Conformity and Resistance HI290- History of Germany.
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Propaganda: Broadcasting 1933: Reich Radio Company established – a single state broadcaster controlled by the government. 1932: Only 25% of German households owned a radio. By % of German families have access to a radio, and announcements broadcast by loudspeakers in public places. ‘Radio Wardens’ make sure that people tune in to Nazi propaganda. The Volksempfänger (People’s Receiver): a cheap set that made radio available to a mass audience, thus allowing the Nazi propaganda message to be beamed directly into German homes.
Transcript of Conformity and Resistance HI290- History of Germany.
Conformity and Resistance
HI290- History of Germany
Propaganda“I view the first task of the new ministry [of Propaganda] as being to establish co-ordination between the Government and the whole people . . . It is not enough for people to be more or less reconciled to our regime, to be persuaded to adopt a neutral attitude towards us, rather we want to work on people until they have capitulated to us, until they grasp ideologically that what is happening in Germany today is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”Josef Goebbels, 15 March 1933
Propaganda: Broadcasting• 1933: Reich Radio Company established –
a single state broadcaster controlled by the government.
• 1932: Only 25% of German households owned a radio.
• By 1939 70% of German families have access to a radio, and announcements broadcast by loudspeakers in public places.
• ‘Radio Wardens’ make sure that people tune in to Nazi propaganda.
The Volksempfänger (People’s Receiver): a cheap set that made radio available to a mass audience, thus allowing the Nazi propaganda message to be beamed directly into German homes.
Propaganda: Cinema and the Press
The Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter was important for disseminating the ideology of the
regime.
Films like Triumph of the Will (1934) and Jud Süss (1940) portrayed the power of the Party and sought to disseminate its racist ideology.
The Nazi Calendar
• 30th January – The Seizure of Power• 24th February – The refounding of the Party (1925)• First Sunday in March – Heroes Remembrance Day• 20th April – Hitler’s Birthday• 1st May – National Day of Labour• Second Sunday in May – Mothering Sunday• September – Annual Nuremberg Party Rally• 9th November – Munich Putsch (1923)
The SS
• The Schutz Staffel (SS) was set up in 1925 as an elite bodyguard for Hitler within the SA.
• Heinrich Himmler appointed its leader in 1929.• Membership grew from 290 in 1929 to 52,000 in
1933. By 1939 there were 240,000 members of the SS.
• Strict rules for admission based on racial purity and political reliability. Himmler saw the SS as the ‘new aristocracy’ of a Nazi dominated Europe.
• Power and influence grew after the Night of the Long Knives and it became one of the most powerful institutions in the Third Reich.
Group photo of an SS wedding in the grounds of the Main Office for Race and Settlement (1936). Himmler stands
to the right of the bride.
Heinrich HimmlerReichsführer SS and
Chief of Police
SS
Leibstandarte Waffen SS Totenkopfverbände
Ordnungspolizei (order police)
Municipal police
SipoSecurity Police
(Heydrich)
KripoCriminal Police
GestapoSecret state police
SDSecurity Service
(Heydrich)
Foreign intelligence
Domestic intelligence
Organisational Structure of the Nazi Police Apparatus
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler(1900-1945)
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942)
Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany before 1939
The Historiography of Resistance • Ongoing debate on the nature, extent and effectiveness of the resistance.
• Used to legitimize post-war states:• East German historians presented Communist resistance as the only anti-Fascist force in Germany.• West German historiography concerned with accusations of ‘collective guilt’ & presented resistance as based on high
moral and ethical values, the individual standing up against tyranny.
• 1960s: Hans Mommsen – argued that national-conservative resistance rooted in the anti-democratic right of the 1920s.
• 1970s: Peter Hüttenberger and Martin Broszat – resistance in everyday life.
• Broszat – Resistenz (immunity): people retain their moral & ethical values without actively challenging the regime.
• Mommsen – Widerstandpraxis (Resistance Practice): resistance was a process encompassing different forms of dissent as individuals came to reject the regime in its entirety.
• Ian Kershaw – Two approaches to the study of resistance: Fundamentalist (dealing with those committed to the overthrow of the regime) and Societal (dealing with dissent in everyday life).
Apolitical Resistance
‘Edelweiss Pirates’Swingjugend
August Landmesser, 1910-1944
Elise and Otto Hampel, executed April 1943
George Elser (1903-1945) Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
Sophie Scholl (1921-1943) Hans Scholl (1918-1943)
Plots against Hitler• May-September 1938: Army plot to
depose Hitler.• 13 March 1943: Attempt to blow up
Hitler’s plane.• March 1943-March 1944: Various
military plots to assassinate Hitler orchestrated by Colonel Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht.
• 20 July 1944: Plot to kill Hitler with a bomb planted in his military headquarters in East Prussia.
Conclusion
• Recent research has challenged the notion of Nazi Germany as a totalitarian state ruled by fear:
• Robert Gellately – only 32,000 Gestapo agents for a population of around 65 million; reliance on ‘denunciations’ by the public.
• This suggests that popular consent or accommodation with the regime was an important part of its functioning.
• Continuing debate about what constitutes ‘resistance’.• Popular focus on the July 1944 bomb plot and the ‘White Rose’
perhaps distorts image of German resistance to Nazism.
