The Nazi State, Economy and Society

When Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30th January 1933, as head of a coalition government, Franz von Papen, the aristocratic Conservative ex-Chancellor and member of the Catholic Centre Party, boasted that: ‘In two months we will have pushed Herr Hitler into a corner so hard that he’ll be squeaking. ‘ In fact, armed with the resources of the state – its police, army, press, radio and propaganda machine – two months was all Hitler needed to achieve the end of Germany’s old political class. Within 24 hours of Hitler’s appointment new Reichstag elections were called.

Prior to this big usiness had held back in supporting the Nazis with money, now at a meeting with Hitler on 20th February 1933, 20 leading industrialists and bankers promised the Nazis 3 million Reichmarks for their campaign. A campaign followed in which the Nazi’s finally revealed their true colours of violence and terror tactics. 69 people died in the five week campaign. Goring enrolled an extra 50,000 Nazi supporters as ‘police’ in Prussia. The Nazi election propaganda blamed all the violence on ‘the terrorist activities of the Communists’.

Hitler issued an Appeal to the German People on 31st January 1933 which was long on rhetoric and short on details. Basically it was a call to restore Germany’s power and unity and ended with a religious peroration: ‘Now German People, give us four years and then judge us….. May Almighty God favour 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. ‘ On 27th February the Reichstag caught fire and a Dutch Communist vander Lubbe arrested close to the scene.

It will never be known for certain whether or not this was a deliberate act of self sabotage by the Nazis, but it certainly gave them an excuse to cynically exploit the incident for heir own ends. ) On 28th February Frick produced the Decree for the Protection of the People and State, which suspended most political and civil liberties and opened up an orgy of arrests of the Nazi’s chief opponents. The election still produced only a small increase in the Nazi vote to 43. 9% giving them 288 seats. They needed a two thirds majority to abolish the Weimar Constitution and were forced to govern with the Nationalists.

The Nazis now used all the powers at their disposal to kill democracy in Germany and create a one Party State and Nazi dictatorship. On 21st march 1933 Goebbels orchestrated a huge Nazi eremonial opening of the Reichstag at the Potsdam Church, allowing Hitler to reassure the old Conservative political and military class that Nazism was on their side. Hitler also used the growing violence to propose and pass a new ‘Enabling Bill’ which would do away with the Republic without actually suspending it in law.

The new Reichstag met on 23rd March 1933 at the Kroll Opera House to consider the new Enabling Bill, but the building was surrounded by fanatical Nazis, mostly SA and SS men who refused admittance to all Communists and spat on and intimidated SPD and Centre Party Deputies. Hitler was careful in his address to the Deputies to promise to protect the rights of the Catholic Church and this ensured that the Centre Party voted for the Bill which passed with 444 to 94 votes. The Reichstag had instigated a ‘legal revolution’ allowing a dictatorship to emerge’. (K. D. Bracher).

A Revolution From Above and Below? The nazis now set about attempting the Nazification of German society (Gleichschaltung – ‘coordination’) beginning with the political system. Government was centralised on Berlin. State (Lander) autonomy was destroyed in April 1933 and local parliaments subordinated in January 934 – ending the federal state. The trade Unions were emasculated. The Nazis unexpectedly announced that May 1st 1933 would be a national holiday and the following day the SA and SS occupied all their offices and arrested their leaders.

Henceforth all German workers were enrolled in the DAF (Deutscher Arbeitsfront – German Labour Front) an instrument of Nazi control. The Communist Party was proscribed after the Reichstag Fire, now the SPD was banned, while the nationalists and Centre Party helpfully dissolved themselves and on 14th July the Nazi Party became the only legal political party. Less than 6 months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. But the party was by now at war with itself internally.

Hitler found himself still needing support from the old Conservative elites – whilst presiding over a radicalised party in which the 2. 5 million members of the SA represented a more proletarian, populist and anti-capitalist form of Nazism, pushing now for a Second Wave of revolutionary action against the old political class. The leader of the SA Ernst Rohm was angry with Hitler for betraying the Nazi revolution and this alarmed the military elite who called for Rohm and the SA to be eliminated at a meeting with Hitler on the battleship Deutchland in April 1934.

With President Hindenburg close to death Hitler decided that he needed the army’s support more than the SA and secretly ordered what became known as: ‘The Night of the Long Knives’, in which the SS shot Rohm and over 400 other leading Nazi radicals and settled other old scores for Hitler (Gregor Strasser, Schleicher etc. ) The Nazi propaganda machine claimed that they were eliminated for plotting ‘high treason against the Fuhrer and his people’. From now on the SA were demoted to appearing at great propaganda occasions and the SS emerged as the Nazis chief instrument of terror.

When Hindenburg died on 1st August 1934 Hitler simply merged the offices of Chancellor and President under the official title of ‘Der Fuhrer’. From now on there was to be no more talk of revolution, other than the one which had already taken place, as Hitler stated clearly at the September 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally: ‘… in the next thousand years there will be no other revolution in Germany… ‘ History had indeed ended. Had the Nazis achieved a true political revolution by September 1934? They had certainly achieved an institutional and constitutional revolution – Weimar and its predecessor the Kaiserreich had been replaced by a one party Nazi state.

However, the old political, military and business classes continued to exist within the state with independent means of action – something the SA Nazi revolutionaries under Rohm and Gregor Strasser had attempted to rectify, and which had cost them their lives. The Nazi Economic ‘Revolution’? Nazis propaganda, like that of their Italian Fascist counterparts claimed to have achieved a ‘Totalitarian’ state in Germany. By the end of 1934 Germany was a one party Nazi state. However, the old state machinery remained largely in tact.

The bureaucracy had suffered a purge of ‘Jewish’ and ‘non-Aryan’ personnel under The Law for the restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 1933). But this and the subsequent Law to Ensure the Unity of Party and State (December 1933) failed to make the party and state into one entity. The party was forged as an instrument to gain political power and was never united about the means to a Nazi state. The huge influx of Party members after 1933 also diluted its radicalism and ideological purity. The decision making mechanism of the state has been the subject of considerable disagreement.

Initially it was argued that Hitler was an all powerful leader, the ‘master of the Third Reich – making all the big decisions himself. Hitler’s aversion to petty administration and disinclination to coordinate government departments, and his propensity to be drawn into foreign policy or grandiose plans for rebuilding Berlin, are well documented. (for example see Karl Deitrich Bracher’s works). Later revisionism depicted him as essentially a ‘weak dictator’ – unwilling to take decisions, open to influence by those around him, and often uninvolved in the day to day decision making process. Hans Mommsen’s position).

Ian Kershaw has combined the two positions – with Hitler refraining from instigating policy, and acting rather as a mobiliser and legitimator of policies dreamed up by competing subordinates. This also allowed Hitler to appear above the factional struggles of his leading associates and to evade responsibility for failed and inhuman decisions. The more junior functionaries of the nazi state were able to claim policy making authority simply by claiming to be ‘working towards the Fuhrer’.

The nazi state also contained powerful elite factions – the old military, the Nazi party, the business elites, the SS and SA. Martin Brozat ermed this a ‘polycratic power structure’ – overlaid by Hitler’s unrestrained personal charismatic power. (Cf. I. Kershaw and M. Lewin: Stalinism and Nazism, 1997, Ch. 4 by Kershaw. ) The dissolution of the government into a multiplicity of competing and non-coordinated ministries, party offices, hybrid agencies all claiming to interpret the Fuhrer’s will.

Hand in hand with the development went the growing autonomy of the Fuhrer authority itself, detaching itself and isolating itself from any framework of corporate government and correspondingly subject to increasing delusions of grandeur and diminishing sense of reality. The overall structure of government was reduced to a shambles of constantly shifting power bases or warring factions. (Kershaw: The Nazi Dictatorship, 1993, p. 74. ) Only during the years of total war mobilisation, first under Rudolf Hess and later Martin Bormann, was the party apparatus able to begin to absorb the state.

Thus, the Nazi party never conquered the state in peacetime as the Stalinists did in the Soviet Union. A Police State? Some historians refer to the Nazi state as the SS State by 1945. The SS were formed in 1925 as the elite Fuhrer body-guard section of the SA. The arrival of Heinrich Himmler as their leader in 929 transformed their fortunes. By 1933 – over 50,000 with a reputation for the utmost brutality and blind obedience. In 1931 Himmler created the SD (Sicherheisdienst) as an internal Party police force and in 1933 he became head of the Prussian Gestapo internal security police.

It was the SS which purged the SA in June 1934. In 1936 Himmler, as Reichsfuhrer SS became head of all sections of the police state, arguably the second most powerful man in the Nazi state. The so-called Deaths Head units of the SS ran the concentration and slave labour camps and was responsible for creating the ‘New Order’ in Eastern Europe, while the Waffen SS became the elite fighting unit of the German Army, with 35 divisions by 1945. By the end of the war the SS had created a huge industrial combine employing slave labour in over 150 firms.

But recent evidence has shown that even the SS and Gestapo were unable to operate as a completely totalitarian police state – it was their propaganda which was really successful in creating the illusion that ‘Big Brother’ was watching everything and everyone, leading to mass denunciations and wrongful arrests, some of which actually damaged the Nazi state. The Army and the Nazi State. In 1934 the Army (Wehmacht) high Command congratulated itself on having defeated its chief rival the SA in the Night of the Long Knives.

The rearmourment programme and compulsory conscription in 1935 appeared to confirm their status at the heart of the Nazi state. But appearances were deceptive. Hitler had simply replaced the SA with the more sinister SS, while increasingly taking over as Commander in Chief of the Army (new oath of loyalty to Hitler). In November Hitler revealed his expansionist plans to the High Command and sensing their hesitation dismissed his two senior commanders (Blomberg and Fritch) after the Gestapo had evealed lurid sexual details of their private lives.

Henceforth the Fuhrer was Chief of Staff through his personal high command Oberkommando der Wehmacht (OKW) headed by the loyal General Keitel. From this point on the army was subordinate to the Nazi state – but not actually a part of it – hence a number of plots against Hitler’s life from Wehmacht officers, culminating with the attempt by Colonel von Stauffenberg in July 1944. The Nazi Economy? The nazis claimed to have affected an economic miracle by 1936. But it is clear that the worst effects of the world depression were over before Hitler was appointed as Chancellor.

The regime erely extended the existing schemes for public works – in particular the building of homes and motorways. Unemployment fell sharply after 1935 – mainly because all males from 18 – 25 were conscripted into the military. Workers in the Third Reich. The German Labour Front was created on 6th May 1933. Headed by Robert Ley – and was the largest single organisation in the Third Reich – 22 million members by 1939. Also unemployment fell to an official figure of 35,000. Wages were frozen at 1933 levels – but employers paid Christmas bonuses and insurance schemes to compensate.

Also lots of overtime in many industries. The small rise in the general living standards and having everyone in work meant a general sense of well being. By 1936 the average wage for a worker was 35 marks a week – ten times higher than the dole money of 1932. Workers lost their freedom in return for a slight improvement in living standards. In the early years of the regime, the economy was under the control of Hjalmar Schacht (President of the Reichbank -1933-39 and Economics Minister 1934-37) His appointment was intended to reassure big business interests.

His macro economic policy was largely pragmatic and reactive. Inflation was kept at bay by low ages and longer working hours as the unions had been destroyed as independent actors. Government deficits were run up to allow public works – motorways, afforestation, the rebuilding central Berlin etc. – which brought unemployment down to 1. 7 million by 1936. There was also a huge programme of rearmourment – at the expense of consumer and export industries, leading to the sucking in of imports.

These growing balance of payments deficits were masked by bilateral trade agreements with the Balkan states and South America – often barter agreements. The Deutchmark had over 200 different values across the world by 1937. By 1936 – there was a rade surplus, and industrial production up by 53% since 1933. Unemployment had fallen to 1. 6 million from 6 million in 1933. The very real threat of a balance of payments crisis caused Schacht to call for cuts in the programme of rearmourment in 1936. From now on Schacht was sidelined.

The Army and Nazi leadership disagreed and in 1936 Goring was put in charge of a ‘Four Year Plan’ based on autarky, which would make Germany self-sufficient in oil, rubber and metals by 1940. Under the plan industry was brought under state supervision. All firms became members of the Reichgruppe for Industry – under the Reich Economic Chamber. From now on the state controlled most resources but industry remained largely privately owned. Large firms were forced to join cartels and to meet government production targets.

In this period over 300,000 small businesses were driven into bankruptcy in this period – in spite of nazi promised to favour the Mittelstand. The Four Year Plan did not achieve all its aims and when Hitler went to war over Poland in 1939 the Nazi state had not achieved anything like central control of the Economy prior to 1942 when Albert Speer began to run the total war economy. And even then individual industrialists were left considerable degree of freedom to operate their businesses. Relations between the nazi elite and big business were generally good.

They benefited greatly from the smashing of the independent unions in 1933. They also benefited from the destruction of Jewish owned firms and the redistribution of the their plant and property. The state sponsored and rearmourment and expansion of the economy particularly benefited the primary producers – and in return they tolerated increasing state intervention in setting targets for production. ‘Profits went above all to the industrialists who were prepared to collaborate actively with he regime. (Hinden, Republican and Fascist Germany, 1996, p. 29)

Daimler Benz’s new aeroplane factories were actually built by the state and its production levels rose by over 800 per cent from 1932-1941. The chemical company IG Farben and the Krupp steel company gained huge dividends by this course of action. IG Farben received over 50 per cent of government investment after 1936 to produce synthetic oil and rubber substitutes. By 1943 it owned 334 plants and was a major part of the war planning effort. But there was a price to pay. Farben produced the gas for the extermination camps and by 1943 ad half its labour force in forced labour camps in the eastern territories.

Under the 1936 Four Year Plan, Goering forced the reluctant steel barons to invest 130 million marks in the 400 million mark project to build the Reichwerk Hermann Goering (RWHG) – in effect creating a rival. In response to their criticisms Goering threatened to charge them with sabotage. By 1939 the RWHG was the largest industrial firm in Europe – producing coal, synthetic fuels, heavy machinery as well as steel. Some became disenchanted by the state intervention. Fritz Thyssen, the iron and steel magnate, led to Switzerland in 1939 arguing that ‘Soon Germany will not be any different from Bolshevik Russia.

Export orientated companies fared much less well – and coal exporters were particularly hostile to the nazi regime. But most stuck with the regime until the bitter end in 1945. No one from business joined the anti- Hitler plot of July 1944. Richard Grunberger aptly described the attitude of German big business as that of: A conductor of a runaway bus who has no control over the actions of the driver but keeps collecting the passengers’ fares right up until the final crash. ‘ (A Social History of the Third Reich, 1974, pp. 58-9)

Hitler’s transport programme saw over 2000 miles of new roads completed by 1938. Agriculture was encouraged to produce with guaranteed prices for production. But later the nazis allowed the price of food to fall to encourage workers to work harder and livestock farmers were hard hit by the rising price of imported winter fodder. Many left the land in the late 30s either conscripted into the armed forces or attracted by the pull of the big cities. Major landowners did benefit from the growing demand for food and the rise in land values, but their political influence was destroyed.

On the surface Hitler’s economic policy was highly successful – he restored full employment and built up the economy into the most powerful in Europe, enabling the early military successes of 1939-42. But autarky was never achieved and rearmourment distorted the economy. Nor did the Third Reich achieve a growth rate above the average for inter-war Europe. Ultimately Nazi Germany never achieved the monolithic centralised command economy. The Third Reich remained an uneasy compromise between state centralisation and independent power blocs – with the Army, big business, and the Nazi Party all jockeying for position.

Only under the pressure f war did Hitler’s racial Imperialist agenda and the SS police state come to dominate this power struggle. Nazism was never a movement reared and controlled from the outset by capitalist interests, (Cf. The structural model – D. Eichholtz & K Gossweller ‘The primacy of Industry, in Das Argument, 10, 1968, modified into the more sophisticated concept of relative autonomy by N. Poulantzas Fascism and Dictatorship, 1974). Nor was it a movement completely autonomous from capitalism and big business.

See Tim Mason ‘The Primacy of Politics’ in H A. Turner (ed) Nazism and the Third Reich, 1972. K. D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship, K. Hilderbrand, The Greater Reich, E. Nolte etc. ) Kershaw argues that due to the extremely complex interrelationships between politics and economics in Nazi Germany it is impossible to establish any ‘primacy’ model. A ‘mutual dependence’ existed between the needs of industry and commerce and the political agenda of the Nazis. and a consequent blurring of the boundaries between state and the private economy.

Kershaw: The Nazi Dictatorship, pp 48-49) Following Brozat, Kershaw sees power as essentially ‘polycratic’ – distributed between various powerful and autocratic elites (Hitler and the SS/SD police faction, the army, big business, etc. Thus, Kershaw also rejects the ‘totalitarian’ epithet as an explanation for the Nazi state. War did tip the balance in favour of the Hitler/SS/SD political agenda giving an ultimately self-destructive and irrational momentum to the total war economy and genocidal programme. But this total war economy and autarkic state was not in any meaningful sense a sustainable model for a future Nazi state.

As middle class individuals and anti-Communists many teachers were already sympathetic to the nazis, and by 1936, 32 per cent of teachers had joined the nazi party and by 1937 97 per cent ad been pressurised or persuaded to join the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB) Local nazi officials kept records on teachers to assess their commitment to NS ideals. The curriculum was closely controlled with 15% of school time allocated for physical education – over 2 hours per day in some schools. For 1935 all textbooks had to be approved and had to carry nazi values, including anti-Semitism and racism.

Co-education schools were closed and boys and girls kept rigidly apart. Girls took needlework and home economics. Core curriculum German Language and Literature, History and Biology. The first two intended to inculcate pride in the nation and its achievements. Biology was the intended instrument of Nazi racial theory and propaganda. Religious education was gradually phased out. By 1939 all denominational schools had closed. Special schools were opened to train the next generation of the nazi elite. – the National Political Institutes for Education (NAPOLAS) for boys between 10-18.

They provided a military style boarding school education. In 1936 taken over by the SS. There were 21 by 1938. In 1938 DAF leader Robert Ley set up eleven Adolf Hitler Schools – intended to rival the SS’s NAPOLAs. For 12-18 year olds, selected for physical appearance and leadership potential. Rapidly became little more than military boot camps for the nasty but dim. No Nazi leader sent their children to an AH school. The nazis also created three levels of Ordensburgen school – modeled on medieval chivalric orders, housed in huge castles for 1000 students (Ordensjunkers) aged between 25 and 30, with 500 staff.

Hitler told Rauschning: ‘My Ordensburgen will mould a youth from which the world will shrink in terror. ‘ There is increasing evidence of resistance amongst teachers to the anti-intellectualism of Nazi education by 1939. In higher education there was a considerable contraction from 115,000 in 1933 to 57,000 in 1939 as the nazis downgraded academic education. The 1933 racial laws For the restoration of the Civil Service, saw around 1200 university lecturers (10 per cent) dismissed for racial or political reasons. Some of the most original thinkers in Germany were dismissed in the process.

In November 1933 all lecturers were forced to sign the ‘Declaration in Support of Hitler and the NS State. ‘ And join the nazi lecturers association. Students were also forced to join the German Student’s League and attend twice weekly fitness nd ideological training sessions. The net result of all these changes was to induce a sharp fall in general educational standards. Albert Speer was arguing from 1939 onwards that the antiintellectual stress should be reversed and many more scientists should be trained. The Youth Movement. By 1938 over 7 million out of 9 million between 10 and 18 belonged to Nazi Youth Movements.

The DJ Deutsche Jungvolk (German Young People’s Movement) alone had over 2 million boys aged 10-14); the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend HJ) had over 1. 6 million 14 to 18 year olds. In these movements boys were prepared for military discipline and girls for domestic and aternal tasks. In 1933 all youth organisations (except Catholic ones) were taken over by the Hitler youth and after 1936 all Catholic youth movements were banned. But again recent evidence suggests that many young Germans resented some of the harsh military discipline of the youth movements as the war approached and they were increasingly used to train soldiers for war.

There was also a loose collection of subversive youth groups called collectively The Edelweiss Pirates – mainly groups of boys aged between 14-17. The wore edelweiss (skull and crossbones) badges check shirts and short trousers. They had icknames for their groups – for instance the Roving Dudes, the Kittlebach Pirates, the Navajos, They were mainly working class and had several thousand members by 1939. By 1945 there were 20 groups with around 100 members each in Cologne. Some groups were simply rebellious youths out for fun and adventure – singing banned songs etc.

Some were highly politicized – linked to the KPD and beating up Hitler youth patrols – their slogan ‘Eternal War on the Hitler Youth. ‘ Some helped escaped prisoners of war to hide. In December 1942 the Gestapo arrested 739 suspected Edelweiss Pirates in Dusseldorf. Many ere sent to Labour camps. In November 1944 the leaders of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates were executed. Swing Groups. Mainly middle and upper class many also belonging to the Hitler Youth – developed in large cities Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden etc. Generally anti-political.

Centred on playing forbidden music. Met in bars and nightclubs and played black American jazz swing and blues music. Nazi authorities felt threatened – faced imprisonment for being discovered playing such music – closed bars and arrested a few. Women in Nazi Germany. Nazism was totally opposed to the emancipation of women. As early as 1921 the party had anned women from active political participation or seniority in the movement. The infamous Nazi slogan for women was ‘devotion to the three Ks’ – ‘Kinder, Kuche, Kirche’ (children, kitchen, church).

Another famous slogan during the war years was: ‘I have donated a child to the Fuhrer’ When one Nazi women’s organisation, the NSF (National Sozalistische Frauenschaft – National Socialist Womanhood) attempted to campaign for a greater role for women its leaders were discredited. Womens’ role was to breed and rear the next generation of genetically pure Aryan super-heroes. Divorce for unproductive marriages was actively encouraged. Contraception was banned. In 1933 interest free loans were offered to women who gave up their jobs to breed. Labour exchanges were told to discriminate against women for jobs.

Free food and children’s clothes were provided for mothers. Harvest kindergartens were built to allow women with children to work in the fields. Prolific mother were awarded medals like the Honour Cross of German Motherhood. Bronze for four or five children, silver to six or seven, and gold for eight or more. But only if both partners were considered racially pure. Between 1933-36 married women were debarred from jobs in medicine, Law, and the higher civil ervice. Women were also excluded from universities and teaching posts. By 1945 49% of university students were women.

The quest for genetically pure Germans also led to the forced sterilization of those considered to be unworthy of German breeding. Perhaps the most bizarre of all the Nazi attitudes towards women came in the form of the Labensborn (spring of life) policy during the war. This was an institution which appeared to be caring for unmarried mothers of Aryan stock – but was in fact an organisation arranging for their impregnation by members of the SS. Attempts to drive women back into the home were highly unsuccessful. The nazi regime was unable to prevent women working in industry and commerce after 1937 due to labour shortages.

Some like Tim Mason have argued that the nazi regime was more popular with women than men. Middle class and educated women who were restricted in their opportunities outside the home were generally least enthusiastic. Catholic women were also generally less enthusiastic. The early stress by feminist writers on the unmitigatedly evil impact of nazi policies on women, was challenged by those who argued that there were advantages for some women, in spite of the evil ends sought. Family social services improved. Nazi women’s organisations and youth groups also widened the experiences of some working class women.

Nazi Culture. A contradiction in terms. Unlike Italian Fascism Nazism untouched by any artistic modernism. In a play by Hanns Johst written in 1934 a line appears which asserts: ‘whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun’. One of the most telling images of the Third Reich occurred right at its inception on 10th May 1933 in a Berlin square, where thousands of books were burnt by a mob of chanting Nazis. Under Nazism culture was only acceptable in the service of the nation and the state, giving rise to second rate and mindless classicism which has left virtually no trace outside the films of Leni Riefenstahl.

The Reich Chamber of Culture was charged with upholding Nazi racial prejudice and the glorification of hard work and war. The music of Mahler, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky and Schoenberg was banned as degenerate art, modern music like jazz and dance band music was labelled ‘Negroid’ and decadent. 2,500 of Germany’s literary community fled abroad. There is little evidence that this second and third rate culturalism created a strong Nazi cultural identity in Germany.