Teachers Volksgemeinschaft

To what extent did the Nazis create a Volksgemeinschaft?

Definition

Volksgemeinschaft meant that society would no longer be composed of individuals or groups of individuals, pursuing their separate interests (e.g. class, region, religion). Instead, people belonged to a much larger group - the National or People's Community – which put the common good before the good of the individual. New unified community based on blood and race, common world view. Not a change in social structure, but a change in consciousness – all acted together.

Aims of Volksgemeinschaft

  • Cult of the Volksgenossen – fellow Germans: Aryan, genetically healthy, socially useful, peasant German Volk Loyal and cooperative. Individual rights: subordinated
  • Classless society: German rather than class values to overcome threat of Bolshevism and Jews.
  • The excluded: mentally impaired, disabled, Jews, misfits.

Aspects of Volksgemeinschaft

Propaganda: expressing new national consciousness through art, music

Eintopf – once a month on Sunday as a sacrifice for the Reich, donate money to welfare scheme

Winterhilfe – to help unemployed in winter, introduced 1933. Propaganda heavy.

Youth movements and education: in the spirit of National Socialism

Women: have children to strengthen Volksgemeinschaft.

Workers: ‘bread and circuses’, education, health care, social insurance, leisure movements e.g. Strength through Joy

Peasants: peasant = foundation of Germany, soldier farmer, lebensraum in East

Historiography

Did Hitler genuinely want to remake German society?

  • Marxist historians: Hitler turned the clock back.
  • Jenkins ‘the social order contained in Volksgemeinschaft was, in many respects, merely a propaganda gimmick. In reality, deep social divisions and sources of serious discontent remained scarcely concealed by the propaganda image and were countered by severe repression’

Did the Nazis have a coherent view of what they wanted?

  • Himmler: Himmler had romantic view of noble Aryan and ordered state.
  • Goering: far more concerned w/ social control

How successful was the Nazi attempt to create a Volksgemeinschaft?

  • Peukert: Volksgemeinschaft had not been achieved by 1939 – internal harmony maintained by diverting public opinion against minority groups.
  • Kershaw: ‘The acute perception of social injustice, the class-conscious awareness of inequalities...changed less in the Third Reich than is often supposed...The extent of disillusionment and discontent in almost all section of the population, rooted in the socio-economic experience of daily life is remarkable’. (1983)