The ambivalence that had marked the beginning of Melita Maschmann’s career in the Hitler Youth often came back to haunt her. She threw herself with enthusiasm into her new job of running the press office and collaborating on the youth magazines, but was shocked by the mediocrity of the other junior workers; she found herself surrounded by a bunch of naive souls—keen, but slavishly obedient to party slogans. On a training course, she caused a stir by rejecting the popular conspiracy theory that the German poet and philosopher Schiller had been poisoned by his friend Goethe, who happened to be a Freemason. The old guard poured scorn on Melita: it was common knowledge within the party that the Freemasons were enemies of the people, on a par with Jews and Marxists. Maschmann found herself on the wrong side of the unspoken law that if you didn’t belong—because you were different, or had different views—you were ostracised. She chose to bury her objections rather than be excluded, telling herself it was the right thing to do:
One has no right to turn one’s back on the party because of such disappointments. Little by little the spirit of truth will prevail over untruth. One must fight the battle wherever one happens to be. As time went by, I often found myself reflecting along these lines.
Such contradictions became part of Melita’s life. She had joined the Hitler Youth soon after making friends at school with a Jewish girl called Marianne Schweitzer. Although Melita believed that Jews were a threat to Germany, and went around saying so, this did not at first affect the girls’ friendship. Melita made no connection between the anonymous spectre of ‘the Jew’ and real-life Jewish people like Marianne or the nice man who lived next door, Herr Lewy. Millions of children in Germany had grown up accepting this paradox, Melita later explained.
Our parents may have grumbled about the Jews, but it didn’t stop them from feeling genuine liking for the Lewys or socialising with my father’s Jewish colleagues. For as long as we could remember, we had watched the grown-ups act out this contradiction as if it were entirely natural.
In the same way, Melita told her Jewish friend all about the Hitler Youth. It was only when Marianne’s brother became involved with communists that the tension began to weigh on her. Gradually, Melita eased herself out of the friendship by devoting more and more time to the Hitler Youth. When her parents sent her away to board because she wasn’t doing well enough at school, she decided to make a clean break. She was a youth leader; she didn’t want to be friends with a Jewish girl anymore. When she said goodbye to Marianne Schweitzer at Halensee station in Berlin, she felt dull, traitorous. Outwardly all was in order now, but her conscience suffered. ‘At the time I thought: So being guilty is a part of life, then.’
The National Socialists left the Germans in no doubt about who belonged in their country and who didn’t. Anyone considered a ‘comrade of the people’—and that was the vast majority of the population—could stride out with them into the great new age. Anyone who didn’t belong would be ostracised and, in the long term, eliminated. Ordinary Germans observed such distinctions daily. They might register it with approval or disapproval, relief or indifference, without having to change the course of their lives. But they couldn’t avoid it entirely. Many began to feel an uneasy apprehension.
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Renate Finkh’s father had been an early supporter of Hitler and was keen to remain on the ‘right side’. He said openly that the Jews should emigrate. But then he found himself having to ask a popular player to leave the Ulm tennis club, of which he was chairman. It had come out that the man’s mother was Jewish. Renate’s parents discussed the dilemma over lunch. It was one thing to be against the Jews. ‘But it went against common decency to take action against someone they knew and who’d done them no harm.’ Renate was confused. How often had she been in Gold’s chocolate shop on the way to school to buy a few pennyworth of sweets? Now her mother happened to mention that Herr Gold was Jewish. Renate felt caught out, as if she’d been lying. She’d spent money in a forbidden shop. She never set foot in Gold’s again.
She came up with a plan to make amends for her transgression. Out playing in the yard, she crept into a shed belonging to their Jewish neighbour Fräulein Liebel and left behind a turd. When this woman broached the matter with her, Renate denied it rudely. For a long time, the young girl was terrified that Fräulein Liebel would talk to her parents. But she didn’t. Renate never told anyone this story.
I pushed it to the back of my mind, hid it away behind the ‘Jews Unwanted’ signs and the newspaper reports which blamed all the ills in the world on the Jews. But the stench pervaded.
Johann Radein took part in Nazi events with an enthusiastic if somewhat uneasy alacrity. The overblown language, by turns cloying and cruel, left him uncertain whether to feel happy or despondent. He had no defences against the rousing imagery, and the words and tunes went round and round in his head. Even during his first days as a member of the Hitler Youth, he swung from one mood to another. As his troop marched through Siefersheim, singing, their spirited young voices echoed off the rows of houses, and the farmers had to pull their carts over to let them pass. Johann’s heart was in his mouth every time.
We sang the same aggressive songs over and over. Nobody stopped us. Sometimes the songs gave me a heavy, queasy feeling in my stomach that often took hours to subside, like a fit of depression.
When the last song was sung, Johann made for home, no longer part of the column. Now the farmers looked down at him from their carts, dark and silent. Führer, flag and loyalty were far away. The magic had flown. Once the parade was done and the feeling of camaraderie had evaporated, Johann said, he often ‘fell into a deep emotional hole and felt very lonely’. The weight that settled on Johann’s shoulders as he headed home was as much a part of his memory as the high-spirited hours that had gone before.
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For most Germans, life after 1933 went on largely unchanged. As Raimund Pretzel observed, the facade of ordinary life was left intact. People went about their business. They went to the pictures or the theatre, sat in cafes, danced in dance halls, walked in parks or relaxed by the seaside. The tension and anxiety were hidden away beneath the surface. ‘Strangely enough,’ he said, ‘it was just this automatic continuation of ordinary life that hindered any lively, forceful reaction against the horror.’
Although Pretzel himself felt the horror, he too went about his business. He passed his state examination, did some occasional work as a lawyer, went to cinemas and cafes. He tried to remain friendly in his dealings with others and not to let himself be swept along by the hatred directed against those perceived as outsiders.
The only way is to turn a blind eye, block your ears, seal yourself off. You become so spineless as to be inured to what is going on around you and eventually you descend into a kind of madness and lose all grasp of reality.
For five years, Raimund Pretzel dragged himself around in a state of inner conflict. Then, in August 1938, he left Germany.