Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Whatever the criticisms ordinary people had about everyday life in the Third Reich, its irritations and vexations, the cult constructed around the Führer represented an enormous force for integration. The daily reality of Nazi rule spawned much antagonism. Grandiose Party buildings, erected at vast cost, greatly affronted a hard-pressed and poorly housed working population in the big cities. Massive criticism continued to be heaped on the self-evident corruption, scandalous high-living, and arrogance of Party functionaries. And, though the ‘Church struggle’ had died down somewhat, compared with intensity of the years 1936 and 1937, the attritional conflict between Party anti-Church fanatics and the churchgoing population remained a source of repeated friction.⁸ But Hitler’s ‘successes’ offered a counter — a set of ‘achievements’, put forward as those of a national, not party, leader, in which almost any German could take pride. ‘I have overcome the chaos in Germany,’ claimed Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag on 28 April, ‘restored order, massively raised production in all areas of our national economy.’ His litany of what were advanced as his own, personal accomplishments, continued: ‘I have succeeded in completely bringing back into useful production the seven [!] million unemployed who were so dear to all our own hearts, in keeping the German peasant on his soil despite all difficulties and in rescuing it for him, in attaining the renewed flourishing of German trade, and in tremendously promoting transportation. I have not only politically united the German people, but also militarily rearmed them, and I have further attempted to tear up page for page that Treaty, which contained in its 448 articles the most base violations ever accorded to nations and human beings. I have given back to the Reich the provinces stolen from us in 1919. I have led back into the homeland the millions of deeply unhappy Germans who had been torn away from us. I have recreated the thousand-year historic unity of the German living-space, and I have attempted to do all this without spilling blood and without inflicting on my people or on others the suffering of war. I have managed this from my own strength, as one who twenty-one years ago was an unknown worker and soldier of my people.’⁹

People worried how long it could all last. But the contrast with the dark days of economic depression and national humiliation was scarcely credible. What had been achieved seemed staggering. Most people did not want to see it put at risk through external conflict. For those who did not dwell too long on the causes and consequences, one man alone appeared to have masterminded it all. For that man, what had been achieved so far was no more than a preparation for what was to come.

As what was to prove the last peacetime spring and summer wore on, Hitler’s subordinates were in no doubt about the difficulties at home, and their impact on large sections of the population. The SD had spoken of a ‘mood close to complete despair’ among the peasantry at the end of 1938 owing to the ‘flight from the land’ and ensuing massive labour shortage. The feeling of being crushed, the SD claimed, was partly reflected in resignation, partly in outright revolt against the farmers’ leaders.¹⁰ In the first months of 1939, the peasants’ mood was said to have deteriorated still further.¹¹ In Bavaria, it had reportedly reached ‘boilingpoint’ (‘Siedehitze’).¹² The SD concluded that the ‘production battle’ had passed its peak, and was now facing decline, with the extensification of agriculture, and threat to the ‘völkisch substance’.¹³ In fact, the whole economic expansion, the SD suggested, had now reached its limits. Further pressure on the work-force would result only in declining performance and production.¹⁴

‘Growing unrest and discontent’ as a consequence of living, working, and housing conditions was reported among the working class of one of the most industrialized regions, the Ruhr District, in early 1939.¹⁵ By summer, reports from the same area were pointing to the sharp rise in the cases of sickness among industrial workers in armaments factories and coal-mines — whether, as some claimed, from ‘lack of discipline’, or, more likely, from genuine overwork, or from a combination of both can only be surmised.¹⁶ By then, the labour situation was described as ‘catastrophic’.¹⁷ Yet sullen apathy, not rebelliousness, characterized a work-force worn down by intensified production demands.¹⁸ Even so, if the industrial working class was politically neutralized, its productive capacity had by all accounts reached its peak. This in itself posed an evident threat to any long-term preparations for war.