putting Pokler in context

[Doug Millison]

Gordon Craig's article in the February 28 issue of the New York Review of
Books (I'm an issue behind, the new one just came in the mail today) is
well worth reading for GR background.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15144

"[...] It is a far cry from Machtan's loose speculations about Hitler's sex
life to Robert Gellately's fascinating study of coercion and consent in the
Third Reich. Drawing on research in the Federal Archives in Berlin, in
Gestapo case files in Düsseldorf, Würzburg, and Speyer, and in the files of
daily newspapers like the Völkischer Beobachter, the SS's Schwarze Korps,
the Berliner Morgenpost, and the Rheinische Lan-deszeitung, as well as his
discriminating command of the secondary literature, he has come to the
conclusion that Germans of all classes found reasons for supporting the
system "and were less regimented, cajoled or forced than we often assume."

This was due in part of course to Hitler's success in overcoming the
political and economic confusion that filled the last years of the Weimar
Republic, and in restoring Germany's international reputation by his
remarkable diplomatic successes in the years after 1935. It is difficult to
exaggerate the respect and admiration with which the Führer came to be
regarded by the German people and which persisted to the very end. This
doubtless helped people to become instrumentally and emotionally committed
to the Nazi dictatorship, but so did the party's systematic use of the
press and radio to explain and justify its policies.

This manipulation of the mass media was notable in the first days of the
regime, when the judicial system was being openly subverted by the police.
In the party press this was described as being necessary if Germany were
not to relapse into its pre-1933 condition, which, in the Nazi view, had
been dominated by criminal elements, Jews, and antisocial layabouts. The
Gestapo's legal expert, Werner Best, was fond of repeating that any
political view except National Socialism was a symptom of sickness that
"threatens the healthy unity of the indivisible Volk organism" and that the
police had full authority to take the necessary countermeasures "on the
basis of its own knowledge and own responsibility so as to ensure the
security of the people and state."

In case this might not be entirely persuasive, the party undertook in 1934
to foster closer relations between the police and the people by
establishing a new Day of the German Police, which featured parades and
band music and on which members of the Gestapo and Kripo (Criminal Police)
gave toys to children and helped raise funds for the annual winter relief
program. Heinrich Himmler boasted on one of these occasions that the police
in National Socialist Germany had set as its goal "to be seen as the best
friend and helper of the German people, and as the worst enemy of criminals
and enemies of state."

It was, however a two-sided relationship, and Reinhard Heydrich once said
that the people had to offer themselves as helpers. How they did so,
Gellately shows in some interesting excerpts from police case files. These
demonstrate that the police and the Gestapo would have found it impossible
to enforce some of their regulations (against fraternization with Jews and
foreign workers, for example, and against listening to foreign broadcasts)
if it had not been for the information provided by denunciations from
ordinary citizens. Many of these were motivated, of course, by malice or
the hope of material gain rather than by political zeal. But even these
strengthened the dictatorship and helped make effective resistance against
it increasingly difficult.

It is hard to say with any accuracy how much terror there was in the early
concentration camps, like Dachau, which was established in 1933. In view of
the not infrequent reports of inmates shot by guards "in self-defense," it
certainly existed but was less obtrusive than it became later. The press,
which paid a good deal of attention to the camps, generally described them
as temporary in nature and as model establishments, whose main function was
social education. The people incarcerated were supposed, for the most part,
to be Communists. The local population was apt initially to welcome their
establishment, as was the case in Dachau, because of the supposed political
and economic advantages that they would bring.

The war brought a tremendous expansion of the concentration camp system
within Germany, as the principal camps established sub-camps and the camp
population came to include prisoners of war and foreign workers in addition
to political prisoners and allegedly "asocial" elements, such as
homosexuals.

The camps now began to invade the public space to a degree unknown in the
regime's first years, and townspeople and villagers alike were confronted
with what Gellately calls the cruelest side of the dictatorship, columns of
thinly clad, ill-nourished prisoners being herded to their work or back to
their places of confinement. This was a sight that might have been expected
to arouse unease or even complaint, but Gellately writes:

Although we hear from survivors of help and comfort they received, the
overwhelming impression is that Germans were at best indifferent and
fearful, and at worst they shared the guards' scorn, hostility, and hatred.

This was true also in the very last days of the war, when the concentration
camps were closed down and their inmates forced on to the roads and made to
endure pointless marches under armed guard that often ended in death.
Thousands of ordinary Germans witnessed these cruel exercises, but very few
offered food to the starving marchers, and some added to their torments by
beating or shooting stragglers.

The defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk ended any possibility that Hitler would
win the war he had forced on the world. Support for the Führer did not
stop, however, and, according to Gellately's research, even showed a marked
increase after the attempt on his life in July 1944. People continued to
denounce friends and relatives to the police, and such accusations were no
longer examined scrupulously and generally ended in death. Meanwhile,
Hitler instituted drumhead tribunals to try anyone who was supposed to be
endangering Germany's determination or ability to fight on; and the
barbarity of his racial policy continued without letup. Gellately confesses
that he is unable to explain how Germans continued to support Hitler in
these circumstances. He writes:

In the closing days of the Third Reich, there were optimists, pessimists,
"idealists," and fatalists. But there was no shortage of Nazi fanatics
determined to fight to the end. Many people apparently could not afford to
let themselves see the situation, including the brutalities, for what they
really were, and could do nothing more than be for Hitler or at least for
Germany. [...]"