Not all organizations and ideologies were equally susceptible to Nazi coordination, penetration or subversion. Catholics had initially proved more resistant to the attractions of pre-1933 Nazi electoral propaganda than had Protestants. The Reichskonkordat of 1933 appeared to establish a modus vivendi for Catholicism with the Nazi regime, but Catholics were concerned to preserve a strict separation between the spheres of religion – which remained their preserve – and politics, which could be left to the state. When the latter encroached on the former, Catholics were prepared to resist, as in the campaigns waged against the Nazi attacks on confessional education and attempts to remove crucifixes from schools.9 The Protestant churches, lacking the transcendent loyalty to a higher authority equivalent to the Catholic focus on Rome, initially appeared more vulnerable to Nazi incursions. But Nazi attempts to co-opt Protestantism, with the appointment of a ‘Reich bishop’ and the formation of a movement of pro-Nazi ‘German Christians’, soon led to a serious rift among Protestants. Those who recognized the essential criminality of the Nazi regime came to sympathize with the ‘Confessing Church’, associated with theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller. A majority of Protestants sided with neither the German Christians nor the Confessing Church, and the latter two groups were in the event subject to internal divisions and disputes. The Nazis eventually gave up their attempt to co-opt Christianity and made little pretence at concealing their contempt for Christian beliefs, ethics and morality. Unable to comprehend that some Germans genuinely wanted to combine commitment to Christianity and Nazism, some members of the SS even came to view German Christians as almost more of a threat than the Confessing Church.10
Clearly there was a wide range of opinions among Christians of different confessions, political perspectives and social backgrounds, and different issues took precedence at various times. For many laypeople, the ‘pastors’ squabbling’ (Pfarrergezänk) must have seemed at best an irrelevance to the pressing concerns of everyday life. For some members of the laity, the singing of hymns with deeper meanings may have helped them to retain a sense of the transience of contemporary oppression, while not galvanizing them against the regime, and may hence have aided regime stability.11 On the other hand, it was also possible to hold what would otherwise have been forbidden political gatherings under the guise of church meetings or Bible study groups. But insofar as it is possible to generalize on a complex issue, it must be said that, whatever the diversity of opinion and action, the record of most Christians (Protestant and Catholic) was at best a rather patchy and uneven one. With the notable exception of those religious individuals and groups who stood out for their principled resistance to the regime – of whom more in the next chapter – it seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, compliance with, or even active support for, the Nazi dictatorship.
Economy and Society
Undoubtedly of major impact on most people’s attitudes and perceptions was their economic experience. Weimar democracy had been associated, for millions of Germans, not only with national defeat and a humiliating peace treaty but also with economic disaster. Many had survived the inflation of 1923 only to be buffeted by the slump that started in 1929. Despite the increasing political repression, for a large number of Germans the Third Reich appeared to give new hope of prosperity and stability. Small retailers looked forward to the suppression of their rivals, the big department stores; peasants looked forward to a rightful place in a country proclaiming the importance and glory of ‘blood and soil’; industrialists welcomed the suppression of trade union rights in the hope of regaining power for the employers, eroded under the Weimar system. While socialists and communists, Jews and other committed opponents of the regime viewed it with foreboding, for many apolitical Germans the ‘national awakening’ appeared to offer hopes of a brighter future.
What actually happened to German economy and society in the Third Reich, and what were the relationships between economics and politics under Nazi rule? Controversies over these questions are far from settled. The Nazis themselves proclaimed that they were effecting a ‘national revolution’, although the hopes of more radical Nazis were rapidly dashed after they attained power, leading to pressure from the party ranks for more radical action and a ‘second revolution’.
It is clear that Hitler’s overriding interest lay in the preparation for the conquest of additional ‘living space’ (Lebensraum) and not primarily in the transformation of the economy. In his view, everything must be directed towards the ultimate goal of rearmament. As Hitler put it in a speech to his cabinet only a week after becoming Chancellor, on 8 February 1933: ‘The next five years in Germany had to be devoted to rendering the German people again capable of bearing arms. Every publicly sponsored measure to create employment had to be considered from the point of view of whether it was necessary with respect to rendering the German people again capable of bearing arms for military service. This had to be the dominant thought, always and everywhere’.12 Insofar as there was a coherent, specifically Nazi economic programme, it had two main features: the notion of self-sufficiency, or ‘autarky’; and the notion of expanded living space in central Europe, encompassing particularly lands to the southeast and east of Germany. These notions were, of course, integrally related to the development of a self-sufficient war economy sustained by territorial expansion and exploitation of the raw materials and labour of conquered territories. At the same time as giving priority to rearmament, however, the Nazis were concerned to retain popular support, which meant paying attention to consumer pressures and not imposing severe levels of austerity on the people. These different objectives were not entirely compatible, and periodic strains and crises resulted from attempts to pursue mutually contradictory strands of policy. Such crises also had effects on, for example, the timing of certain foreign policy moves, such as the remilitarization of the Left bank of the Rhine in 1936.
Initially, the economic policies of Nazi Germany were controlled by the relatively orthodox former President of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, as Minister of Economics. Deficit financing began in 1933 with the issue of so-called Mefo Bills, which served to disguise spending on rearmament under the cover of the spurious ‘Metallurgical Research Society’ (Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H.). On 1 June 1933 the first ‘Reinhardt Programme’ was announced with the ‘Law to Reduce Unemployment’, followed by a second plan on 21 September 1933; and on 27 June 1933 there was a law initiating the construction of autobahns. While the economy had already begun to turn around in 1932, prior to the Nazis’ participation in government, economic recovery up to 1936 was certainly aided – perhaps speeded up – by Nazi work-creation schemes, motorization and construction works, and their willingness to engage in deficit financing. Many of these early schemes were of an infrastructural nature, facilitating later mobilization for war without being directly war-related themselves. While autobahns would later be highly useful for the rapid movement of troops, they could also serve more immediate ideological ends, symbolizing the rebuilding of the community and the integration of its different parts into one future-oriented national whole.13 Schacht’s New Plan of 1934 marked the first stage in the planned development of autarky (although Schacht himself was an opponent of out-and-out autarky), with bilateral trade agreements between pairs of countries not relying on certain international foreign currency exchanges.
By 1935, however, it was becoming clear that, despite the return towards full employment, Germany’s economic problems were by no means resolved. With a shortage of foreign exchange reserves, a choice had to be made between the import of raw materials for the rearmament programme or of foodstuffs for consumers. Moreover, there were splits within industry: while some industries, most notably the great chemical combine I. G. Farben, supported the manufacture of synthetic materials and an economy of autarky, others, more export-oriented, were opposed to such policies. In August 1936 Hitler issued a key memorandum stating that Germany must be ready for war within four years and that economic activity must be geared towards this primary end. On 18 October 1936 the Four Year Plan was announced,