The full title of this book is The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945. I discovered it when following up on a post by John Ganz. Ganz mentioned a book called Behemoth, which was about the Nazi government and how it was a chaotic collection of feuding power centers. But this related book is the one that interested me: what was it like to become Nazi Germany, and why did ordinary people flock to the movement, despite what we know today? I got what I was looking for. My question was well answered, and I recognize all or most of the forces that were at work. I’d like to share some quotes from the book, by theme, so as to summarize the insights.
The underlying radicalization of the middle class
Before the Depression the class warfare was severe and the middle class had an over-developed fear of “Marxism.” The workers on the other hand, i.e. those who belonged to the party that was falsely maligned as Marxist, wanted democracy. This checks out in the U.S. today, obviously.
Mass extremism, intolerance, a desperate desire for radical change—all factors that make a stable democracy impossible—are difficult to evoke. When the community is secure, political agitators find themselves ranting in near-empty halls. It takes a haunting fear, a sudden awareness of hitherto unsuspected dangers, to fill the halls with audiences who see the agitator as their deliverer.
It was the depression, or more accurately, the fear of its continued effects, that contributed most heavily to the radicalization of Northeim’s people
propaganda themes that produced results. That meant primarily appeals to small businessmen, shop clerks, and the rural population, with a primary content of anti-Marxism plus attacks on the economic policies of the Weimar Republic
I was drawn by the feeling of strength about the party, even though there was much in it which was highly questionable
To most Northeimers the NSDAP [i.e. the National Socialist German Worker’s Party] was first and foremost an anti-Marxist party
Thugs
The main contributors to street fights were Hitler’s Brownshirts, the SA. The shirt was significant, for it emboldened its wearer and was a provocation to others
The opposition party
The worker’s party was the Socialist party, the SPD. They seemed to fully understand the Nazi thread on the one hand, but offered only ineffectual strategies on the other hand. We can recognize a lot of this in today’s Democratic party.
After the (small number of) bankruptcies that affected the middle class:
The SPD, instead of commiserating with the burghers, exploited these bankruptcies
it was unwilling to be a revolutionary party at a time when the best defense of democracy may have been social revolution
Furthermore, the SPD’s defense of democracy meant, in practical terms, defense of a status quo which was identified in the minds of most Northerners with national humiliation and economic ruin
No one believed that the Socialists would really attempt fundamental economic changes. Many blamed the Social Democrats for not being radical enough (in economic matters) while still resenting their social composition and “leveling” goals.
But its [i.e. harsh personal attacks in the anti-Nazi press] chief effect was to debase the nature of politics and to destroy the foundation of trust and mutual respect without which democracy cannot succeed. When politics becomes a matter of vilification and innuendo, then eventually people feel repugnance for the whole process. It is the beginning of a yearning for a strong man who will rise above petty and partisan groups
They felt that their only hope was in common action, all together, all over the Reich. Hadn’t the former SPD governor of Hanover, Gustav Noske, said that only a counterattack should be made? So they waited and prayed for the order to come, but it never did.
The radicalization
Look at some of these false beliefs and these emotions and see if you recognize them today.
The September election campaign taught Northeim’s Nazis that their best drawing cards were religion and nationalism, preferably combined
effective propaganda need not be logical as long as it foments suspicion, contempt, or hatred
The middle classes were hardly touched by the depression in Northeim, except psychologically
The townspeople believed that the Nazis were numerous
There was no pressure put on me by my father or anyone else to join the Hitler Youth—I decided to join it independently simply because I wanted to be in a boys club where I could strive towards a nationalistic ideal […] we enjoyed ourselves and also felt important
Many who voted Nazi simply ignored or rationalized the anti-Semitism of the party, just as they ignored other unpleasant aspects of the Nazi movement
In the opinion of a keen observer, “Most of those who joined the Nazis did so because they wanted a radical answer to the economic problem. Then, too, people wanted a hard, sharp, clear leadership—they were disgusted with the eternal political strife of parliamentary party politics.”
Meanwhile, the folks who joined the party eagerly and became Nazi Nazis are a bit less examined in this book, but this analysis of the eventual party leader and mayor Ernst Girmann seems spot on, and we can all recognize this sort of belligerant and nihilistic resentment:
many of the actions taken by Girmann and his closest friends suggest that they were a product of social resentment
Ernst Girmann was possibly attempting to triumph over the environment in which he had grown up and which had condemned him previously to the condescension of his social betters
The energetic Nazi party
This was an entirely grass-roots phenomenon. The local leaders drove the whole process, with direction coming from above. They were extremely effective at raising money, exciting the people with events and speeches, and pressuring/forcing people to join. The arc was that starting in the 30s the Nazis started to get a share of the vote, which rose and peaked at around 2/3.
By 1931 the Nazi party had become a kind of ‘pyramid club’ and as long as the momentum could be sustained it seemed that the profits would grow limitlessly.
Northeim’s Nazis had established themselves as both respectable and radical. They were seen as patriotic, anti-Socialist, and religious
Hindenburg was reelected by a comfortable margin, but nationally the Nazi vote had risen to about 37 percent of the German people [in 1932]
In short, the NSDAP succeeded in being all things to all men
The NSDAP was the first mass movement of the middle class. Its leaders, down to the lowest level, had the skills of the small businessman
Nazi leaders also had the petty bourgeois qualities of intolerance, self-confidence, gullibility, and unreflective self-righteousness—characterological defects that Hitler knew only too well how to reinforce and employ
Does this one sound familiar?
a Hitler speech had become something like a combination carnival, rock concert, and major league championship game
The Nazi atomization process
This is sort of the main thing, to me. An atomized mass of people who mistrust each other and isolate from each other is easier to control. Before the Nazis this community had a large collection of clubs and organizations, and that was the social fabric. But they were divided along class lines, with multiple choral clubs, shooting clubs, and so on. The Nazis combined all similar clubs and put Nazis in charge of them, which lowered enthusiasm and removed this fabric. I consider our current society highly atomized as well.
Under these circumstances the Nazis had very little to do to intimidate people. They created examples on the Left and Right (as will be shown) and let natural social forces do the rest.
an attempt was made to amalgamate all clubs that had the same function but were formed along class lines
clubs that were formed for reasons of pure social intercourse, or that had only an incidental objective purpose, either declined, ceased to exist, or were absorbed
This gigantic process was all lumped together under the general term “coordination” (Gleichschaltung).
In most cases the Nazis tried to fill the vacuum, but often people simply stopped coming together. Either there was no more club, or the attractiveness of the club had been destroyed by Gleichschaltung, or people no longer had the leisure or the desire to continue with their club
people began to distrust one another
Northeimers were molded into the kind of unorganized mass that dictators like so well
More and more Northeimers were bored and exhausted by Nazi dynamism and complained about the incessant meetings, parades, and demonstrations
Here’s a charming letter the mayor wrote to a woman:
It has been reported to me that on the occasion of the Führer’s birthday ceremony you did not raise your arm during the singing of the Horst Wessel song and the national anthem. I call your attention to the fact that by doing this you put yourself in danger of being physically assaulted. Nor would it be possible to protect you, because you would deserve it. It is singularly provocative when people still ostentatiously exclude themselves from our racial community by actions like yours. Heil Hitler!
The economic revival
The Nazis did achieve full employment (except, for some folks this meant undesired manual labor or various (nonviolent) ways to remove them from the denominator of the job statistics). A lot of the activity was genuine and positive, but it didn’t actually solve the Depression, it was just what we might call “quantitative easing of the psychological kind.”
in the spring of 1934, a whirlwind of construction encompassed Northeim
the main reason the settlement project was not begun in 1932 was that it had been blocked by the Nazis. This was conveniently forgotten in 1933
Whether deliberately or not, the Nazis took advantage of the fact that what men believe happens is sometimes more important than what actually does happen
The aftermath
By December 1944 the privilege of being part of the Third Reich had cost Northeimers 148 dead, 57 missing-in-action, and 14 captured sons, fathers, and brothers—or 6 percent of the town’s male population
The Social Democratic party reemerged practically overnight, and according to how the political currents have flowed, has governed Northeim whenever the conservatives have not
The conclusions
The economic environment, the false beliefs, the willful downplaying of the downsides of the Nazis, and the numbness that helped perpetuate the situation: these are the important factors, and they are evergreen. There’s really nothing extraordinary in this story. We need additional tactics to fight back, is all. Maybe we have those today, and maybe not.
to a large extent by the desire on the part of Northeim’s middle class to suppress the lower class and especially its political representatives, the Social Democratic party. Nazism was the first effective instrument for this
The middle class responded to the existence of the SPD in ways which were almost paranoid. Its members insisted upon viewing the SPD as a “Marxist” party at a time when this was no longer so
In short, intelligent and credible radicalism was a response the depression called for, but the Socialists did not offer it
the main effect of the depression was to radicalize the town
The single biggest factor in this process was the destruction of formal society in Northeim. What social cohesion there was in the town existed in the club life, and this was destroyed in the early months of Nazi rule
it shows how ineffective cynicism, deceit, accommodation, apathy, denial, and determined indifference are as human survival tactics. The adjustments Northeimers forced upon their Nazi masters made it possible for the townspeople to live in the Third Reich, but popular passivity also made possible the crimes that the Nazis were able to perpetrate upon the human race
moral numbness was the prerequisite for all the other shameful crimes of Nazism
Northeim’s difficulties and Northeim’s fate are likely to be shared by other humans in other towns under similar circumstances. The remedy will not easily be found, but knowledge and understanding would seem to be the first step toward it.