Analysis Of The Strategies Used By Nazis To Garner Popular Support

The popularity of the Nazi regime and its policies have been the subject of debate, controversy and historical analysis for a long time. Questions have been raised about the compliance of everyday citizens, was it out of fear or was it voluntary? Perhaps there was even enthusiastic support for Nazism as their propaganda ministry boldly suggests. This essay seeks to explore the strategies used by the NSDAP while they were in power to garner popular support and to discuss the successes or shortcomings of said strategies.

Four days after Hitler was appointed to the position of Rechskanzler he began outlining his goals and agenda in front of his military commanders. Hitler’s main goals were the “abolition of democracy and ‘eradicating Marxism root and branch’”. How was Hitler going to achieve this? Through cultural revolution. A total upheaval of the cultural zeitgeist and the values associated with the Weimar Republic, Hitler believed, would help turn the German people into a productive people with performance-oriented characters. Through the promotion of Volksgemeinschaft, Hitler believed that he could engineer the German people to become beacons of health, productivity and efficiency to be envied across the globe.

Hitler’s goal for a performance-oriented nation manifested itself through the creation of the Nationalsozialistische Gemeinschaft "Kraft durch Freude" (NSG "KdF") or National Socialist Community “Strength through Joy” program. This program, aimed at creating a Leistungsgemeinschaft (performance-oriented community), was initially focused on filling and controlling the weekend and leisure time, with organisational director of the NSDAP Robert Lay stating that with empty weekends, boredom would emerge, and boredom leads to “stupid, rabble-rousing criminal ideas”. Moreover, as the prospect of the Volksgemeinschaft grew, the KdF began looking for other ways to foster public support for the Nazi regime. Enter the resort at Prora Bay on the Island of Rugen, “the most colossal seaside resort of the world”. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were to travel to the Prora Resort for some rest and recuperation as a reward for hard work in the regime. The resort was designed as an affordable zone for Germans to travel to under the KdF program and experience a side of German culture they might not have experienced before. The idea of cheap travel oriented towards the working-class German was incredibly well received, however, several unexpected problems came up.

The first problem being the flagrant disregard for the KdF’s widely disseminated family politics, as it became clear that unskilled workers were still unable to front up the amount of money for travel expenses. The second problem arose from the tourism industry, unhappy with their spas and resorts being filled with KdF-holidaymakers rather than the original chic middle-class clientele that used the luxury resorts. However, the KdF’s egalitarian approach to societal issues which usually favoured the working class, supported the middle classes in this issue and began moving away from luxury hotels and sending KdF tourists to Austria and other undeveloped tourist areas. A rather unimpressive and unsuccessful attempt to foster popular support, seeing that Prora never got finished after many setbacks and the KdF’s willingness to part from egalitarian politics.

However, another Nazi party program to garner popular support took the form of propaganda. Produced by Reichsparteitag-Films, directed, produced and written by Leni Riefenstahl, the film Triumph des Willens as a good source as a historical recording or carefully contrived propaganda because it encapsulates an emotionalism of Nazi Germany and the fervour surrounding the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremburg, which the film shows to be attended by hundreds upon thousands of people. The importance of the Nuremburg rally is highlighted by the Nazis themselves with the films only explicit statements appearing at the beginning, stating “September 5, 1934, 20 years after the outbreak of the World War, 16 years after the start of the German suffering, 19 months after the start of Germany’s rebirth, Adolf Hitler flew once again to Nuremburg to hold a military rally”. The creation of such propaganda focusing on German suffering and the German rebirth in a propaganda film only helps to further the persistence of social divisions under the Nazi regime. The ideas of the Volksgemeinschaft were based upon race and value- qualities that were focused upon to override the Marxist divisions of class. The NSDAP party members were overwhelmingly derived from the various levels of the middle classes and their focus on race and value underpinned all their decisions and legislation, including propaganda. By using film, propaganda and placing an emphasis on who was valuable, the Nazis were implementing a program of societal eugenics to achieve their goal of a Volksgemeinschaft. Using sterilization and the promotion of Aryan values to ‘valuable women’ the Nazi regime increased the birth rates of their citizens, however, there is also a correlation between the higher birth-rates and a higher rate in marriage after the depression ended, so whether or not the Aryan-centric propaganda was useful in manipulating the social divide in order to create more Aryan children is debatable.

However, the most infamous of the Nazi regime’s programs to drum up popular support, with the longest legacy, aside from building giant resorts on an island perhaps, is the Volkswagen “people’s car” program. The Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) or German Labour Front people’s car program was an attempt by the Nazi regime to copy the consumerist brand in the United States. Modelled after Henry Ford’s car the Model T, the Nazi regime invested in creating a “people’s car”, the Volkswagen. After research and development, the question arose on who would be able to purchase the Fuhrer’s Volkswagen. According to studied undertaken by the German Bureau of Statistics in 1937 found that 80 per cent of pre-existing cars were being used for services in the trade and professional industries, only 1. 1 per cent of buyers were working class and a miniscule 13. 7 per cent of buyers were employees. In the August of 1938, the DAF started a savings system for the Volkswagen in which consumers could acquire a car within a four-and-a-half-year period, paying 5 Reichmarks per month. The program’s results were abysmal to say the least. By the start of World War II only 270, 000 people were participating in the savings plan, and in 1945, only 330, 000. Out of all the savers, only 5 per cent were workers, 5. 3 per cent were families with four or more children, whereas an astounding 40 per cent came from the commercial establishment. The people’s car was presented as a leisure mobile, aimed to help Germans satisfy their urge to travel and discover. Synonymous with the KdF’s attempt to increase structured leisure and state-sponsored fun, the Volkswagen acted as a money pit into which German citizens pooled money into the war effort and got literally nothing in return.

The NDSAP implemented several different social programs throughout its 12-year reign to garner, maintain and foster popular public support, but the successes have been many and varied, and the relative cost to benefit ratio for these public support initiatives begs the question if the investment was worth it at all? Hypothetically, if Hitler decided instead not to funnel so much money into research and development on the Volkswagen, he could have perhaps spent more money on maintaining, researching and developing better equipment for the winter war after foolishly deciding to invade Russia. However, that would be playing “the game of history” and that situation could end up with many other alternate endings, besides, aren’t we glad the Nazis lost?