In the chapter on terror Allen shows the fate that befell some of the more prominent members of the SPD in Northeim. Johannes Grote, an SPD member of the City Council, was subjected to numerous house searches, arrests, beatings, and was eventually driven away from a number of jobs. Yet in his recollections he points to the mental torment that he underwent: his family and friends started to ignore him, and even the daily encounters with his co-workers disappeared. “It sure made the work worse.” (194) Allen addresses the question of how the people particularly disposed to disliking the Nazis reacted with the change of power- “there was left only flight, internal conviction, irony, or little triumphs of the sort Carl Querfurt carried off.” (200) Hence, for the opponents of the Nazi regime in Northeim the change of power brought about not only political and economic persecution, but also the disbanding of their usual pattern of socialization.
For the ordinary citizen the regime change affected daily life on the deepest and most personal level. Not only were political parties forced and terrorized into closing (and political clubs were a major part of Northeim’s social gatherings), but the Gleichschlatung laws restructured every other club or society in town, such that most ceased to exist and “people simply stopped coming together.” (232) All that was continued were the most basic groupings such as the Stammtisch, and yet even these were “threatened as people began to distrust each other.” The Nazis manage to invoke a fear in its citizens on the most primitive and apolitical level.
Such pressure perhaps explains the relative ease with which the Nazis managed to take full control of their subjects in the 6 months following Hitler’s chancellorship. Uprooting life at every level implied the impossibility of coordination of the people opposed to the regime. Uncertainty about your neighbor’s loyalty refrained you from expressing an opinion that might be reported, so all that was left was to adapt in order to survive. Even Carl Querfurt would give out the advice to former SPD members to join the party, “Think of your family. There’s nothing to be gained by acts of heroism.” (192) The “tamed tiger” was not alone in his rhetoric. One man described it: “There were wives whose constant words were ‘Think of your family!’ There were wives who actually went out and bought a brown shirt and put their men into it.” (242)
Thus the psychological pressure acted on so many levels that people went out and applied for NSDAP membership for numerous and conflicting reasons. The essential way of life in Northeim was altered to the point where people willingly refused to read their usual newspaper for fear of their image.
I think that Maria’s point is an important consideration in addressing the Nazi Seizure of Power; again this ties to Allen’s localized focus in evaluating the Nazi influence on German towns. Their successful propaganda truly transformed the social psychology of Northeimers at the individual level. This idea tied with Andrew’s point about Nazi “persuasion” seems important. That other clubs and social gatherings were forcefully disbanded by violent Nazi tactics made sure that no opposition could mobilize against the NSDAP. The examples in the post above really depict how Nazi propaganda infiltrated every level of society. The manipulation of fear was so successful that it discouraged any form of opposition rising against NSDAP.
ReplyDeleteI kept thinking back at what was said in lecture about the radicalization of politics during the peak of Nazi popularity. That such a violent and extreme political discourse was considered to be acceptable in a so-called “democratic” society also set the grounds for this possibility of Nazi “support” at the local level. Perhaps if their extreme political tone strategy as seen during Weimar was considered absolutely intolerable, their ensuing tactics could have been largely rejected by the majority of Germany, even by Nazi members who perhaps didn’t have such direct ties to the ideologies of the Nazi Parties.