Volksgemeinschaft
When you have a dictatorship, there is one thing you need to make sure of - or it all falls apart.
What that one thing might be?
You have to make people feel they all
belong to the group.
For example, in the dictatorship of China,
everyone has a Chinese Communist Flag, and waves
it when told. They all swear allegiance to the
dictatorship, they march all in time together on
parades celebrating the dictators of the past
and present. The same happens in all
dictatorships - North Korea and it used to
happen in Soviet Russia too.
What does this make the people feel?
Part of the group.
In Nazi Germany, Volksgemeinschaft was promoted
as being the most important thing.
So what exactly is it? It is made up of a few
separate but linked ideas, all designed to give
the German people a feeling that they had a
common history and that they all belonged to the
‘same’ Germany. We know that most countries have
different regions, different customs and ways of
doing things.
Naturally they are all fairly similar, but
there are differences.
What made up ‘Volksgemeinschaft’?
One of the central ideas was ‘social
Darwinism’.
What did Charles Darwin suggest as his main
theory?
Evolution - survival of the fittest.
In Germany though, the Nazis promoted the idea
that there was a certain race of people who were
far and away better than all the rest of the
world.
What was the name of that ‘race’?
The Aryans.
What were their characteristics?
Men were taller, athletic, a bit muscular;
blond hair and blue eyed. Women were not as
generally tall as the men, they also had
blond hair and blue eyes and they had
'larger' breasts.
Is this a real race of people?
No. Scandinavian people tend to be blond
haired, often with blue eyes but that’s not
a race, it’s just a genetic group.
But crippled little Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels - himself small and really not well built at all - told everyone that the ‘Aryan Race’ was made up of Germans and they were simply the best in the world.
So how did he get everyone to believe that the
Aryans were best?
Propaganda!
He was very good at propaganda. The German
people, you will remember, were going through a
very bad time and so they wanted to believe that
something was good in their lives - and Goebbels
telling them that they were the superior race
was just exactly what they wanted to hear.
Quite quickly, they believed it. They genuinely
thought they were the best race of people in the
whole world and therefore, because they were
best, should run the world. That suited Hitler
very well, because of course on his own - or
even with his Nazi party - he couldn’t challenge
the world.
With the people behind him, supporting him all the way, Hitler was able to break the Treaty of Versailles and build up his forces. All because of this untrue theory of ‘social Darwinism’.
The next aspect of Volksgemeinschaft was
Anti-Semitism. A ‘Semite’ is simply another name for
following the Jewish faith. Jews are not a race
of people, they are just a group who believe a
certain thing. Just like Buddhists do,
Christians, and all the other religions.
Hitler’s Nazis needed someone to blame
for the badness that was happening in Germany in
the 1920s and 1930s. Sadly, once again, the Jews
became a target. This has happened throughout
history; the ethics of the faith can mean that
Jewish people work hard and because of that,
make lots of money. This money acts as a cushion
in bad times.
Of course, with Goebbels doing the propaganda,
the German people soon started to believe that
yes, the Jews were to blame for all the lack of
jobs, the poverty and the bad state of Germany.
But why would they? Simply because people have a
need to blame someone for troubles that they
didn’t cause and cannot fix on their own.
The next central part of Volksgemeinschaft is
Führerprinzip.
The two parts of the word are ‘führer’ and
‘prinzip’. Many German words join together to
make one long words out of a few meanings - just
like Volks (people) gemein (togetherness) schaft
(nation).
Führerprinzip says that the Führer (leader, president and prime minister) has the right to lead the country, a right given by God Himself. So, Führerprinzip meant that Hitler was God’s man to lead Germany to victory over the world.
Again, with the help of Goebbels, and all his propaganda, the German people really believed that Hitler was so important that God had made him the leader. Pure nonsense of course, but that’s what propaganda can do. And the German people needed not only a scapegoat (the Jews) but someone to lead them (Hitler).
Up to now we have
social Darwinism telling the
German people that they are better than anyone
else, anti-Semitism, and
Führerprinzip.
Next we have the unification of all Germany. You might think that, well, they are already all German, but that’s not quite what it means. In reality it meant that all the differences in areas, or provinces, should be smoothed out and pretty much all of Germany should follow the same traditions and customs. Small differences were allowed, because they indicated the great diversity of Germany as well.
What is ‘diversity’?
Simply put, it’s the things which are
different within a specific group. In school
classes, there is ‘diversity’. You’re not
all the same, but you all have things which
are the same.
Goebbels went to work yet again and persuaded
the German people that although they had
differences, they were part of the ‘whole’
Germany and should be together ‘as one nation’
and that would mean they could conquer the
world!
They heard it, wanted to believe it - so they DID believe it.
The unification of Germany also aimed at getting rid of the class and social divisions in Germany - making all the great German superior people equal.
There are social classes even today: the rich, all the way down to the poor. It is not a popular thing to say these days, but there are social divisions based on money and possessions.
The unification tried to get rid of all that -
but failed very much. Some ideas are easy to
change, some are not. Even with the power of
Goebbels, people still knew that if they were
rich, they were certainly not the same as a poor
person living under a bridge.
So Goebbels was not always successful - but in
most things, he was.
After the unification of Germany, comes another
German word -
Lebensraum.
It literally means ’space to live’.
Germany then (and now) is a large country, with
lots of room. What does it mean in the context
of the Nazis?
For the Nazis it meant gathering together all the countries which spoke the German language - and ignoring the fact that there were German speakers in many countries all around Germany itself.
A fairly dangerous concept. That’s because it meant that Hitler - supposedly God’s man on earth - had the absolute right to annex land or even countries around Germany simply because they spoke German.
The next concept is that of ‘traditional Germanic values’.
What is this?
It’s actually another false thing that the
Nazis wanted the German people to
believe.
The German people were told that traditional
Germans came from hard working agricultural
people - sons and daughters of the earth,
dedicated to working the land to produce food in
plenty for the country so everyone lived well.
Another part of it was that Germans were
supposed to have a common belief in God - not
bothering about being Roman Catholic, Protestant
or Lutheran or any other denomination.
In reality, the Germans were diverse in their
beliefs and always had been. It is that
diversity which actually gives strength to a
people, not common (the same) beliefs.
So, moving on, we have something called (in
German) “Blut und Boden”.
In English it means ‘blood and
soil’.
It was another attempt to convince the German
people that they came from the land, that they
had traditional beliefs and values and in fact
were able to go back to the centuries-old
traditions of a rural society, but in a modern
setting.
The trouble is that Germany had never been a
rural society and had very few of the values
that the Nazis were trying to tell them that
they had!
Most societies come from an ancient
agricultural beginning, which later becomes
‘rural’.
What is the difference between
‘agricultural’ and ‘rural’?
It’s only really a small difference to do
with development. An ‘agricultural society
is mainly composed of people working on the
land; and a ‘rural’ one is where there is a
mixture of agriculture and more advanced
industry.
The idea, was, again, to persuade the Germans
that they had an honourable and traditional
history going back many many centuries and that
they should bring back their value of those
beginnings.
Did this work?
Well, actually it pretty much did work. The
Germans began to believe that they had this
mythical history, of great traditions,
heroes and almost like Greek gods and
goddesses.
In truth they really didn’t have that
background.
Gender roles were increasingly separated in Nazi
Germany. They were supposed to come from a
strongly agricultural history, and people really
in those ancient times did things differently to
how modern society was doing things.
What that means is, in ancient times, men did
the work and women did the cooking. In ancient
times that might have been true. In modern times
of course it is not. In Nazi Germany though,
they concentrated on trying to make men the
‘breadwinners’ - literally the workers who were
paid and brought bread home - and women were to
be the 'home-makers', as they’re called
today.
Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with men
doing jobs and women staying home, but equally,
there is absolutely nothing wrong with women
working and men staying home. However, the
so-called ‘traditional’ values were - men work,
women make the home nice for the man to come
home to. And of course - women were supposed to
make babies (with the help of the
husband).
Not only, then, were men to work and women stay
home, but families were supposed to be large and
all blond haired and blue eyed.
(This blond hair and blue eyed thing is very
strange, because only Herman Goering was that in
the Nazi leadership. Hitler was very dark haired
and brown eyed, Goebbels - well, he was just a
mess - and the others also had brown hair which
usually means brownish eyes.)
Families were given awards for having more and
more children.
What were all the children for?
Boys were to be soldiers and workers, and
girls were to make homes for their
husbands.
More children meant a bigger and stronger
military power.
Finally, there was to be an
integration of class, religion AND
politics
in Germany. This was designed to unite (bring
together) all the people in Germany and give
them the overall sense that they were really ALL
German and ALL the best in the world, whichever
province they came from.
Those are the important aspects and concept of Volksgemeinschaft.
F