Question regarding the psychology of the German citizens

World War II General WWII Discussion
#21

It’s always interesting to read a German’s point of view, even if a tad second hand. The stories told by one generation to another are sometimes quite revealing in their own right.

I want to make the observation that the Germans like to talk about their oppression following WWI, but note at the same time that not a single German town or city of any consequence was damaged during that war. A large swath of France, on the other hand, was laid waste. German perceptions are a bit off kilter here (read “way off”).
The German author says that Germany had 30% unemployment. I can’t confirm the figure but can attest that 30% is very high and very bad. However, at about the same time, the US had unemployment of about 25%, also very bad, and we did not put a jew-killing vengeance-seeking devil in command of our people as a consequence, though there were certainly radicals around the US who would have loved to gain power, but who never had a chance to do so.
One is very tempted to think that had the German nation been subject to the same depredations they visited upon the French, they might have thought twice about the war of vengeance they embarked upon under Hitler.

I have my parents’ stories from Holland during the war. My mother said, “Oh, we thought he (Hitler) was crazy and that no one would take him seriously.” Oopsie.

#22

However, the US had the democracy deep entrenched in their national conscience. The Germans, however, had been semi-forced into democracy after the defeat of the Empire. This lead to the continuous belief that “under the Kaiser, everything was better” - with regards to the time before WWI, of course.
Therefore, Germany society was still very much believing in the idea of one strongman leading the country, rather than a pathetic collective of weak politicians who do nothing but argue all day. That’s why the idea of a nationalistic socialist strongman was so attractive.

  1. He was nationalistic, as everybody was at the time, and wanted to lead Germany out of its misery
  2. He was socialist, which meant the workers would support him as he would ease their struggles
  3. He was a strongman who would get things done, rather than having to argue with parliament for weeks on end, and get nothing done in the end, after all.
  4. He strongly disagreed with the Treaty of Versailles, which almost every German considered a shame and dishonoring for Germany.

Does it make a little bit more sense now?

One is very tempted to think that had the German nation been subject to the same depredations they visited upon the French, they might have thought twice about the war of vengeance they embarked upon under Hitler.

No. They would have probably been even more furious. What mattered was that the French won, the Germans didn’t. What mattered was that the Allies took apart the Empire, with Northern Schleswig, Danzig, Poland, Alsace-Lothringen and the Saarland removed from Germany.

The only thing that might have changed was the stab-in-the-back legend that became so popular in postwar Germany. However, that is only if the German army had actually collapsed and been destroyed, not retreated in some order.

I have my parents’ stories from Holland during the war. My mother said, “Oh, we thought he (Hitler) was crazy and that no one would take him seriously.” Oopsie.

That was the same fallacy of many Jews and opponents of the Regime, up to the war. They didn’t believe Hitler would manage to control the Germans as much as he did…

#23

Interesting. Germany’s Kaiser was a strong man and he got them into a fine mess. Hitler was a strong man and he destroyed all of Germany. One has to wonder where the admiration of strong men who don’t have to argue with parliament comes from since their rule seems inevitably to lead to disaster. There seems to have been a lack of distinction in Germany between real leadership and dictatorship which apparently had some sort of basic, animal-level hold on the German soul. This is all the more puzzling because Germany was such a source of cultural enlightenment in so many ways in the 19th century - philosophy, poetry, music, literature, science and industry. How the Germans could have descended into such complete barbarism, degradation and debasement with millions participating in it continues to fascinate us to this day.

A desire for “strong leadership” doesn’t do it for me. Sorry.

Most countries in the world have “black periods” that they would rather forget and sweep under the rug, but some things are just too big and too hideous to ignore. In the end, the truth will nearly always come out - the South’s (and parts of the north as well) treatment of blacks from slavery to segregation is one such period in US history, as is the destruction of the native American cultures, although they survive for the most part today. The insanely stupid war against Iraq based on lies not dissiimilar to the lies about a Polish attack on a German radio station in 1939, is yet another. But mass slaughter of an individual socio-economic group (Jews) on an industrial scale is difficult to fathom and impossible to excuse. One may certainly forgive, but one should never forget.

#24

Well, first of all, the Germans of Weimar obviously wouldn’t know about where Hitler’s reign would lead to, so that’s one thing.

Secondly, it was very much public opinion that it was not the Kaiser’s fault that Germany got involved in the First World War.
It was either the Jewish conspiracy that wanted to have the White Europeans kill each other, the vengeful French, who still wanted to avenge the defeat in 1871 or the Democrats/Communists who wanted to use the confusion of the war for a revolution (as in Russia).

There were many theories on why the war happened - the fewest of which saw the Kaiser as the culprit. Never mind the part where France and Britain were involved from the get-go, too - and they were democracies.

However, this experience might be the reason why modern Germans tolerate 622… things… (you can’t really call them people, since they seem to have no personality) sitting in parliament doing fuck-all while the country is going tits up.

There seems to have been a lack of distinction in Germany between real leadership and dictatorship

Dictatorship and leadership aren’t mutually exclusive. Consider this: Had Hitler been assassinated in 1938, he would probably stand in the history books as a great leader. He brought Germany out of the Depression, he stopped the state from falling apart from the inside and managed to bring back the Saarland, annex the Sudetenland and attach Austria to the rest of the country/Reich.
He also re-empowered the German’s then-beloved Army from the pathetic boy scouts of the Reichswehr to the Wehrmacht.

So in 1938, average non-Jewish Germans who had not yet had a run-in with the Gestapo would have probably considered Hitler a great statesman.

[…] which apparently had some sort of basic, animal-level hold on the German soul.

A desire for “strong leadership” doesn’t do it for me. Sorry.

Germany had, at the time of Hitler’s election, only been united for 62 years - barely a single lifetime. The perception that the union of the many, relatively independent, German states could only really be ruled by a single, strong, leader was quite predominant - and maybe not completely faulty, considering that there were many movements which intended to split from the Weimar Republic.

Additionally, you should consider that the Germans in fact hadn’t had any real bad experience with single, powerful leaders. They thought of Charlemagne, Frederick II, Wilhelm I, etc. The only reason that Germany lost WWI was because of those democrats and Jews who stabbed the monarchy and military in the back, anyway (Stab-in-the-back-Legend).
Also, the war was fought equally by democracies and monarchies, so the argument that it was the monarchy/dictatorship that caused the war was considered faulty.

The search for a strongman became all the more popular as the government of Weimar proofed too passive and too weak to control the country, while Communists and Fascists were fighting each other in the streets on a daily basis.

But mass slaughter of an individual socio-economic group (Jews) on an industrial scale is difficult to fathom and impossible to excuse. One may certainly forgive, but one should never forget.

Not to make excuses, but I am certain that if the Americans had had the industrial means during their genocide against Native Americans, the same thing would have happened, just as it would have with the Conquistadors in Latin America. But these groups got “lucky” that it happened before the industrial revolution, because at the end of the day, what allowed the Holocaust to be committed on the scale it was, were the means available.

#25

Sounds like an excuse to me.

Actually, many if not most of the native American tribes that were attacked, survive today on their own reservations with home rule and which legally are separate and distinct from government of the United States, but which cannot make any foreign policy of their own. It is pure supposition on your part that “we” would have tried to annihilate the Indians on an industrial scale as the Germans certainly tried to do to the Jews (and largely succeeded in doing across much of Europe (“Judenrein”)). As I said before, this was a “Black Period” in American history but it isn’t really comparable to what the Germans did. The Americans could have wiped the Indians out but did not.

It’s true that Germany was a gerrymandered state for a long time, but 62 years, I hasten to point out, is at least three generations, and I fail to see how that is an excuse for how Germany turned out by 1939. It may be true that if Hitler had been killed in 1938 he would today be considered to be a great man, but 1) that’s not relevant to the discussion, and 2) Hitler actually broadcast his deadly intentions quite explicitly in Mein Kampf, so the idea that no one knew how it was going to turn out doesn’t hold a great deal of water either and makes a mockery of the “great man” thinking.

Hitler did indeed get the Saar back, and Alsace-Lorraine and the Sudetenland, but Germany lost all of those and more (Danzig, Prussia, Austria) following the war. How great was that?

You can mock democracy all you want because it is a woefully flawed but very human system of government, but, as Churchill wisely observed, “it is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.”

The idea that “great men” accountable to no one but lackeys and sycophants are somehow better at governance than elected leaders is, I submit, not borne out by history. Do I detect a “yearning” for a strong leader?

#26

Don’t forget Ernst Lubitch (I hope I’m spelling his name correctly), one of the best directors of the ‘crazy comedies’ of the 1930s. Even though Lubitch was Jewish, Doktor Goebbels was ‘prepared to overlook’ the director’s ‘Jewishness’ if he would stay in Germany and work for the Reich film industry. Lubitch gave the propaganda minister the finger, so to speak, and took up a lucrative Hollywood offer.

I am currently reading something called The 12-Year Reich, A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933-1945. Seems like a rehash, but it’s not. I’m not beginning with Point A and proceeding chronologically to Point Z. I look at the index and the subjects offered: For instance, ‘Corruption’ [in Germany by the highest-echelon party members–Goring on down].

The German public, according to the author, Richard Grunberger, was perfectly aware of this corruption, but looked the other way (as did Hitler, by the way, who always liked to project his ‘puritan’ image to the public), since the Nazis, by and large, were helping themselves to others’ property–first the Jews, then the occupied countries. Anyway, this little book is a treasure trove of information, if the author of this thread wants to get a hold of it.

#27

More of comparison.

Actually, many if not most of the native American tribes that were attacked, survive today on their own reservations with home rule and which legally are separate and distinct from government of the United States, but which cannot make any foreign policy of their own.

What a great fate, considering once all of North America was theirs.

It is pure supposition on your part that “we” would have tried to annihilate the Indians on an industrial scale as the Germans certainly tried to do to the Jews (and largely succeeded in doing across much of Europe (“Judenrein”)). As I said before, this was a “Black Period” in American history but it isn’t really comparable to what the Germans did. The Americans could have wiped the Indians out but did not.

True, yet they also faced the problem of uncharted areas as well as huge unsettled and uncontrolled stretches of land where they couldn’t chart and detain Native Americans very easily - as opposed to the situation in Europe. Yet, things like biological warfare against Natives and bounties on Scalps, etc were quite horrific and point towards a treatment not unlike that of Jews - though admittedly less organized.

But I have to admit that I do not know enough particulars about that Genocide to argue about it in any overly specific manner.

It’s true that Germany was a gerrymandered state for a long time, but 62 years, I hasten to point out, is at least three generations, and I fail to see how that is an excuse for how Germany turned out by 1939.

Again, it is not an excuse but an explanation, and I’m not trying to explain the war, but the election in 1933. A German democracy had, by then, only existed for 15 years, accompanied by political unrest, a Great Depression and a lethargic government.

It may be true that if Hitler had been killed in 1938 he would today be considered to be a great man, but 1) that’s not relevant to the discussion,

Heck yeah it is! We are not arguing about the reason for the war, but why Germany elected Hitler and why the people liked and trusted him even throughout most of the war. It therefore is in fact quite relevant.

  1. Hitler actually broadcast his deadly intentions quite explicitly in Mein Kampf, so the idea that no one knew how it was going to turn out doesn’t hold a great deal of water either and makes a mockery of the “great man” thinking.

It didn’t matter. Hitler was quite the powerful and sweeping speaker, he managed to mobilize the masses. His propaganda managed to spread the belief that Germany was going to be either Fascist or Communist - and the people chose fascism, since it also seemed to be the one supported by the old monarchists and national heroes like Hindenburg, etc.

There’s no point denying that Antisemitism was quite widespread in Germany (and the rest of the Western World) at the time, so there were probably quite some people who simply didn’t care about what would happen to the Jews.

As a side note - I wonder how many people actually believed that Hitler would really go on to exterminate the Jews. Segregation, yes, Discrimination, yes, maybe even Deportation, but Genocide? I belief that even many of the NSDAP-Voters didn’t think Hitler would really dare to go quite as far.
That’s always a thing with politicians - what do they talk beforehand and what they actually end up doing can be quite different - usually less radical. Ask the American Democrats at the moment. :smiley:

Lastly, you shouldn’t consider the Holocaust as the crux of Hitler’s electoral platform. There were many people who supported the Nazis not because of this but because of his promise of strong leadership, the regaining of lost territory and German honor.

Obviously, Holocaust and WWII will forever be the two things we’ll remember Hitler for, but you can’t assume that those were the reasons all those people supported him.

Hitler did indeed get the Saar back, and Alsace-Lorraine and the Sudetenland, but Germany lost all of those and more (Danzig, Prussia, Austria) following the war. How great was that?

You’re not making sense. You’re approaching this argument from an anachronistic standpoint, which is just utter bollocks. How was the common, non-Nostradamus German Voter supposed to know that Germany was going to go to Total War, lose and be forced to surrender the territories?

That’s as if you blamed the American Republicans for 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, because they voted for Bush/Cheney in 2000…

You can mock democracy all you want because it is a woefully flawed but very human system of government, but, as Churchill wisely observed, “it is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.”

I agree. And yet you’re also right when you say that I can mock them as much as I want. That doesn’t mean I oppose it. Though about whether it is instinctively human or not, one could argue. There’s a reason it took us so long to adopt/regain it.

The idea that “great men” accountable to no one but lackeys and sycophants are somehow better at governance than elected leaders is, I submit, not borne out by history. Do I detect a “yearning” for a strong leader?

I definitely wouldn’t mind a strong man (Or at least a politician with backbone) - though one still accountable to the Rule of Law - to mix up politics in Germany at the moment.
You Americans at least have the advantage(disadvantage?) of having only two big parties - in Germany there’s five of them (Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, Green, Communist), with always at least two having to work in coalition and compromising important laws to death…

Yet, apparently, American democrats still manage to fail despite huge majorities :lol:

#28

Yet, apparently, American democrats still manage to fail despite huge majorities

Point taken.

#29

Don’t give Republicans a pass, either. You’ll notice they’re good at shrinking the gov’t in rhetorical imagination, and expanding it despite complete control of all branches for six years…

The entire US system fails, because the government is bought and paid for by special interests and corporate-whore lobbyists…

*It’s the sickening, prohibitively expensive US election cycle system whereas other Euro democracies tend to have very short, concise elections lessening the need for political funding…

#30

No worries, Nick. Republicans never get a pass in this household.

#31

Apart from the points Schuultz has made about the features specific to Germany between the wars, the economic conditions in Germany and the English-speaking Allied nations were so vastly different that one cannot logically infer that because something did not happen in America then because it happened in Germany there was some deficiency in the German political or personal character.

The Germans suffered political and social upheavals and economic miseries unknown in the English-speaking Allied nations in the post-war / pre-Depression decade, while the English-speaking Allies, and most of all America and in part due to its war-expanded and then post-war economy, prospered or at least had very stable economies compared with the inflationary disasters in Germany.

The German people generally also suffered things unknown in the English-speaking Allied nations at war’s end and in the immediate aftermath, from food shortages verging on starvation to revolution and the general decay of civil government and related social organisation.

If the English-speaking Allied nations had suffered the same experiences their populations might have been rather more sympathetic to a ‘strong man’ who offered a solution to their predicament. Or even a cripple with a solution, such as Roosevelt’s New Deal which got him elected.

As it was, and even without facing anything like the problems the German people faced from the end of WWI, most of the English-speaking Allies threw up their own fascist movements, notably Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in England and to a lesser but still significant extent the German American Bund in America, during the Depression era.

The German experience with fascism was, like the Italian experience, a product of local history, but the emergence of similar overt movements in America and England suggests that the appeal of such movements said something about the times in general rather than just the German situation.

Footnote: Australia’s unemployment rate during the Great Depression is quoted in various sources as 29% to 34%, which is in the same region as the figures quoted for Germany and somewhat higher than America. Yet we didn’t produce a Mosley or, despite a strong ethnic German population, anything like the Bund or any other strong overt public fascist movement. But we did produce a potentially more dangerous and much more effective far right movement based on our small permanent army and its large reserve forces, important elements of which were poised to seize control in defiance of law and constitutinality if there was any sign of a communist or related uprising. So the absence of a Hitler or Mosley type figure and related organisations was no guarantee that a nation was not at risk of a more direct takeover by fascist type elements than the less direct takeover which Hitler engineered through a corrupted democratic process.

#32

Since the post that began this thread was an inquiry into the state of the German mind prior to WW2, I suppose it would be best to leave a discussion of internal conditions in the US (and elsewhere) at the same time for another subsequent thread, interesting as that subject is. I don’t much feel like giving the Germans a “pass”, however, just because they’re from another culture and their circumstances were unique. Every place is different, every culture is peculiar and every circumstance is unique in some way, which means that that unique-ness cannot be an excuse for barbarity.

#33

Who talks about “giving a pass”? It’s rather an attempt at explaining why/how it could happen.

#34

True. I am still baffled as to how this came about and have not read anything yet that really explains it to my satisfaction.

#35

I Read many posts in this thread mentionning “Hitler’s propaganda”.

The master of this was dr. Goebbels. When war broke out, his ministry had control over ALL newspapers in Germany (this had been going on for a while).
The editors received detailed instructions as to what they could or could not write every week. Furthermore, he had control of the airwaves and the film industry.

The nazi party even subsidised small “people radios” that could only catch a few frequencys (with nazi propaganda, of course). Everyone was “encouraged” to get one, as there was one party member responsible for it in every appartment building, to monitor what and who listened to what. (quite a job !)

They even had an international radio service which transmitted in over 30 different languages ! (they were much less succesfull in that venture, since neither Goebbels nor Hitler had travelled outside Germany, so they completely ignored the mentality of their ennemies).

#36

The radios were called (from memory) “Volksender” and were manufactured by a German subsidiary of Philips. The price was subsidised by the Govt. through the Ministry of Culture, or Ministry of the Interior, I forget which.

There were two or three models, distinguishable by either a black or brown bakelite (think: early type of plastic) cover, or a wood-veneer case. Some models could receive either three or 5 frequencies, some two, and some, only a single frequency.
They could be purchased on time-payment, (what we would today call Hire-Purchase) which facility was overseen by an arrangement between the Finance Ministry, Reichsbank, and Cultural or Interior Ministry.
From memory, they were (roughly in today’s values) about $25 to $40 each.

That’s about as much info as I can recall on the topic, I hope someone finds it useful.

Regards, Uyraell.

#37

Volksempfänger :wink:

BTW, in spring/summer 1939 there were serious plans made by Goebbels to confiscate every single radio in Germany in case of a war.

#38

Here’s a poster depicting exactly what we’re talking about…
If I remember correctly, listening to the BBC was, for the germans, punishable by death…
Look closely at the bottom character doing just that : he is scared, in the dark, he really don’t want his neigbour to know what he’s doing…

traitors.jpg

#39

As has been noted by others here, there was anti-semitism in Germany prior to Hitler for a considerable time, as well as in Austria and a host of other European countries. Nor was the US immune to this ugly discrimination and, I might add, especially in Poland and the Soviet Union. Progroms were a long-time manifestation of this in the latter two countries. There seems to be plenty of evidence that anti-semitism survived the war in Poland and probably in other countries as well. Little wonder then that the jews sought to create a state of its own, the subject of another thread.

That the stab in the back theory was complete nonsense from the outset seemed to matter little, even if there were probably plenty of Germans who knew very well that it was not true, since it “suited” their needs and their ends. Tens of thousands of jews honorably fought on the German side in the Great War. This service to their Fatherland mattered not at all in the gas chambers later on.

With very little in the way of war damage during World War I, the Germans had much less experience with the destruction that war brings and may therefore have been able to “imagine” only the glory and not the gore. Early war events bore this out; later events were otherwise with a vengeance.

No, one does assume there was no anti-semitism in Germany before the war. Lots of Germans foresaw the murderous nature of this and many Jews, especially, left. Not nearly enough.

The post war generations have no blame in this. Germany appears to have recognized its role and responsibility - unlike the Japanese. We should forgive but never forget.

#40

FTG, many Thanks My friend, I had only ever heard the radio named, not having seen it written on more years than I care to recall.
That I recalled enough to prompt the memory of another is itself good fortune. :mrgreen:

Kind Regards Ftg, Uyraell.