Hitler's silent majority? conformity and resistance under the third reich (Part two)1

Michigan Quarterly Review

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 550-583

  Eley, Geoff ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149209784     PISSN: 00262420     EISSN: 00262420     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. The following books are reviewed in this two-part essay: Hitler. 1936-45:Nemesis. By Ian Kershaw. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. Pp. xlvi + 1115. $35. 00
2. The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933-1945. By Pierre Aycoberry. New York: The New Press, 1999. Pp. 380. $30. 00 (hb); $15. 95 (pb)
3. The Third Reich: A New History. By Michael Burleigh. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. Pp. xxvi + 965. $40
4. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. By Robert Gellately. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 359. $35. 00
5. Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans. By Eric A. Johnson. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Pp. xx + 636. $35
6. Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. By Richard J. Evans. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Pp. xiv + 318. $27
7. A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany. By Mark Roseman. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000. Pp. xvi + 491. $27. 50.
8. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992).
9. Johnson, 15, also for the following quotation.
10. The key works are those by Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1992); Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul, "Allwissend, allmächtig, allgegenwärtig?: Gestapo, Gesellschaft und Widerstand," Zeitschrift für Geschichtswis-senschaft, 41 (1993), 984-99
11. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul (eds. ), Die Gestapo: Mythos und Realität (Darmstadt, 1995)
12. also Reinhard Mann, Protest und Kontrolle im Dritten Reich: Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft im Alltag einer rheinischen Grosstadt (Frankfurt am Main, 1987).
13. For denunciations specifically: Robert Gellately, "Denunciations in Twentieth-Century Germany: Aspects of Self-Policing in the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic," Journal of Modern History, 68 (1996), 931-67
14. Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann, Politische Denunziation im NS-Regime oder die kleine Macht der "Volksgenossen" (Bonn, 1995).
15. See also Eric A. Johnson, Urbanization and Crime: Germany 1871-1914 (Cambridge, 1995).
16. Gerhard Paul, "Ganz normale Akademiker: Eine Fallstudie zur regionalen staatspolizeilichen Funktionselite," in Paul and Mallmann (eds. ), Die Gestapo, 250.
17. See Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge, 1991), 170; also Wolfgang Ayab, "Asoziale" im Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1995), 24.
18. This literal construction of "policing" to apply to the Gestapo per se rather than to wider processes of social discipline allows "asocials" and other criminalized categories of people to drop out of Johnson's field of vision, even though arguably they were profoundly "terrorized" by the Nazi state. In these terms, Burleigh and Wippermann's Racial State presents a more accurate and well-defined account of Nazi terror than either of the books under review. See Ayab, "Asoziale"; Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1997), 117-46
19. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus (eds. ), Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton, 2001); and the various volumes edited by Götz Aly et al. in the series Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik (Berlin, 1987).
20. See Francis L. Carsten, The German Workers and the Nazis (Aldershot, 1995), 157.
21. For a case study of "aryanization" of Jewish property, see Frank Bajohr, "Arisierung" in Hamburg: die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer, 1933-1945 (Hamburg, 1997).
22. Gellately's chapter on this subject, "Concentration Camps in Public Spaces" (204-23), builds on the now incontrovertible evidence provided by the detailed studies of particular camps, localities, and businesses accumulating during the 1990s.
23. Werner Best (1903-89) was a highly educated lawyer who rose through the ranks of the SS, helped build the Gestapo, assisted Heydrich in the SS central administration until 1940, and became Reich Plenipotentiary over Denmark. Formed politically in the radical nationalist and anti-Semitic milieu of the völkisch Right, he made a post-Nazi career in the West German Free Democratic Party. See Ulrich Herbert, Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903-1989 (Bonn, 1996).
24. Burleigh, 227.
25. Beginning with The Destruction of Dresden (London, 1963), David Irving had published around thirty books mainly on military aspects of the Second World War, whose provocative claims often attracted noisy publicity. By the time of Hitler's War (New York, 1977), which sought to absolve Hitler of responsibility for the Judeocide, or even knowledge of the extermination policies until late 1943, he was regarded as a willing controversialist sympathetic to Hitler, whose apparent assiduousness as a researcher was counterbalanced by troubling revisionist proclivities. Irving's more recent works included: Rudolf Hess (London, 1988); Hess: The Missing Years (London, 1989)
26. Göring (London, 1989); Hitler's War and the War Path (London, 1991)
27. Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (London, 1996); and Nuremberg: The Last Battle (London, 1997).
28. The simultaneous publication of a second book on the Irving trial by D. D. Guttenplan, The Holocaust on Trial (New York, 2001), makes for a telling juxtaposition. Its author, a U. S. journalist resident in London, provides a wider-ranging commentary on the broader public and moral-philosophical ramifications of the trial, but his account suffers from glibness, frequent missteps, and a limited grasp of the relevant contexts. These weaknesses emerge in ironic counterpoint to the "pedantry" he dismissively attributes to Evans on the witness stand, as the latter's understanding of the larger questions remains much the superior. Among the exceptions to the shallowness and poorly researched tendentiousness of most press coverage, Evans mentions Eva Menasse of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, plus Jonathan Freedland and other writers in The Guardian and Independent.
29. Evans confines "historical scholarship" somewhat tautologically to the work done by professional historians themselves according to the procedures described in Lying About Hitler. But if historical understanding can be furthered by other methods and forms of analysis too, using a different kind of archive or inspired by different disciplinary traditions, then historical knowledge can clearly originate in other fields like Holocaust studies (where for Evans the dominance of "literature and aesthetics" seems to make this unlikely). Among many possible examples, see Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago, 1998); or Inga Clendinnen, Reading the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1999). Of course, Holocaust studies also contains many historians in the professional sense, including Robert Gellately, who now holds a chair at Clark University's Center for Holocaust Studies. Rather dubiously, Evans also draws an equivalence between "political exploitation of the Holocaust" and "the political payoff of Holocaust denial," using as an example the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's "marginalization of any other victims apart from the Jews. " (261) Despite that Museum's imperfections, this mischaracterizes its activities rather unfairly and simplistically, as a visit to its website, 〈http://www. ushmm. org〉, will quickly confirm.
30. See also Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History (New York, 2000), which uses an ideal of objectivity to draw the boundaries around the discipline of history in a particularly question-begging way.
31. For the advantages of "acculturation" as a term over "assimilation," see Marion Kaplan, "Tradition and Transition. The Acculturation, Assimilation, and Integration of Jews in Imperial Germany. A Gender Analysis," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 27 (1982), 3-36.
32. For a succinct account of the decision to expel the German Jews and its place in the chronology of the "Final Solution," see Kershaw, Nemesis, 472-87.
33. Roseman's account of the Abwehr's role in protecting the Strauss family can be found on 129-45 and 250-53. See especially Winfried Meyer, Unternehmen Sieben. Eine Rettungsaktion für vom Holocaust Bedrohte aus dem Amt Ausland/Abwehr im Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Frankfurt am Main, 1993).
34. Two illustrations are especially telling. One concerns the confusing ramifications of Friedrich Hammacher's help for the Strauss family. If he offered the lifeline to the Abwehr from human feelings for a respected associate, Hammacher also used his connections in the Essen Nazi party and Gestapo to purchase the Strauss residence, which during the abortive deportation of October 1941 reverted to the city. He let the family continue living in the house, but on deportation made sure to pick over their abandoned furniture. This "murky world hidden from the official records" was exposed in the postwar restitution proceedings as an extensive network of bribery, payoffs, and private enrichment ("between Hammacher and the Abwehr, Hammacher and the party, Hammacher and the city administration, Hammacher and the Gestapo"). Whereas historians previously doubted such corruption, here "private testimony undermines the official record. " (137-8) The second case was that of Maria and Wilhelm Jürgens, who stored some of the Strauss family possessions. When Marianne claimed the trunks after the war, they insisted the contents had been a gift, thereby necessitating "a miserable fifteen-year struggle over family property that was one of the low points of Marianne's postwar life. " (343) For "Aryanization", see Bajohr, "Arisierung"; for the economics of Jewish exclusion, Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation. The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933-1943 (Hanover, N. H. , 1989); and more generally on corruption, Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure: Korruption in der NS-Zeit (Frankfurt, 2001).
35. Until Roseman's account, virtually nothing was known about the Izbica camp, which helped feed the extermination camp at Belzec following the Wannsee conference in January 1942. The standard work on deportations from Germany is still Hans-Günther Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974); also Michael Zimmermann, "Die Deportation der Juden aus Essen und dem Regierungs- bezirk D̈sseldorf," in Ulrich Bosdorf and Mathilde Jamin (eds. ), Uberleben im Krieg. Kriegserfahrungen in einer Industrieregion, 1939-1945 (Hamburg, 1989), 126-43.
36. Deportations to Belzec were halted to allow a larger and more efficient killing facility to be built. Sobibor filled the gap in May-June, only for non-military transports to be halted in the interests of the summer military offensive. In August, Lublin resources were directed toward the "Great Action" against the Warsaw ghetto, where 300,000 were deported mainly to Treblinka. When large-scale deportations from the Lublin district resumed, technical problems with the rail link to Sobibor still slowed the pace. "In early October 1942, as the killing machine came closer, Izbica was again spared because the main extermination effort was to the north of the district. " (211) The essential account is in Dieter Pohl, Von der "Judenpolitik" zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1939-1944 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 128-39; and for a rare eyewitness account of Izbica, Thomas Tovia Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor. A Story of Survival (Evanston, IL, 1997). This is a good example of how carefully Roseman matches his oral history with the available documentary record. At Marianne's end, the resumption of the transports severed her postal link.
37. Virtually nothing was known of the Essen Bund, whose thin network extended elsewhere in the Ruhr and Wuppertal, until Roseman stumbled on its existence, after which Artur Jacobs's manuscript diary, held in the Essen city archive, proved a key source. See also Monika Grüter, "Der 'Bund für ein sozialistisches Leben': Seine Entwicklung in den 20er Jahren und seine Widerständigkeit unter dem Nationalsozialismus," Dissertation, University of Essen, 1988. Roseman is now writing a book on the Bund. See Past in Hiding, 231-4l, 264-338, 340-47, 360-63, 415-16.
38. See Klemens von Klemperer (ed. ), A Noble Combat: The Letters of Sheila Grant Duff and Adam von Trott zu Soltz, 1932-1939 (Oxford, 1988)
39. Hedley Bull (ed. ), The Challenge of the Third Reich: The Adam von Trott Memorial Lectures (Oxford, 1986)
40. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (ed. ), Helmut James von Moltke. Letters to Freya: 1939-1945 (New York, 1990)
41. Freya von Moltke, Erinnerungen an Kreisau, 1930-1945 (Munich, 1997).
42. See Yosefa Loshitzky (ed. ), Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perpsectives on Schindler's List (Bloomington, 1997)
43. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1945, 2 vols. (New York, 1998, 2000); Browning, Ordinary Men
44. Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996)
45. Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001); Browning, Nazi Policy, 89-169. Johnson and Burleigh both have in common the use of case records for individualized stories.
46. Until November 1938, Marianne attended the Luisenschule (girls' grammar school) in Essen, where she enrolled in April 1933 after four years of Jewish elementary schooling. Roseman's chapter ("Schoolgirl in the Third Reich") brilliantly weaves together Marianne's own recollections with those of her contemporaries and written documentation, complemented by rele-vant historiography. The Yavne school was mainly supported by Orthodox families until 1933, when "the liberal-minded Jewish middle class" began seeing it as an alternative to the Nazified state schools. (89) While Jews were banned from state schools and higher education, the Nazis still permitted certain Jewish vocational qualifications in agriculture, domestic science, nursing, and education: "The Jewish College for Kindergarten Teachers in Berlin was unique in that it provided a state-recognized qualification. " (93) Marianne cut her studies short in October 1941, returning abruptly to Essen on her family's receipt of deportation orders. After the reprieve from the latter, she went back to Berlin in February 1942 and passed the final qualifying examination, which was duly ratified by the authorities: "⋯ a month after the Wannsee conference, Jewish kindergarten teachers in Berlin were still graduating with the Staatsexamen, even as the their potential charges were being transported to Lodz, to Minsk, and to Riga. " (117) The College was closed on 1 April 1942.
47. five years before, she had published an article about her underground life, and Roseman's British nationality and Essen connections qualified him to make the contact in Liverpool. The interview left them feeling "that we had both survived a painful immersion in her memory" (7). In 1996 he contacted her again for a TV documentary about the allied occupation of Germany. By then extremely ill, she agreed to record her life story, managing three meetings before she died on 22 December 1996. Roseman then worked through the Strauss family files in the Düsseldorf Gestapo records, sorted the extraordinary profusion of family documents, pursued the trail through the official archives, and traced surviving witnesses across various parts of the world. Marianne's original article was published at the urging of the Bund. See Marianne Ellenbogen, "Flucht und illegales Leben während der Nazi- Verfolgungsjahre, 1943-1954," Das Münster am Hellweg, 37 (1984), 135-42, reprinted in Alte Synagoge (ed. ), Stationen jüdischen Lebens. Von der Emanzipation bis zir Gegenwart (Bonn, 1990), 248-52. Roseman was a member of the Jewish community in Essen during his dissertation research in 1981-1.
48. See Mark Roseman, Recasting the Ruhr 1945-1957. Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations (New York, 1992).
49. For the phrase "biologizing of the social," see Ulrich Herbert, "Rassismus und rationales Kalkül," in Wolfgang Schneider (ed. ), "Vernichtungspoli- tik": Eine Debatte über den Zusammenhang von Sozialpolitik und Genozid im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (Hamburg, 1991), 28. Tim Mason was an early commentator on this trend, distinguishing "biological politics" as a key theme to emerge from a conference on "Reevaluating the Third Reich" held at the University of Pennsylvania in April 1988. This was also the first time I remember encountering the idea in a meeting of German historians. Mason was responding partly to the work of Detlev Peukert, partly to the ideas of the New York-based German Women's History Study Group, each of which shaped those Philadelphia discussions.
50. See Tim Mason, "Whatever Happened to 'Fascism'?", in Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class: Essays by Tim Mason, ed. Jane Caplan (Cambridge, 1995), 328, together with Caplan's comment in her "Introduction," 27; also Renate Briden- thal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan (eds. ), When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York, 1984)
51. and Detlev J. K. Peukert, "The Genesis of the 'Final Solution' from the Spirit of Science", in Thomas Childers and Jane Caplan (eds. ), Reevaluating the Third Reich (New York, 1993), 234-52.