Party membership in the NSDAP meant absolutely nothing. Like membership in many organizations, it was restricted for the purpose of whetting the appetite of the nonmembers who, by virtue of the restriction, were now excluded. It’s an old come-one, known to every real estate promoter. When Hitler was released from prison in December, 1924, he announced that he would accept only 35 per cent of his previous followers, and that was all it took to bring 100 per cent of them to heel again.
In March, 1933, when membership in the triumphant NSDAP was thrown open, millions joined. These “March violets,” as they were contemptuously called by both old Nazis and old anti-Nazis, were band-wagoners. Hitler never trusted them, and few of them ever rose to high rank. Hitler was right; the “March violets” joined for good reasons, bad reasons, Nazi reasons, non-Nazi reasons, and even anti-Nazi reasons; and X-number of them for no reason at all—that is, because “everybody” was doing it.
I do not mean that Party membership was the same as buying a tag on tag day in America, but neither was it without any resemblance. Nor was the Nazi block-manager system the same as the civilian defense organization in America; but neither was it entirely noncomparable. Eager beavers, who constituted a distinctly small minority of the block managers in Kronenberg, rode herd for all (and more than) they were worth, swaggering, bullying, discriminating, threatening to denounce, and occasionally denouncing. But the majority served notices of meetings or canvassed for contributions and did not keep official track of delinquency. In American-occupied Kronenberg, after the war, some of the most enthusiastic organizers of American-supported projects had been among the most enthusiastic organizers of Nazi-supported projects. Some of these people were trying to cover up for past misdeeds or mistakes; but most of them were simply enthusiastic organizers of anybody’s-supported project.
Men joined the Party to get a job or to hold a job or to get a better job or to save themselves from getting a worse job, or to get a contract or to hold a contract, a customer, a client, a patient. Every third man, in time, worked for the State. In the Weimar Republic the German tradition of the nonpolitical, nonparty civil servant (always safely conservative) was broken down; the Nazis finished the politicalization of the government workers which the Social Democrats began.
It would not be reckless to estimate that half the civil servants had to join the Party or lose their jobs. The other half were well advised to do likewise, and nearly all of them did. Career men in the central and provincial governments and in the city halls, living only for their pensions, could no more resist Party membership (if they ever thought of doing so) than they can the “kickback” in our own Tammanies. In the United States the ancient, if not honorable, practice of compelling state payrollers to support the party in power with 1 per cent or even 2 per cent of their annual salaries is known colloquially as “swinging the mace.” In 1954 the Governor of Pennsylvania, admitting that the system was in operation there, said that there was no “macing” involved; the contributions, he said, were voluntary, and no state employee would be fired for failure to contribute.
“Governor Fine is surely not so naïve as his use of that word ‘Voluntary’ would indicate,” said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorially. “When your political bosses, the men who got you your public job, ask you to chip in for the welfare of the party, there’s very little ‘Voluntary’ about the situation. You don’t have to chip in, true enough, but if you have any brains or ambition, you’d better. To be considered uncooperative by the political bosses is not the best way to advance or even hang on in a patronage post.” In Germany, where, as everywhere in Europe, party membership is formal and the party is supported by regular dues, you did not have to join the National Socialist Party if you were a government employee, but, if you had any brains or ambition, you’d better have.
The exposure of hundreds of former Nazis in the Foreign Ministry of postwar West Germany, although it revealed in a half-dozen sensational cases a real penetration by Nazism of the Adenauer regime, did not tell us, for the rest, whether they were high officials in the Ministry, stenographers, or messenger boys before, during, or after Nazism; or how many of them (if any) had joined the NSDAP for the purpose of covering their anti-Nazism, alleviating the application of inhuman policies, or even participating from within in a hoped-for (or merely dreamed-of) revolt.
Take the late Ernst von Weizsäcker, promoted by Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in 1934 from Minister to Switzerland to State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He not only became a Nazi; he accepted the rank of brigadier general in the black-shirted Nazi SS. As Ribbentrop’s State Secretary, he signed the documents by which thousands of Jews were deported to slavery and death. At Nuremberg the American prosecutor called him “the Devil’s State Secretary” and “the executive officer of Murder, Incorporated.” An American tribunal convicted him of crimes against humanity.
There, certainly, was a Nazi. But at his trial, the diplomats of all the Allied countries (including the United States of America) testified to his hatred of Nazism; all the surviving leaders of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany testified to his support and encouragement; distinguished Allied churchmen, scholars, scientists, and International Red Cross executives testified to the relentlessness of his efforts to mitigate or circumvent Nazi directives; a procession of German Jews and Jews of Nazi-occupied countries testified that his illegal assistance to them had saved their lives. Bishop Primate Berggrav, leader of the Norwegian resistance and President of the World Council of Churches, said, “Von Weizsäcker was not a Nazi; he was an anti-Nazi. I know this man in the essential character of his soul. I saw him suffer and serve. If he is condemned, we are all condemned.”
Expressions like “Nazi teacher,” “Nazi actor,” “Nazi journalist,” “Nazi lawyer,” even “Nazi pastor,” are as meaningless as “the Devil’s State Secretary.” Most teachers teach the three R’s under all regimes everywhere. Most actors are looking for jobs anywhere. Most journalists are reporting fires or accidents (with most lawyers hard on their heels) and are writing what the management wants, whoever the management. And most pastors in Germany had always preached Christ crucified without seeing—who does?—that he was being crucified all around them every day.
There are many lawyers in the United States who disagree vehemently with the policies and program of the American Bar Association; but, if they want to practice law, they had better belong to the constituent societies of the ABA. There are even more physicians in the United States who disagree even more vehemently with the policies of the American Medical Association, but, if they want to practice medicine, they had better belong to the constituent societies of the AMA. They may only pay dues, and that grudgingly; but the record shows that they belong. They are officially “guilty” of the policies of the organization which speaks in their name. In Nazi Germany the professional associations were all “blanketed” into the National Socialist organization.
“So it was,” said all of my Nazi (and most, not all, of my anti-Nazi) friends and acquaintances in Germany, and always with a sigh that said, “You don’t believe it, do you?”
The anti-Nazi son of a railroad worker told me his father’s story. In 1931 the German state railways were letting men go because of the depression. Herr Schäfer, who had no interest in politics, learning that his local boss had joined the National Socialist Party, joined it himself in the hope of hanging on to his job. Long after the war, he learned that the local boss had been an anti-Nazi who had joined the Party in the hope of hanging on to his job, because his boss, the section superintendent, was an ardent Nazi. And the local boss, assuming that Schäfer had joined the Party from conviction, tried covertly to get him fired—unsuccessfully, because the section superintendent was protecting Nazis. “So it was,” in one instance, in Kronenberg—perhaps in more than one, and not only in Kronenberg.
None of this means that there was any mass opposition—if opposition is more than unenthusiasm—to National Socialism in Germany. No attempt has ever been made to discover its genuine extent. Perhaps no attempt would be feasible. But we know how little mass opposition to National Socialism there was prior to 1939 outside Germany, where opposition would have been less dangerous than it was within. Those who, as Cabinetmaker Klingelhöfer said, lived outside the system and were not its beneficiaries could see its evils better. How many of those saw them or, seeing them, raised their voices even to demand that their own governments grant refuge to the system’s victims? Some few millions of Germans, at least, listened for foreign voices to hearten their opposition: from America they heard a few; from England and France, where the Germans listened more closely, still fewer. Moral indignation outside Germany was free, but it was scarce.
Nonmembership in the Party meant no more than membership. As some men joined for good, bad, or no reasons, so some men, for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all, did not join. “After the war,” said Herr Hildebrandt, the teacher, “every nonmember of the Party was an ‘anti-Nazi hero.’ Some of these heroes weren’t Nazis because of the sixty cents a month dues and for no other reason.” “Opposition?” said Herr Simon, the argumentative bill-collecter. “What does ‘opposition’ mean? Employers opposed the Party because it raised wages, capitalists because it cut profits, loafers because it found jobs; but what do they all say now? They all say, ‘The poor Jews.’ All the criminals who didn’t join because they were ‘on the lam’—now they are ‘anti-Nazi persecutees.’”
“I was a tobacco salesman,” said Herr Damm, who had risen to be office manager of the Party headquarters in Kronenberg, “but I was let out when the state tobacco tax was raised 100 per cent in 1930. I reported to the Labor Office immediately and wrote applications for every job, but I got no work. At first I drew unemployment compensation, but then, since I was still single, I was told I could go back home to the village and live on my father’s farm, which, when my father died, my oldest brother would get. That’s the way it was in the spring of 1932, when the National Socialists from Kronenberg held a recruiting evening in the village Bierstube. Only one member of each household was allowed to sign up, and my family all agreed that I was the one. I agreed, too. Why not? And, by the way, Herr Professor, it was the only political party that had ever held a recruiting meeting in our village as far back as anyone could remember.”
Cabinetmaker Klingelhöfer was contemptuous when he spoke of those who did not want to join the Party “lest something happen, some day” but who, while the going was good, wanted it known that they were the truest of the Nazis. “My own brother-in-law was one, Schuchardt, who had the café in the Mauerweg. I used to argue with him—not to join, no, but to be something, either for or against. He always said it was for ‘business reasons’ that he was nonpolitical but, of course, that his heart was with the Party. So he made big contributions to the Winter Relief, always hung out the flag, said ‘Heil Hitler’ a thousand times a day, and then, when the Americans came, he wasn’t a Nazi, he had never been in the Party. Such men play both sides, always. You admire them, their cunning. But you wouldn’t want to be like them, would you?” “No,” I said.
The notes of my conversations with Herr Klingelhöfer, made during or immediately after our meetings, quote him as saying, again and again, “Die freiwillige Feuerwehr über alles! The Volunteer Fire Department above everything!” and “Mein Leben für die freiwillige Feuerwehr! My life for the Volunteer Fire Department!” I can scarcely believe my own notes; this earnest, middle-aged German cabinetmaker is as fire-department–crazy as a boy. Kronenberg, like all German cities under one hundred thousand population, had a volunteer fire department. In 1927 the Fire Chief asked my friend Klingelhöfer to join because the department was short a trumpeter. In those days each block had a fire trumpeter. The trumpeter had an alarm in his bedroom, and when the alarm rang he blew his trumpet out the window, awakening the other firemen (and everyone else) in the block. So Klingelhöfer, who was interested in trumpeting but not, in those days, in fire-fighting, joined. “N’ja, that’s me. I always joined everything.”
Beginning in 1932, under the Republic, Klingelhöfer took two weeks off from his shop every summer, at his own expense, to attend the state training school for firemen. In 1933 he was a squad leader in the freiwillige Feuerwehr when, the Nazis having come to power, some of the “fellows” said that Party members would get promotion preference in the department. “You see,” he said, “before the Hitler time, the firemen chose their own leaders, but after 1933 promotions were proposed by the company chiefs and had to be approved by the Oberbürgermeister. Of course, the Oberbürgermeister was a Nazi, and, when the old chief, who wasn’t, quit in 1934, the man promoted from company chief to take his place was a Nazi, too. So I joined. Besides, I thought the Party was a good thing.”
“Would you have joined if it hadn’t been for the Feuerwehr?”
“Not then. Later, probably; oh, yes, certainly. But not then.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was against a one-party State. That was one reason. And I was not a strong nationalist; a Frenchman is a man, just as I am. That was another reason. And the race politics didn’t make sense; there is no pure race any more, and inbreeding is bad anyway—we know that from plants and animals and from the insanity and feeble-mindedness in the villages where everyone is related to everyone else. That was another reason. We talked about all these things in the Wandervogel, the Youth Movement, when I was young, and I had gone on hikes across the borders a little way, into both France and Switzerland.”
“Well,” I said, “you’ve given me three good reasons for not being a Nazi.”
“Und doch war ich in der Paitei! And still I was in the Party!” And he laughed exuberantly, and I with him.
Once he was in the Party, he was asked to join the SA and to be a block manager. “I said ‘No.’ The Volunteer Fire Department was more important, and I said so. The SA didn’t like that, and they said so,” and he laughed again. “But we were independent until (when was it?) 1934, yes, in the reorganization after the Röhm purge. Then we heard that all the fire departments would become either technical troops of the SA or a branch of the police, and at the firemen’s training school that summer we were asked which we preferred. There were fifty men in training, one from each county in Hesse. All fifty of them said the same thing—they wanted neither; they wanted to remain independent.
“That’s what we said, yes, and that fall we were put under the police, and our name was changed to Feuerlösch-Polizei, “fire-fighting police.” How is that for a name, Herr Professor?” and he laughed again.
“Terrible,” I said, and laughed with him.
“So war die Sache. That’s the way it was. Well, at least it wasn’t the SA. I was promoted to adjutant to the new chief. At the end of 1938 the police in the towns like Kronenberg were put under the SS, so we, the freiwillige Feuerwehr, were part of the Nazi SS! What do you think of that, Herr Professor?”
“What did you think of it?”
“Man macht eine Faust im Sack. One made a fist in one’s pocket.” He wasn’t laughing now, nor was I. Then he brightened and smiled and said, “Aber, die freiwillige Feuerwehr über ailes!”
“Opposition?” said Hen Klingelhöfer, on another occasion. “How would anybody know? How would anybody know what somebody else opposes or doesn’t oppose? That a man says he opposes or doesn’t oppose depends upon the circumstances, where, and when, and to whom, and just how he says it. And then you must still guess why he says what he says. So, too, even in action. The few who tried to kill Hitler and seize the Government in ’44, certainly they ‘opposed,’ but why? Some hated the dictatorship of National Socialism, some hated its democracy, some were personally ambitious or jealous, some wanted the Army to control the country, maybe some could escape punishment for crimes only by a change of government. Some, I am sure, were pure and noble. But they all acted.”
“And here in Kronenberg?”
“Here in Kronenberg? Well, we had twenty thousand people. Of these twenty thousand people, how many opposed? How would you know? How would I know? If you ask me how many did something in secret opposition, something that meant great danger to them, I would say, well, twenty. And how many did something like that openly, and from good motives alone? Maybe five, maybe two. That’s the way men are.”
“You always say, That’s the way men are,’ Herr Klingelhöfer,” I said. “Are you sure that that’s the way men are?”
“That’s the way men are here,” he said. “Are they different in America?”
Alibis, alibis, alibis; alibis for the Germans; alibis, too, for man, who, when he was once asked, in olden time, whether he would prefer to do or to suffer injustice, replied, “I would rather neither.” The mortal choice which every German had to make—whether or not he knew he was making it—is a choice which we Americans have never had to confront. But personal and professional life confronts us with the same kind of choice, less mortally, to be sure, every day. And the fact that it is a platitude does not keep it from being true that we find it easier, on the whole, to admire Socrates than to envy him; to adore the Cross, especially on cloudy Sundays, than to carry it. A still young man in Berlin, an actor forbidden employment since the war, said to me: “I had my choice of acting for Hitler at home or dying for him in Russia. I preferred not to die for him in Russia, not because I was an anti-Nazi (I wasn’t) but because I wasn’t a hero. If I had wanted to die for Hitler or my country—and this, you understand, was the same thing in the war—I would not have waited to be conscripted. I would have enlisted, like a patriot. Tell me, Herr Professor”—he was too polite to ask me what I had done in my circumstances—“what would you have done in my circumstances?”