Historical Background of Dissent in Germany 1933

There was a lot of political dissent in Germany in the early 1930s. That didn't just disappear when the Nazis came to power.

Not everybody in Germany was happy with the Nazis coming to power, especially with the Enabling Act and curtailing of civil rights. Many, especially those aligned with left-wing or pro-democratic groups, were terrified.

In the March 1933 election, SPD, KPD and Zentrum together got about 40%, and those parties, especially the former two, were strongly opposed to Nazism. The NSDAP got about 44% in total by itself.

Considering all that, I think about 30 to 40 dissent makes sense. It's not just about the opposition to Nazism, but also the after effects of the depression. The Nazi rise to power was really only finished with the death of Hindenburg.

There was a huge amount of internal dissent in Germany, even after the nazis took over. It only really died down when the German economy started gearing up for war and people focussed more on the coming war than on their own living conditions (which remained shitty throughout).

Weimar Germany was also full of political party militias. These had to be suppressed before Nazi rule was firm.

I think Joe is right on the money, Turk, and Saephil makes the essential point. Hitler didn't come to power by popular vote but was appointed to the office of Chancellor because of the vagaries of the German political system. Thus, when he took control in 1933 more than half of the voting German public wanted someone else. It was only when he started getting the economy moving and people back into work that his popularity started to increase.

I do disagree with Joe on the living conditions in Germany "throughout" however. I'm working from memory here, but I think that by 1936 Hitler had put more than two million Germans back in work and introduced a number of social support programs for those still unemployed. Statistically, Germany did better over that period, and indeed right up to the war, than any other industrialised nation and the improvement in living style is what gave him such great leverage in the later years. Of course the price payed for that was the war.

There's a very neat little analysis of that dynamic that suggests that while Hitler's preparation for war provided the impetus to get the German economy back on its feet, the only way to keep it there was more of the same - so war become an economic goal as well as an ideological one. Not unlike the military-industrial complex in the US from the 50s through the 70's and beyond.

Epaminondas said:

I do disagree with Joe on the living conditions in Germany "throughout" however. I'm working from memory here, but I think that by 1936 Hitler had put more than two million Germans back in work and introduced a number of social support programs for those still unemployed. Statistically, Germany did better over that period, and indeed right up to the war, than any other industrialised nation and the improvement in living style is what gave him such great leverage in the later years. Of course the price payed for that was the war.

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I minced my words, sorry.

Conditions *did* improve for most Germans, as a result of a recovery in the global economy. However, they did not, to my mind, improve beyond the pre-recession boom and more importantly, Nazi policy called for a reduction in the standards of living of German workers.

The nazis needed to find money to fund the war effort, and their options were limitted. They absolutely refused to print money, for faily obviously reasons - hyper inflation was still fresh in everyone's mind at this point. So they resorted instead to higher taxes and goods shortages (though price controls prevented an increase in the price of many goods, the result of this was huge shortages). Manufactured goods in particular, and anything that involved metal, were basically absent from the consumer economy post 1938, such was the army's requirement for steel.

The problem with this stuff is that everything's relative, so the viewing point basically dictates what we get to see.

I agree with everything you say here Joe but have a different read on what one of your points means. When you say that "Nazi policy called for a reduction in the standards of living of German workers" I think you're speaking in terms of absolutes and in those terms you're dead right. But that 'rightness' comes with the broader economic recovery. Throughout the German economic recovery, which Hitler brought in well in advance of its global successor, the situation of German workers (and Italian workers too for that matter) far outstripped that 'enjoyed' in other industrialised nations when it came to both comparative wage levels and rate of employment. And that's in spite of the fact that, as you say, Nazi policy did call for very severe restrictions on pay rises.

It didn't last of course, but even through the war years - when the allied nations imposed very strict wage controls of their own - the comparative wage of German workers eroded more slowly than their foreign counterparts. I'm sure that was of very little comfort to them, however, as they had increasingly little on which to spend it.

Do you think that maybe we're giving you more than you asked for Turk?

Epaminondas said:

The problem with this stuff is that everything's relative, so the viewing point basically dictates what we get to see.

I agree with everything you say here Joe but have a different read on what one of your points means. When you say that "Nazi policy called for a reduction in the standards of living of German workers" I think you're speaking in terms of absolutes and in those terms you're dead right. But that 'rightness' comes with the broader economic recovery. Throughout the German economic recovery, which Hitler brought in well in advance of its global successor, the situation of German workers (and Italian workers too for that matter) far outstripped that 'enjoyed' in other industrialised nations when it came to both comparative wage levels and rate of employment. And that's in spite of the fact that, as you say, Nazi policy did call for very severe restrictions on pay rises.

It didn't last of course, but even through the war years - when the allied nations imposed very strict wage controls of their own - the comparative wage of German workers eroded more slowly than their foreign counterparts. I'm sure that was of very little comfort to them, however, as they had increasingly little on which to spend it.

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Well German wages were still lower than those in the UK and France, which themselves were far below the USA. I don't have the correct book on me at the moment but wages for industrial goods in Germany were lower than the West and remained so throughout the war.

The German people also had their consumer goods being requisitioned indirectly by the military much earlier than in the West. The huge expansion of the Wermacht that took place pre-war was done so only by massively restricting the amount of steel available to the consumer economy. This meant less machine parts (which will drive up the price of all manufactured goods), less construction, less railroads. This squeeze was felt by Germans, though was offset to an extent by increased demand for exported goods. Taxes also went up throughout these periods, which cut further into disposable income.

Again I can't argue with you, Joe. You've got your facts straight as far as I know them, but as with all the facts economists like to hang their hats on they're subject to the action of other facts. Again, timing is one issue involved here, pricing is another, and finding the basis for meaningful comparison is a third.

Lumping them all together, the German economy, as far as the worker experienced it, took and maintained an upturn pretty much from the time Hitler established his 'pact' with the bankers and industrialists in 1933. There were slowdowns and tapering effects, but Germany came out of the Depression earlier than the democracies and was spared any German equivalent of the Roosevelt Recession. So the point at which we make our comparisons is important to the kind of data we generate. If we try to avoid that by taking a broad view over the entire period and compare Germany with the US, I think you're on very solid ground in asserting that American workers came through with a better wage outcome. But if we take the relative improvement in German workers' wages and employment rates from their appalling low base to their more or less stable 'high' and compare that with the same data set for the US, the situation is reversed. If we next factor in price control, which the Nazis progressively imposed and Britain and the US assiduously avoided, the German side of the equation improves further as the relative 'worth' of the German wage holds up better. Yet if we then consider the actual availability of consumer goods, as you rightly suggest we should, things turn around yet again.

I long ago gave up trying to figure out who had it better in any kind of comprehensive 'factual' basis, but since the point of Turk's inquiry is the level of dissent in Germany in 1933, I think the subjective experience of the people at the pointy end is the real yardstick by which to judge. And there I can't get past the uncomfortable fact that despite everything he put them through, the majority of the German people stuck with Hitler to the end. I figure that for that to have happened they must have come from a really dire place to begin with.

For details ,about pre war german economy,check this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany

That's an excellent reference, panzer - Wiki at its best. I don't think that it provides any definitive answers but in my view it asks all the right questions.