Opposition and Conformity in Nazi Germany

First they came for the communists

Martin Niemoller had commanded a U-boat in the First World War, voted Nazi in 1933, and welcomed Hitler as the man who would restore Germany. By the autumn of 1933 he was organising the Pastors Emergency League against the attempt to merge the Protestant churches into a Reich Church that would exclude Christians of Jewish descent. Around 6,000 of the 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany joined him. On 1 July 1937 he was arrested after preaching that the Church must obey God rather than men, and from 1938 he was held in Sachsenhausen as the personal prisoner of the Fuhrer, until 1945. He was one of the few. In the plebiscite of April 1938 on the union with Austria, 99 per cent voted yes, and the Sopade, the exiled socialist party that collected secret reports from inside Germany, told itself that the figure was rigged and the mood behind it was not. Unemployment had fallen from 6 million to under half a million, the Rhineland and Austria had been taken without a war, and the Gestapo, with perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 officers for 66 million people, relied on neighbours to do its watching. The exam asks how far the regime was supported, why most Germans went along with it, and who did not: the churches, and the teenagers of the Swing Youth and the Edelweiss Pirates. The hard question is whether conformity was fear or consent. This module gives you the dated evidence and the shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a 12-mark answer.

The churches and the regime, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• The Vatican signs the Concordat with the Reich
• Ludwig Muller becomes Reich Bishop and Niemoller founds the Pastors Emergency League
• The Confessing Church breaks from the Reich Church
• Mit brennender Sorge is read from Catholic pulpits across Germany
• Niemoller is arrested and hundreds of Confessing Church pastors follow
• Niemoller is sent to Sachsenhausen as a personal prisoner of Hitler

Why was there so little opposition?

Germany had 6 million Communist and Social Democrat voters in 1932. Which explanation best accounts for the absence of organised opposition by 1936?

• The organised opposition was destroyed first: the KPD and SPD were banned in 1933 and their leaders were in Dachau or abroad; the Gestapo and the camps made the cost of resistance known and the regime encouraged denunciation, so that a remark in a bar could end in Dachau; the regime delivered what most Germans wanted, work for the 6 million unemployed, the Rhineland in 1936 and Austria in 1938 without a shot; and the churches, the one institution that could have led resistance, chose to defend their own freedom rather than to oppose the state.
• Every German became a convinced Nazi by 1936.
• The Gestapo had an officer in every street watching every family.
• The churches ordered their members to support Hitler.

Two churches, two responses

The question on the churches wants the difference between Catholic and Protestant, and the limit both shared: they resisted for the Church, not against the state.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: from a report on public opinion in Germany compiled in 1938 by the Sopade, the Social Democratic Party in exile in Prague, from accounts smuggled out by its contacts inside the country. A student infers that the regime enjoyed real support even among people who disliked it. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• Even among workers who were formerly Social Democrats one hears: Hitler has achieved what nobody else could. Austria has come home without a shot being fired.
• Complaints about the price of fats and the shortage of eggs are heard in every queue and in every factory.
• A worker in the Ruhr said: I do not like the brown shirts, but I have had a job for three years now and under the old lot I had none.
• The reports were carried across the border by couriers and compiled in Prague.
• The trials of the priests are widely regarded as a put-up job, and church attendance has risen in Catholic districts.

The young who would not

Select the THREE statements that correctly describe youth opposition in the 1930s.

• The Swing Youth were mostly middle-class teenagers in Hamburg and Berlin who copied English fashion, danced to banned jazz records and mocked the Hitler Youth, and were treated by the Gestapo as political enemies from 1940 although they had no politics.
• The Edelweiss Pirates were working-class gangs in Cologne and the Ruhr, around 2,000 by 1939, who hiked and camped outside the Hitler Youth, sang songs against it, and fought its patrols, and were dealt with by the police as hooligans until the war made them resisters.
• Neither group threatened the regime: they were small, local and mostly non-political, and their importance for the exam is what they show about the limits of Nazi control of the young rather than about resistance.
• The White Rose distributed leaflets in Munich in 1936 and its leaders were executed that year.
• The Edelweiss Pirates were a national organisation with a leader and a programme.
• The Swing Youth were organised by the Confessing Church.

Two interpretations of conformity

Question 3 gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. Germans conformed because they were afraid. The left had been broken in 1933 and its leaders were in the camps, the Gestapo could arrest without charge, and every German knew that a neighbour, a colleague or a child in uniform might report a careless word. Support in the plebiscites was the support of people who had watched what happened to those who said no. Interpretation 2. Germans conformed because, on the whole, they approved. The Gestapo was tiny and depended on the public for its cases; the Sopade, which had every reason to find discontent, reported that even former socialists admired the jobs and the foreign policy; and the opposition that existed, from the churches and the young, was about protecting a space of its own, not about removing the regime. Terror was real, but it was needed against very few. Question 3(c) asks why they differ. The answer is the evidence each weighs: Interpretation 1 reads the camps, the arrests and the Gestapo files; Interpretation 2 reads the denunciations that filled those files, the Sopade reports and the plebiscites, and asks who was doing the informing. This meant that the same file can show fear to one historian and consent to the other, and the judgement in 3(d) turns on whether a regime that relies on its citizens to police each other is ruling by terror or by agreement.

In the shoes of a pastor, a priest, a worker and a teenager

Four choices Germans made between 1933 and 1938. Choose what was actually done in each case, and notice what each choice cost or spared.

• September 1933. You are Niemoller, a Berlin pastor who voted Nazi. The new Reich Church has adopted the Aryan paragraph, expelling pastors of Jewish descent. What do you do?
• July 1933. You are the Vatican. The Centre Party has dissolved itself and the Nazis offer a treaty: the Church keeps its schools, youth groups and worship, and stays out of politics. What do you do?
• 1936. You are a former SPD voter in the Ruhr, unemployed from 1930 to 1933 and in work since. A colleague makes a joke about Goring in the canteen. What do you do?
• 1938. You are sixteen, in Cologne, and hate the drill and the leaders of the Hitler Youth. Your friends have an edelweiss badge and go hiking at weekends. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because the KPD and SPD were banned in 1933 and their leaders sent to _____, there was no organisation left through which discontent could become resistance. Because the Gestapo had only 20,000 to 30,000 officers, it depended on _____ from the public, which made every neighbour a possible informer. Because unemployment fell from 6 million to under half a million and Austria came without a war, even former socialists told the Sopade that Hitler had done what nobody else could. Because the Vatican signed the _____ in July 1933, the Catholic Church had traded its political voice for its schools before the regime had shown its hand. And because Niemoller and the Confessing Church defended the independence of the _____ rather than attacking the state, their resistance was real, cost around 800 arrests in _____, and threatened nobody in power.

The Emergency League

Around 6,000 of the 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany joined the Pastors Emergency League in 1933. What percentage of pastors is that, to the nearest whole number?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• The main difference is that Interpretation 1 explains conformity by fear, pointing to the destruction of the left, the Gestapo and the camps, whereas Interpretation 2 explains it by approval, pointing to the small size of the Gestapo, the denunciations that fed it, the Sopade reports of admiration for full employment and Austria, and the limited aims of the opposition that did exist.
• Interpretation 2 says the Gestapo was tiny and relied on the public.
• I agree with Interpretation 1 because Niemoller was sent to a camp for a sermon.
• They differ because one thinks Germans were scared and one thinks they were happy.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why there was little opposition to the Nazi regime in the years 1933 to 1939. One reason there was little opposition was that the regime gave most Germans what they wanted. In January 1933 there were 6 million unemployed; by 1939 there were under 300,000, and a worker in the Ruhr who had been idle since 1930 had a wage, a paid holiday through Strength through Joy and the promise of a car. Abroad, the Rhineland was reoccupied in March 1936 and Austria annexed in March 1938 without a shot, which reversed the humiliations of Versailles that every party had promised to undo since 1919. This meant that even the former Social Democrats whose views the Sopade collected in secret admitted that Hitler had achieved what nobody else could, and that the discontent which existed was about the price of eggs and the treatment of priests rather than about the regime itself. Opposition was rare because, for most people most of the time, there seemed nothing worth the risk to oppose. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the figures, Strength through Joy, March 1936, March 1938, the Sopade); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question. Two more paragraphs, on the destruction of the left and the terror of the Gestapo and the camps, and on the choice of the churches to defend themselves rather than oppose the state, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why there was little opposition to the Nazi regime in the years 1933 to 1939. You may use the following in your answer: the Gestapo; the churches. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a figure, a name or a law
• Causes of your own: the banning of the left in 1933, the fall in unemployment and the foreign policy successes, or the reliance of the regime on denunciation

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks: How far do you agree with Interpretation 1 that Germans conformed because they were afraid? Use both interpretations and your own knowledge. A student has written the case FOR Interpretation 1. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• Fear explains silence but not the denunciations that made the silence necessary: a Gestapo of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 for 66 million could not have watched anyone without the neighbours who supplied most of its cases, and the Sopade, whose informants had every reason to find hatred, reported instead that former socialists admired the jobs and Austria, so the terror was real for communists, pastors and Jews and largely unnecessary for everyone else, which means fear kept the few quiet and consent kept the many content, and a judgement should give each its share of the population.
• Niemoller was brave, so Germans were not all afraid.
• Ninety-nine per cent voted yes in 1938, which proves they were not afraid.
• Germans fought to the end in 1945, so they must have supported Hitler.