escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s and gurbles absolutely refused to play her version so okay I apologize I'm having see we have kind of an issue here because I'm like the least technologically savvy person you've ever seen in your life and I'm having experiencing a slight technical issue oh come on there we go okay German health care system in during the wartime Germany is is typically excellent going back to Germany in the 1930s in 1920s the Germans are pioneers in many respects medical care was free each district had a medical director who's responsible for every aspect of anything you can think of with health care priority is on sanitation emergency medicine both of those came in handy once the war started infant mortality is almost nil in Germany even through the war when things are getting hard to have and the German Red Cross runs the the nurses system as well as many of the hospitals the German economy one of the things that Hitler did very soon after he took power was to get rid of some of the problem anticipated problem people in organizations and and along this line he dissolved the labor unions because they were in many cases not fans of his so in its place what Hitler created was that the German worked front it is a state controlled organ organization for workers all throughout Nazi Germany by 1939 because Hitler had had rigged the economy in such a way that a prioritized war goods and military service there's almost no unemployment to speak of a Nazi Germany the long term had the war not come in 39 Nazi Germany probably would have been bankrupt by 30 43 44 working hours during the war are a lot 60 to 72 hours rising to 72 hours but one of the things that the Germans did that was very popular both with workers in families generally with something called Kraft durch Freude means strength through joy strength through joy is a program that allows workers minimally expensive trips to exotic destinations Germany converted to or built to cruise liners simply to take workers on vacations you could go to Norway you could go to Italy you could tour the Mediterranean and that part was very popular some of the other stuff not so much in one of the issues too with Germany is that what a a policy in the 30s had been eventually we would like to make Germany independent the vocabulary word for that is autarky which I think this is the first time I've in my life I've ever had to actually save the word out loud I only learned what it meant a short time ago but by the time the war comes in 39 Germany had not reached anywhere near that point so Germany as of the war is still importing food raw materials and Germany produces almost zero oil which makes the decision in 1941 to launch an attack on the country that supplies most of your oil kind of interesting which they do when they attack Russia so shortages start in this and the rationing and begins in very much an earnest starting in 1941 most people average monthly wage is about thirty Reichsmarks another interesting thing and this was part of this kraft durch Freude up strength through joy movement is they came up the idea with the with ferdinand porsche and hitler and others to produce a cheap mass-produced car the VW Beetle right and the idea was that a German worker could save at a five five Reichsmark increments and eventually in about three years the German worker would receive one of these new Volkswagen cars so you had your little like out like a your green stamp book and you got your little little stamp here with a picture of the VW on it and you you posted it in your book and you saved and you and he's saved and then the war comes and would you like to guess how many of these workers actually got their VW cars zero they sued after the war sued volkswagen demanding their a free car because they had saved during during Nazi Germany for a Volkswagen and yeah that that didn't really go anywhere gurbles the propaganda minister in an effort both to keep people propagandized as well as entertained and his his thing was to see if you could do both of these at the same time was he made available to germans a cheap but well-constructed people's radio there came in two different versions there was a large version for 70 Reichsmarks and a smaller version for 3035 and there were hundreds of thousands of these produced so in your home maybe for the first time in your life you had a radio and you could listen to the quality programming that gurbles was providing on the german radio network to make sure that you know you beYOU you got the message and the thing was there comes a point in 1943 because before that if you tuned into Nazi radio you would have heard in cases the very things early on so 3940 and for part of 1941 about how well the war was going and you would have heard about the campaign in Poland you would heard about beating the beaches from Hitler you would have heard speeches from gurbles you would have heard news broadcast i'll let you know where and many families had a home map so you could track where the troops were and then comes Stalingrad in early 1943 and also in 43 the German forces surrender in Africa and the shift in tone of the proper broadcast is interesting some people advocated that what durable should do is continue to sort of pump air into this thing and and can about the successes that we're having even though we're not really having them but he determined it would be worse for morale if we started lying and they found out the truth through letters or people from home on leave so it's better to explain some of the the difficulties the soldiers they're having which creates kind of a psychic shock because if you've been listening religiously through through 39 through 42 and everything's going great and we're winning the war drama we're this close to Moscow and we're gonna take Moscow next year and then suddenly after Stalingrad all of the news is bad news and they're really not sure how to spin this because how do you when it's evident when your cities are getting flattened and your troops you're losing more and more troops I mean at one point on the Eastern Front the Germans are losing 150,000 casualties per month think about that number for a second a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers per month weirdly the Soviets are losing you know eight times that but for Germans who are used to to these broadcasts of victory it's it's there I think sense of doom is probably gonna is pretty palpable German air raid precautions start almost immediately after Hitler comes to power in 1933 youth and even just ordinary citizens start rehearsing air drills and and they're really quite proficient at it the photograph here this is some very actually very small children I think this is probably thirty four thirty five posters go up once the war starts in terms of using the Hitler Youth as primaries in some cases of air defense and the system is is kind of a marvel of organization big terms of like what Germany is able to do with its anti-aircraft defenses and fighters as well as mostly as effective as people NBD with air defense but it they're simply overwhelmed when Hamburg is destroyed over a couple of a couple of days really and there are 40,000 dead people in Hamburg there's no system in the world that's going to make that okay but firefighting is is a priority it's but it's just not possible to keep up with it women are encouraged to volunteer and then later are directed to serve in air defense units one of the things that goes on in Germany because of the casualties are so high on the Eastern Front especially there are by the end of the war some 8 million foreign workers in Germany this is slightly different than slave labour which of which there are other millions but these are people that have either been enticed or paid or threatened and they come into Germany to do agricultural tasks and some other things in this case here on the bottom right-hand side it's a it's a Polish it's an advertisement in Poland telling workers that you know the promised land of salary and opportunity lays if you volunteer to go work in Germany conditions are from absolutely awful in many so many respects to actually okay in other places but one of the problems that foreign workers have in addition to being abused and in some cases killed in Germany is once the war is closing and Soviet troops occupy a good you know sections of the country Soviet citizens or people from the east who volunteered to serve in Germany or the Soviets do not look upon them very kindly so if you're a Soviet citizen and you are liberated by the Red Army that's not going to go very well for you left hand side here is a propaganda photograph from the German news agency which shows very well fed well clothed contented foreign workers you know writing letters home to their families on the other side is a warning that is put out by the German government or telling women not to get too cozy with foreign workers one of the things that Hitler is he's concerned about it and he's certain about is that the primary cause of Germany losing the First World War is the collapse of the homefront and the reason the homefront collapsed is because the morale was destroyed he is very careful and his people are very careful to to not do much early even in during the during wartime afraid that the mood of the German population will turn against them so in addition to having spies in and amongst the people the SS security service essentially does opinion polls of what people are thinking inside Germany about whatever it is the government is doing and this isn't well even this isn't for purposes of arrest or prosecution so you have like like these these people like wandering into bars are just kind of leaning in and listening and then they're going to report the kinds of things that people are saying about the government to increase morale at the same time therefore that's why oofah produces a thousand ninety four films during the war because it's considered essential to keep morale up even when it especially when conditions get hardest so theaters remain open the radio programming it does it's quite varied it's entertaining it's light its comedic as well as inner space as the war goes on with with different messages to a propaganda a very common sight on a German Street in our Meier family that I talked about at the beginning would have seen this often is that of children with these red tins vente Hill Civic it's the winter aid donation so they would stand on the street corner and you would pass and your Hitler Youth person would offer you the tin with a slot in it and the thing you probably didn't want to say was no thank you so you made your donation and then after people started complaining if they were getting like nickel and dimed and hit up every time that they crossed the street you would get a little token a little plastic thing or a little metal badge or something and you could show that yes I've already donated to the vendor Helzberg now run along out one of the slogans that comes out to and this is at least the SD the security services reporting when people can see with their own eyes that their cities are collapsing and burning and they know that their sons and brothers and husbands are getting killed or badly wounded that rationing is in place that the economy is getting worse and worse and worse one of the things that people who are desperate hold on to is this idea of Indust feo tvasta if only Hitler knew about this he would do something and this is especially true that the serious committed Nazis did the things wouldn't be so bad if Hitler only knew he wouldn't permit these kind of abuses to take place and as the war goes on and on and on and one of the things is cities are getting bombed gurbles makes a point especially in Berlin to go to areas and talk to the people who are at soup kitchens or getting medical attention Hitler doesn't go one time not ever even when the bombing is is blocks away from from his Reich's Chancellery in Berlin he never goes to see bombed or injured people and during the LAT once the war starts and especially after Stalingrad the number of times he addresses the German people on radio is almost none at all but weirdly there's a resilience that I think almost has nothing to do with with Nazi Germany that their cities are getting hit day and night and in some cases day and night and morale suffers but a frustration of the American Army Air Forces and the British Royal Air Force is that German morale never really breaks it's still this community centric together in his peace and and no matter how many buildings you blow up or how many people you kill it doesn't seem to have the morale effect that the that the Allies are hoping and and that's probably worth a discussion some other day women in Germany traditionally at least in Hitler says this or at least indicates this Hitler has a very idealized very special idea of what German women should be specifically German women should concentrate on three things kitchen church children that's it German education of German women should be physical education and so to keep them healthy and raising German children they're having German children but that's about all so weirdly Germany Nazi Germany doesn't declare total war until 1943 the Americans and the British are years ahead of the Germans and the British are very cleverly and using well women in the work force women in the armaments industry weren't women in essential war work and Germany just simply doesn't do this until it's too late but as things go on in eleven percent one of the things that Hitler does that that's kind of curious because the casualties are high and maybe for some other reasons that have to do with eugenics the Germans Institute was called the mother's cross that's the decoration on the top right hand side there are three different version three different grades of it it four if you get a bronze mother cross you've had four children silver six children and if you want to go all the way for the gold order it's going to you're gonna have to have eight children now the benefits of having them others cross first of all is status I suppose but more immediately it allows you to cut in lines at stores try this at Price Chopper and limit let me know how that works working the National Socialist German Workers let me let me get back to one thing too as husbands and wives or engaged couples are separated by the war or they become engaged during the course of the war it is impossible physically for as many marriages to take place normally as they would so there's the ceremony and German French wrong which means you're getting married at a distance so a bride would go to her local registry and on a table is a steel helmet and at the same moment the husband or the to be is going to be making having a similar ceremony at his unit and these were actually legal marriages they they experiment with a weird thing like it is the war gets goes it goes further and further the idea that you can actually marry someone who has deceased the that doesn't really work to plan and they think there's some some sham going on that people are trying to get you know spouse or deceive this benefits but once they start it they eventually they don't completely cut it off again the National Socialist German women's organization is is a very it's an interesting thing there's about two million members their leadership these are serious hardcore Nazi women who've Airy look extremely happy in this photograph on the upper left-hand side here kind of what you would expect a seriously doctrinaire Nazi women to look like in 1943 women aged 17 to 45 are ordered to register for work for the children it's mandatory actually it's mandatory twice when Hitler comes to power the Hitler Youth Organization is is already in existence in 1933 and 34 and 35 they're working very quickly to try to collapse all the other youth organizations in Germany so in 1937 a 30 I'm sorry 30 36 the Catholic Youth Organization gives up and also by 1936 it is mandatory to join the Hitler Youth so if you are from ages 10 to 18 you shall be a member of the Hitler Youth either the the Hitler Youth and the boys version or the BDM the League of German girls no exceptions especially and after 1939 there are actually legal penalties if you fail to register your child in the Hitler Youth if you're one of the things that Germany also does as the war goes on is they they essentially copy what England has done and take children from vulnerable areas inside cities and send them to the countryside now in England you know if you've ever seen even some of the movies the idea is you put them with families and they live with the families and then when things get better you know they come back to the cities Hitler didn't do it that way you your children go in groups and stay essentially in camps that are highly not safai so you have a ceremony every morning of like going at this loop the swastika flag and you have a school curriculum that is entirely almost based around sort of Nazi educational principles they're not letting anything slip here if you are a promising child in Nazi Germany you can be selected to go to the autofit low Shula or to what's called an ordinance burg if you're very very bright and these are people that are supposed to be fast into politics and into the SS they make toys in Nazi Germany until 1943 when they ordered because of the war toys are stopped the collectibles here are toys that are miniature German soldiers and they make miniature tanks there's a problem though sometimes because the the hard-to-find figures are the ones of political leaders this becomes kind of embarrassing after 1941 and it's no longer possible to buy a Rudolf Hess doll because Rudolf Hess flies to England and gives himself up so that's that's yeah we're not gonna be having that figure anymore or after 1934 the Ernst Roehm figure he was the head of the s these the stormtroopers and yeah he's Hitler he shoots himself after he's been taken into custody and it's been clear he's gonna be shot by somebody else yes so that figures not going to work the picture this is one of the last taken in the last couple of months of the war but it's Joseph Goebbels congratulating and pinning an Iron Cross second class on a I think he's a 15 year old boy because by the time 1948 44 gets here the Germans have formed what is called the Volkssturm of every able-bodied child or retired person any man who's not already in uniform is going to be in in this new unit to resist mostly the Soviets they are minimally trained they're minimally armed and they're sent out because there's really nobody else left to send a couple quick things and Grimm kind of I'm sorry and probiotics eating like my allotted time there are resistors to Nazi Germany though even despite all this mostly groups of teenagers there's a group that operates kind of an in northwestern Germany they call themselves they Aida lies pirates they smoke they drink they wear clothing that is not the approved where and the Hitler Youth there are others that are called swing kids I mean they listen to jazz records and also smoke and drink and hang out that are they're not they're anti sort of anti Hitler Youth people the black market despite Nazi denials flourishes and if there is something that you need you can always get it but running the risk of the the person you're buying it from being a Gestapo informant I'm going to tell you about the weirdest thing that I know about Nazi Germany I don't I can't explain it there is a fad that happens in the 30s about people posing with people in bear suits not making this up this is really true the picture this is the picture here the woman on the left weirdly is is ava Brown's sister so Hitler's mistress soon to be his wife for about a day posing with the guy in the bear suit and it's not just her these are two soldiers and I think it's the same bear suit I mean if you start yeah I actually I spent probably more than my boss would allow time the other day comparing things on the bear suit to try to see if I could figure out if it's the same bear suit bear suit at the beach bear suit at a children's school bear holding girl with parasol bear at a wedding with the top hat they're holding a Scottie and I can't prove this but weirdly I think the Scottie is probably Ava Brown Scottie she had two Scottie dogs with a Hitler Youth girl in the the beauty of the bear suit guy though is that he survived the collapse of Germany so we have baracy guy in Berlin with 3G eyes and if somebody can can tell me like if you know the identity of bear suit man let me know because I can get a book out of that I think it's frankly a lot like something that actually our daughter has been involved in which is people in t-rex costumes doing it people you're on the internet you can you can find I can't explain it the Myers that I introduce you to the family from Berlin are part of a generation inside Germany there are 5.5 million German soldiers killed during the course of the world more than two million civilians it's I don't I don't really have a good way to phrase that almost every major city and many many minor cities are destroyed by bombing or by ground assault or artillery and the thing with Nazi Germany is that and one of the reasons I've had I've wrestled with this for for a long time there's a lot of evil to go around here and some of it committed during the war in Germany and with by the Germans and other places is beyond comprehension III I don't fully understand it but at the same time I think it's important to realize that there are people who survived Germany who lived there that are just regular people like the rest of us and I don't know if the Meyer family survived Berlin where their children did but I kind of hope they did which ends my presentation [Applause] so if any questions that I'll be happy to see if I can stumble through an answer to TomTom in the back I I don't I don't know that man I don't know why I called him Tom he's he's unknown it's one of the one of those mysteries you pointed out in this Ferrand travel arrangement the bride's got married with a helmet sitting next to them on the on the counter I wondered what the soldiers who were doing this ahead next to them on the counter it's it's the the photographs I've seen of it it's usually a field table they put some try to put some flowers on it their candles the bride's picture is usually there and in some case on which unit is the person is from you may have like a picture of Hitler kind of in the background sort of blessing the marriage it became traditional after I think 38 1938 that if you got married in Germany as a as a gift to you from the state you got a copy of Hitler's book Mein Kampf as your wedding present no charge to you just totally free just you know and I think you'd be stupid not to send a thank-you note what part if any did religion play in the in that during that period of time Hitler made a point of trying to get rid of it entirely he had zero almost zero success among the Catholic areas in Germany mostly the south so Bavaria or Baden Wurttemberg where you have large Catholic populations - the Protestants he started the Nazi Party started something called the German Christians so to take you out let's say from the Lutheran Church but to put you in a state Nazi state created Church that was entirely controlled by the party and that never really caught on in either so he I mean he actively was was he couldn't figure out a solution to the religion problem but he knew that it was a danger to the regime sir it depends the first concentration open was Dachau in 1933 the popular the first generation at Dachau was heavily communist in in most cases they were detained in some cases they were detained perpetually but in most cases they were detained they were thought to be re-educated and they tried to integrate them back into society if they lapsed or slid back into their old beliefs that the the penalty was much greater something they didn't just get the Communist is they weren't just sort of clear-cut that we didn't just just kill all of them many most of the leaders were killed but the Communist rank-and-file in Germany which is in their Millions they didn't do that Nazi Germany or the communism that basically it was an electoral failure communist again I think with a third largest party in Germany like going into the 19th but the foot 1932 elections they just couldn't quite get the majority over the Nazis and Germany is a parliamentary government system which means like when Hitler took power it wasn't he's he didn't have enough strength just to just didn't make it totally Nazi it's it's a parliamentary government so he had to pick people from other minor parties to sort of cobble together the majority and the German Reichstag in the communist just they never quite got there but like through most of the 24 certainly from the latter of 25 forward it was up in the air who's gonna be the new leading party in Germany it was gonna be communist it was gonna be Nazi or if it's gonna be the Social Democratic Party yes ma'am not a question but just a comment so I was in Leipzig last October for the anniversary of the light like this and I went to an antique store and I saw a case with several iron crosses there was an iron cross it was 95 euros and then there was a mother's cross and I think that was around 35 or 40 euros there was a what they call a hero's cross or as another cross that was around 45 50 euros but several crosses but the swastika was was marked out you know the owner of the antique store said he couldn't allow the swastika to be seen and that's where he had the price I take the weird thing about that is since the war Germany has been more serious about fighting Nazism than almost anybody else it's illegal in Germany today to deny the Holocaust it's criminal offence it well in it and it is and it's like for example even if you served in the the bunt with the new German army that's created in 1949 even if you had a decoration that was from the Second World War you could continued most most cases to wear it but there could there absolutely no swastika on it whatsoever they all had to be they all had to be denounced fide yeah well in in maybe we'll have another talk another day but like just in terms of like post-war one of the thing I do write for my day job in terms of research is is war crimes and it's a fascinating subject till 2 if you walk through it to see how Germany Britain America Russia and some other countries viewed Nazi crimes after the war was over periodically a majority he's got some some lapses to it but I mean there wasn't many cases a serious look at trying to trying to get rid of that would still have it would still have the imperial eagle or Sutton I think about the end of the crown would be on it yes ma'am you probably made a goodbye sir did they have bomb shelters in in these major cities and Germany we went to a weird they certainly did and factories had their own so for example if you worked it at a fireman or you worked at Essen a steel plant you had one this totally was calculated to be of the size sufficient for the for that workforce we toured one a couple of years ago that looks like a it looks like a missile silo I mean I think it must be like six or seven storeys tall but it's round with like a conical top on it and there they have their own filtration system they had their own like it was it had a rubber gaskets to seal it against the gas attack but and they started building those in in sorter like 36 37 so they had they had a good three years worth of worth of preparation in terms of before the world yes sir yeah I have mic when I do the war crimes class I have my students read ordinary men Chris where Browning's book I my experience is that he has the right argument and I like especially that he makes it about it's not just a Germany problem that if you do like you look at the Milgram experiments and some other things that is kind of a human being problem this happened to be in Germany but the scary part about that and about this this this reserve Police Battalion he writes about these murders mass murders are committed by people that would never have had a criminal record and would never have one again after the war you get ordinary there were can you give everybody just had three sentence an OPS s of the book I'm sorry Chris he's a crisper brownie is a British author and he's looking at a reserve police battalion German police battalion that's operating in the Eastern Front the only mission of this unit and others like it is is to murder Jews it serves no other function it goes to an area they round up they murder they move on and he goes as far as in depth as a record will allow in terms of looking at the way the unit is put together and who the people are and they're nobody they're not people you would pick as murderers because they never had been and they never would be again but there's something that gets switched in them that allows them to continue to to murder tens of thousands of people and one of the quotes that provocative questions he asked them there is how could that be and there's a couple different you know answers to that I mean Browning's book I mean there are others that say that it's something essentially German that's only only the German culture and history and experience have made people capable of doing that and Browning's argument is that no not really it's happened other places and it probably will happen other places but there it's it's a fascinating it's a it's an easy it's an easy read but it's a very provocative book that makes you think about things so head to your local book store Amazon and buy a copy and tell Chris I said hi thank you for your very kind attention [Applause]

Channel: The Dole Institute of Politics

Views: 37,309

Keywords: Dole, Institute, Dole Institute of Politics, German Homefront, World War II, Mark Hull, National Socialist state

Id: lfxDUFZuiTY

Length: 72min 25sec (4345 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 03 2018