Strange as it may seem to some of the people who know me, one of my old hobbies involved devouring anything and everything I could get my hands on concerning the Third Reich. I grew up in an ex-pat German family, so I had ample opportunity to get a feel for what life under the Reich really was like. My research served to flesh it out, and fill in a lot of the blanks. It even cleared up a mystery or two, such as what was going on with my father’s disappearing neighbors. He’d go to sleep at night, and in the morning, they were gone! Not a sound was heard. Poof! They just disappeared. More than one neighbor, more than once. My father always got uncomfortable, and went sort of pale, when he talked about that.
As an adult, I read William Shirer’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’, and there it was, an exact description of what my father had gone through! Turns out the authorities in his region were taking a page from the Spanish Inquisition. They were going around padding the wheels of vehicles so that no one would hear them, and spiriting off people in the dead of night. The reason? To instill maximum fear and dread into the locals. When people just ‘poof’ into the night, it is a lot scarier than when they are seen being dragged off.
You will notice that I said, ‘in his region’. I used that term because my father’s experience was completely different from my mother’s. They came from completely different regions, and Germany under Hitler was a mosaic of different regional ideologies. In some regions, the Gauleiters were kinder to the populace than in others. This was more than just a personality quirk; National Socialism was itself a hodgepodge of loosely glued together ideologies. Joseph Goebbels, for example, leaned strongly towards communism, and wanted a German-Russian peace. What held the whole ramshackle thing together was Adolf Hitler, and Adolf Hitler was a master at making everyone believe they were his one and only one.
My father grew up in Lower Saxony, and he had it very, very bad. Disappearing neighbors were the least of it! After his mother was declared unfit, he was fostered out to relatives, passed around, and eventually ended up in a boy’s home. If you are thinking that the government interfered unjustly in taking him away from a loving mother, don’t. It was completely justified. This was one thing that the Reich actually got right. There is one story he told about his childhood that really stands out. At the time, he was living with an aunt who was quite devout. He probably got his own interest in religion from her – but that has nothing to do with this. As the story goes, her house was raided on at least three occasions; the floor boards were ripped up, and any newly turned earth in the garden fell under government suspicion. What were they searching for? Apparently, her bible. That was how it went in that region.
Make no mistake about it, house searches were fairly normal. Authorities performed them for reasons that ranged from making sure Hitler’s photo and the obligatory copy of Mein Kampf were displayed correctly, to hunting for illegally hoarded butter and foodstuffs, to the well known ones where it was suspected that people were sheltering enemies of the state.
My mother, by comparison, fairly breezed through the era. Sure, they had to hide their butter under potted plants, and learned the requisite Nazi songs at school, but in general, nobody was forced to take it too seriously. One of the main differences was that the village school teacher was the ranking Nazi in the area, and he was only a member of the party because he’d been forced to join it. He routinely interfered in attempted arrests, smoothed things over, and he probably was the reason my grandfather and great-grandfather were not deported.
That side of the family is complicated, even more so than my father’s. My grandfather could not prove his racial purity due to an inability on the part of Reich genealogists to track his Hungarian mother’s family line. When it came to her, the entire village developed collective amnesia – which is quite common behavior among southern German villages when they don’t feel like cooperating. But, the threats of deportation did not come from that. No, it was because my grandfather and great-grandfather had the audacity to insult Nazism straight to the Kreisleiter’s face. Somehow, for some reason, they escaped punishment.
My grandmother’s half-brother, meanwhile, had been recruited from Hitler Youth into the SS. He had a blast strutting around, showing off his new position. It was not to last, however. By the end of the war, he’d had enough. This proves the lie to the assertion that the Hitler Youth and SS were maniacal fighters until the very end. When my uncle got shot in the arm, the army surgeon, seeing which way the wind was blowing, let his scalpel slip just enough to remove my uncle’s SS tattoo along with the bullet. Towards the end of the war, large numbers of SS men had their tattoos removed, but those removals were traceable. My uncle’s wasn’t.
But he still had to go into hiding after the war. The village, being the southern German village that it was, happily hid him. They also turned out on the steps of the town hall, and demanded the release of the village school teacher, who had been arrested by the allies. He’d done what he had to do to protect them all, and they were damned if they were going to let him be punished for it.
(image source: pixabay.com)
My Grandfather, meanwhile, had gotten the boot from the regular army, and been reassigned to the OT. The Todt Organization was a construction division that, after Fritz Todt’s death, was headed up by Albert Speer. Their job was to follow the regular army, rebuilding roads and other infrastructure destroyed by the fighting. My grandfather spent almost the entire war on the eastern front. His unit was behind the regular army at Stalingrad, and, when the Russians performed their pincher maneuver, he was far enough back to see it coming. He did what everyone else in my family seems to do when they see the enemy coming: he got the hell out of there!
Thus, he survived Stalingrad.
As the war came to its conclusion, he’d also had enough. At the time, he was on the Russian front, and, well… he deserted. He made his way, on foot, from Russia to his home in southern Germany. Along the way, it was the very same locals that the Germany army had overrun, and often brutalized, who now hid a German deserter from his own people.
Many strange myths grew up around the Nazis after the war. One was that theirs was a hyper-efficient regime. It wasn’t. Hitler let his underlings do whatever they wanted. There was no uniform ideological doctrine. Nazism was basically whatever you wanted to read into it. At times, it was more like a Three Stooges movie than an actual regime. That the German nation was able to fend off the super-powers of the time says more about them, than it does about the Nazi regime. What is says isn’t all that complimentary.
Unfortunately, we are now facing the utterly bizarre in terms of what the Nazi legend has become. There are conspiracy theorists who believe Hitler escaped and went to live on a base on the moon. Yes, they do! They also believe that the Nazis were in contact with a race of Aliens who bequeathed them extraterrestrial technology, and that Nazis have developed a secret space program for the United States of America.
No! No, no, no! I tell you, NO! If you put aside the strange histories, and talk to the people who were there – or at least read what they wrote – you soon find out that the Nazis were about as likely to have been contacted by aliens bearing gifts, as the Queen of England is likely to give it all up to go live in a fisherman’s hut. The Nazis, particularly the SS, were die-hard occultists. However, there is absolutely nothing that proves they had any success in their search for ancient knowledge. They were simply too scattered, too prone to in-fighting over territory and the Fuhrer’s favour, to pull off anything that spectacular.
The other bizarre thing that I see happening these days is the ‘Germany did nothing wrong’ movement. Many of its adherents present Hitler as a kind man, one who was totally misunderstood, and wrongly reviled.
Absolutely not!
Okay. I will agree that there has been a lot of exaggeration, and I support historical revisionists such as David Cole Stein. The right to question should also apply to the second world war. But… life in Nazi Germany was horrible for many regular Germans. Nazism was not very popular. People were threatened, beaten, and even killed for simply voicing dissent. Germany did a lot of wrong, and they did it to their own people.
As a Venezuelan living in a political, economical, social crisis i love to read these kind of history. It gives hope that a better future may come for my people and hopefully we also will have a nice story to tell.
What is happening in Venezuela is truly sad. I hope that better days are in store for your country. I've only been to Margarita, and I wish one day I will get to see more.
Great read... I love the history of Germany. I am in Berlin at the moment and i can't get enough! Dragging my poor boyfriend around to all the different sites asking him question after question but he isn't as interested as I am even though he is a Berliner :) So thanks for sharing also the personal details too I look forward to reading more from your posts
The whole Berlin is a museum! I love it
Yes me too Linzy I am going out exploring again today I can't wait :)
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This was so interesting and a coincidence i came across this post now as i have just started reading the Anne Frank book. Great topic to read and learn about.
This was a great read! I've always had a fascination with WWII. Your post was great at dipping into "behind the scenes" of what life was like for Germans during that time.
It's also horrifying to think that Holocaust Survivors today are terrified that they're watching history repeat itself. So many countries are in economic declines in the same manner that Germany was in, and someone waltzes up and seems like a saving grace when it's truly going to drag us down farther than we can pull ourselves up from. I would love to hear any other stories your family may have shared from the war. I don't have any relatives that were in WWII or if I did, they aren't alive anymore.
Thanks! There are couple of things I still want to write about. I should make a list, before I forget!
Nice. More please!
Excellent write up! Thanks for sharing!
Excellent read! I too am a bit of a history fan, and specifically military history.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich should be required reading in school, if for no other reason, it can halp future generations avoid making the same mistakes. I have just begun reading "The Nightmare Years" by Shirer. If you are looking for another great read from him, try "Berlin Diaries". Really gives you a day to day account of life in Berlin and the rest of Europe prior to 1942.
If I am not mistaken, I have read them. I was impressed by the switch in tone between his letters sent from Switzerland and what he was able to say when in Germany. The man was a brilliant journalist, but after the war he got dissed pretty good. Some people also tear Rise and Fall down these days. Sad. I am glad you like this!
Thank you for your story!
Hard to read your post=))
@ajdohmen as it seems with all well written posts here on Steemit, yours has driven me to search for answers.
A common saying about history is that, "History is written by the winners."
Down through the ages, people spoiling for war have pointed across a distance, whether it was across an ocean or over a mountain range, and said, "Those people over there are ALL bad."
Yes, Hitler was bad, Saddam Hussein was bad.
But we never seem to remember the people that created the conditions which allowed bad people to come to power.
Germans as a whole were punished for the actions of their government after World War I. It was the economic suffering of a people that drove them to accept Adolph Hitler as their savior.
Who imposed those economic conditions upon the German people?
Saddam Hussein was a handy proxy for the United States to supply chemical weapons and intelligence to, so they could be used against Iran. The nation whose democratically elected leader had been overthrown in a coup d'etat organized and funded by the CIA.
I would like to believe that most sane people, left to their own devices, would choose to live a peaceful life with their spouses and children. They do not hope and pray for war so that they can go to far away places and experience things that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
They don't wish for their children to be sent away, only to come back broken or in boxes.
It is only the politicians, the generals and admirals who sleep comfortably in their soft beds while the ordinary people suffer and die.
The dictators are merely convenient scapegoats after the fact.
The German people were worn down through numerous elections and referendums. They finally just gave up and let it happen. That is the whole point of putting the same things to a vote again and again. The de-nazification programs after the war was brutal in itself. I am don't know how many people know this, but in Germany it is now illegal to even mount a defense if you are accused to questioning even the tiniest aspect of the holocaust. Ernst Zundel's lawyer was sent to jail for defending him, and continuing to defend him as she was hauled out of the courtroom during his trial. As far as I am concerned, all the Nazi superman myths out there are because Germans were never allowed to publicly talk about what they really experienced. It is so complicated. I suggest to digging up some David Cole (Stein) vids, because he had a lot to say before the JDL put a hit on him and he changed identities. It really gives a person something to think about.
I've seen mention of prosecution of holocaust deniers in Germany.
I'm not denying it, I'm saying that the people who were responsible for bringing about the situation have never been exposed or held accountable.
The world wants to think that it was all Hitler's fault and the responsibility died with him and the others sentenced at Nuremberg.
I'd be interested to know how many innocent civilians have to die in order for an act to be considered a war crime.
Does the approximately 25,000 dead from the Dresden firebombings qualify?
How about the 100,000 killed in the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945?
War itself is a crime against humanity.
Revisionists and Deniers are not exactly the same, but that is for another time. In Germany it is not permitted to speak of this at all, which is a problem. One theory that could apply to your question is that if someone else's crime can be made to seem so horrific that your own crimes can be justified by it, then pump up the allegations to the maximum. You have to make the opposition look like monsters in order to cover the monstrosities that you have committed (or are planning to commit). It still goes on today. Look at the campaign against Saddam Hussien, and now Bashir al-Assad. People only consider something a war crime when it is the other side that it supposedly committing it. If their side is responsible, it isn't seen as a crime. Sad, but true. As far as I am concerned, no one has to be killed for a war crime to have been committed. Just dropping bombs on facilities or installations in another country is a war crime.
Agreed
Hitler did nothing wrong
Yes, it was a dictatorship, and some Germans most have suffered the system as much as the non-german countries involved. When you have a family you do everything to protect them.
It must be so nice to know that much about what occurred to your family during those times.
I hope you have it all documented for the future generations in your family :).
great post. this is an interesting read
https://steemit.com/film/@elenahornfilm/holocaust-lesson-in-germany-what-do-we-teach-our-kids-at-school
Hey! This film might be relevant to you..check it out. It's about the raise of neo-nazi in Germany and how German kids learn about the Holocaust.