How the Germans lived in the Third Reich. What was it like to be a resident of the Third Reich?

LIFE IN THE THIRD REICH: 1933–1937

It was precisely at this time, in the middle of the summer of 1934, that I arrived in the Third Reich to permanent job. And he discovered many things in the new Germany that impressed, puzzled, and alarmed the foreign observer. The overwhelming majority of the German people seemed to have nothing against the fact that they were deprived of personal freedom, that many cultural values were destroyed, offering senseless barbarism in return, that their life and work were subjected to such regulation as even he, accustomed for many generations to strict order

True, behind all this was hidden the fear of the Gestapo, the fear of falling into concentration camp, if you have gone beyond what is permitted, if you share the views of communists or socialists, if you are too liberal or pacifist, or if you are a Jew. The “bloody purge” of June 30, 1934 showed how merciless the new rulers could be. However, at first, Nazi terror affected relatively few Germans. An outside observer who had just arrived in the country was somewhat surprised that the Germans apparently did not recognize themselves as victims of intimidation and oppression by an unscrupulous and cruel dictatorship and, on the contrary, they supported this dictatorship with genuine enthusiasm. In some ways, Nazism gave them hope, new motivation and amazing faith in the future of the country.

Hitler was dealing with the past, which had brought so much trouble and disappointment. Step by step, without wasting time, which we will describe in detail later, he freed Germany from its last obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, which baffled the victorious countries, and restored Germany’s military power. The majority of Germans wanted this and were ready to make the sacrifices that the Fuhrer demanded: renunciation of personal freedom, meager food (“guns instead of butter”) and hard work. By the fall of 1936, the problem of unemployment was largely over: almost everyone able to work had a job. I have heard workers, deprived of the right to form trade unions, joke after a hearty lunch: “Under Hitler, the right to starve was abolished. The Nazi motto “Common interests above personal interests” became widespread in those days, and although many representatives of the party elite, primarily Goering, secretly enriched themselves, and the profits of entrepreneurs grew, there was no doubt that the masses believed in the “national socialism” that supposedly puts public welfare above one's personal gain. The racial laws that made the Jews outcasts of German society appeared to the shocked foreign observer as a return to primitive times; but since Nazi theories extolled the Germans as the salt of the earth and as a superior race, the country's population was far from negative about these laws. Some of the Germans (former socialists, liberals or true Christians from the old conservative strata) with whom I spoke were indignant and even indignant about the persecution of Jews, but, although in a number of cases they helped individual victims, the campaign of persecution was not stopped tried. “What can we do?” - they often asked. It was not easy to answer this question.

The press and radio, despite censorship, gave the Germans some idea of how critical the world community was, but this circumstance, as they could see, did not prevent foreigners from flooding into the Third Reich in droves and enjoying its hospitality. At that time, entry into Nazi Germany was much freer than entry into Soviet Russia. Tourism flourished in the country, bringing in large amounts of much-needed foreign currency. It seemed that the Nazi leadership had nothing to hide. A foreigner, be he any opponent of Nazism, could come to Germany and see and study everything he wanted, with the exception of concentration camps and, as in all other countries, military installations. And many came. And if, upon returning from there, they did not become adherents of Nazism, then at least they began to be tolerant of the “new Germany”, believing that they had discovered, as they put it, “positive changes” there. Even such an astute man as Lloyd George, who led England to victory over Germany in 1918 and who campaigned that year under the slogan “Kaiser to the Gallows!”, found it possible to visit Hitler in Obersalzberg in 1936, after which he publicly proclaimed him a “great man” who showed enough foresight and will to solve social problems modern state, first of all, the problem of unemployment, from which England still suffered, like an unhealed wound; The program proposed by this outstanding leader of the Liberal Party, called “We can defeat unemployment,” did not find support within the country.

The Olympic Games, held in August 1936 in Berlin, provided the Nazis with an excellent opportunity to surprise the world with the achievements of the Third Reich, and they did not fail to take advantage of this opportunity. Signs with the words “Jews are undesirable” that hung in shops, hotels, pubs, and entertainment establishments were slowly removed, the persecution of Jews and two Christian churches was temporarily stopped, and the country acquired a completely respectable appearance.

Not a single previous Olympics was so superbly organized or accompanied by such impressive spectacles as this one. Goering, Ribbentrop and Goebbels organized lavish receptions in honor of foreign guests. More than a thousand guests gathered for dinner at the Minister of Propaganda on the island of Pfaueninsel on Wannsee, where a grandiose performance called “Italian Night” took place, which was reminiscent of scenes from “The Arabian Nights”. Foreign guests, especially from England and America, were amazed: the sight of seemingly happy, healthy, friendly people rallying around Hitler was far from consistent with their ideas about Berlin, gleaned from the newspapers.

But behind the splendor of the Summer Olympic Games, an outside observer, at least a foreigner, could not help but see something that was hidden from tourists and that the Germans themselves stopped noticing or took for granted: the deterioration of the moral climate of German society. After all, no one hid the anti-Jewish, so-called Nuremberg laws adopted by Hitler on September 15, 1935, which deprived persons of this nationality of German citizenship. The laws prohibited marriages and extramarital affairs of Jews with Aryans, and Jews were deprived of the right to hire domestic servants from women of Aryan origin under thirty-five years of age. Over the next few years, thirteen more decrees were issued that essentially outlawed Jews. Moreover, in the summer of 1936, that is, just at the time when Germany, as the organizer of the Olympic Games, tried to captivate the imagination of guests arriving from the West, Jews either by law, because with the help of Nazi terror they began to install so many slingshots when entering service in government and private institutions that at least half of them were left without any means of subsistence. In 1933, the first year of the Third Reich, they were excluded from government service and from work in the press and radio, and were not allowed to engage in agriculture, teaching, or work in the field of theater and cinema; in 1934 they were expelled from the stock exchange. As for the ban on medical and legal practice, as well as trade, although it was imposed by law only in 1938, it actually began to operate at the end of the fourth year of Nazi rule.

Moreover, the Jews were denied not only the blessings of life, but also the most necessary things. In many cities it became difficult, if not impossible, for Jews to buy food. Above the doors of grocery stores, meat and dairy stores, and bakeries, signs hung: “No Jews allowed.” Often they could not provide milk for their children. Pharmacies did not supply them with medicine. Hotels did not provide overnight accommodation. And everywhere they went, mocking signs awaited them: “Jews are strictly prohibited from entering this city” or “Jews may enter here only at their own peril and risk.” On a steep bend in the road near Ludwigshafen there was a sign: “Caution - sharp turn! Jews - drive at a speed of 120 kilometers per hour!”

Such was the fate of the Jews during the Olympic Games - it was the beginning of a path that soon led them to physical death.

Persecution of Christian churches

Less than four months had passed, and on June 20 the Nazi government had already concluded a concordat with the Vatican, which guaranteed the freedom of the Catholic faith and the right of the church to independently “regulate its internal affairs.” On the German side, the treaty was signed by Papen, on the Vatican side - by his Secretary of State, Monsignor Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. The Nazi government began to violate the terms of the treaty almost before its text was put on paper; but, being concluded at a time when a wave of indignation was sweeping the world over the first excesses of the new German regime, the concordat undoubtedly contributed to the increase in prestige of Hitler's government, which it greatly needed.

On July 25, five days after the ratification of the concordat, the German government passed a sterilization law that particularly offended the Catholic Church. And five days later, the first steps were taken to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. In subsequent years, thousands of Catholic priests, monks and lay leaders were arrested, often on trumped-up charges of “immorality” and “foreign currency smuggling.” The leader of Catholic Action, Erich Klausener, as we already know, was killed during the purge on June 30, 1934. Dozens of Catholic publications were banned. Under pressure from Gestapo agents, the secret of confession was even violated. By the spring of 1937, the Catholic hierarchy in Germany, which, like most Protestant priests, had initially sought to cooperate with the new regime, had lost all illusions. On March 14, 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical entitled “With Deep Sorrow,” accusing the Nazi government of “deviating” from the provisions of the concordat, violating it and spreading “tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, slander, secret and open hostility towards Christ.” and the holy church." On the “Germany horizon” dad saw “impending storm clouds destructive religious wars... which have no other purpose than... extermination.”

Reverend Martin Niemöller welcomed the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. Then his autobiographical book entitled “From Submarine to Pulpit” was published. The story of how this man, who served as a submarine commander during the First World War, became a famous Protestant pastor, earned much praise from the Nazi press and was a great commercial success. To Pastor Niemöller, like many other Protestant ministers, the fourteen years of the republic seemed, as he put it, “years of darkness.” At the end of his autobiography, he notes with satisfaction that the Nazi revolution was finally victorious and led to " national revival“, for which he himself fought for so long, and for some time in the ranks of the “free corps”, from where many Nazi leaders came.

Soon, however, he was severely disappointed.

In Germany, as in the United States, Protestantism is divided into different denominations and churches. Only a very few Protestants - about 150 thousand out of 45 million - belonged to various nonconformist churches such as the Baptist and Methodist. The rest belonged to twenty-eight Lutheran and Reform churches, the largest of which was the Church of the North German Union, which united 18 million parishioners. With the advent of the National Socialist movement, there was a further division of Protestants. More fanatically minded Nazis of this religion organized in 1932 the “German Christian Movement”, the most violent leader of which was a certain Ludwig Müller, a chaplain from the East Prussian military district, an ardent supporter of Hitler; It was he who first brought Hitler together with General von Blomberg, who was then the commander of this district. “German Christians” actively preached Nazi ideas of racial superiority, trying to instill them in the Reich church and thereby contribute to the inclusion of all Protestants in a single congregation. In 1933, out of 17,000 Protestant pastors, about three thousand were “German Christians,” although these latter may have had disproportionate resources. a large number parishioners

The enemy of the “German Christians” was another group that called itself the “confessional church.” It consisted of approximately the same number of pastors, and Niemöller eventually became its head. She opposed the Nazification of Protestant churches, rejected the Nazis' racial theories, and condemned the anti-Christian ideas of Rosenberg and other Nazi leaders. The majority of Protestants took intermediate position. Apparently wary of joining any of the opposing groups, they preferred the role of observers and ended up largely in the hands of Hitler, accepting for granted his right to interfere in the affairs of the church and obeying his orders. It is difficult to understand the behavior of most Protestants in Germany in the early years of Nazism without considering two things: the history of Protestantism and the influence of Martin Luther. This great founder of Protestantism was both an ardent anti-Semite and an ardent champion of the idea of unconditional submission to political authority. He wanted Germany to get rid of the Jews, and advised that when expelling them, they should take away “all cash, precious stones, silver and gold... set fire to their synagogues and schools, destroy their homes... herd them like gypsies into tents or stables... and let they will wallow in poverty and bondage, constantly groaning and complaining to the Lord God about us.” This advice was followed four hundred years later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler.

During the Peasants' War of 1525 - perhaps the only mass uprising in German history - Luther called on the princes to mercilessly deal with the “mad dogs,” as he called the oppressed, desperate peasants. And here, as in his attacks against the Jews, Luther resorted to such rude, rigoristic expressions that history did not know until the advent of the Nazis. Many generations of Germans, especially Protestants, experienced the influence of this outstanding personality. Another consequence of this influence was the ease with which Protestantism in Germany became an instrument of the absolutism of kings and princes, from the 16th century until 1918, when the kings and princes were overthrown. Hereditary monarchs and petty rulers became archbishops of the Protestant Church on their lands. So, in Prussia, the king from the Hohenzollern dynasty became the head of the church. According to established tradition, in no other country, except for Tsarist Russia, did church ministers subserviently to state political power as in Germany. All of them, with rare exceptions, stood firmly for the king, the junkers and the army. Throughout the 19th century they consistently opposed liberal and democratic movements. Even the Weimar Republic was anathematized by most Protestant pastors, not only because it overthrew kings and princes, but also because it relied mainly on Catholics and socialists. During the elections to the Reichstag, it was impossible not to notice that the Protestant clergy, a typical representative of which was the same Niemöller, quite openly supported the nationalists and Nazis - the enemies of the republic. Like Niemöller, most pastors welcomed Adolf Hitler's assumption of the chancellorship in 1933.

They soon learned the Nazi strong-arm tactics that brought Hitler to power. In July 1933, representatives of Protestant churches drew up the text of the charter of the new Church of the Reich, which was officially recognized by the Reichstag on July 14. Immediately after this, a fierce struggle unfolded in connection with the election of the first bishop of the Reich. Hitler demanded that his friend Chaplain Müller, who served as his adviser on the affairs of the Protestant Church, be ordained to this highest rank. The leaders of the federation of churches proposed the famous theologian Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwing for this post. It was a naive calculation. The Nazi government intervened: dissolved several provincial church organizations, removed a number of leading dignitaries from positions in the Protestant churches, unleashed the SA and Gestapo on recalcitrant priests - in essence, terrorized everyone who supported Bodelschwing. On the eve of the election of delegates to the synod, which was to elect the bishop of the Reich, Hitler “called” on the radio for Protestants to vote for the “German Christians” who nominated Müller as their candidate. The intimidation tactic worked perfectly. Bodelschwing was forced to withdraw his candidacy, after which the majority of votes in the elections were given to “German Christians”; They elected Müller bishop of the Reich at the synod held in September in Wittenberg, where Luther first challenged Rome.

However, the new head of the church, a despotic man by nature, was unable to either create a unified church or completely Nazify the Protestant congregation. On November 13, 1933, the day after the overwhelming majority of the German people supported Hitler in a national referendum, “German Christians” held a mass rally in Berlin's Sportpalast. A certain Dr. Reinhardt Krause, the head of a sect in the Berlin district, proposed to abolish the Old Testament “with its cattle dealers and pimps” and revise New Testament with the goal of bringing the teachings of Christ “in full compliance with the requirements of National Socialism.” The texts of resolutions were prepared under the motto “One People, One Reich, One Faith,” demanding that all pastors take an oath of allegiance to Hitler and that all churches accept clauses concerning Aryans and the exclusion of Jewish converts. But this was too much even for humble Protestants, who refused to take any part in the war of the churches, so Bishop Müller was forced to disavow Dr. Krause.

In essence, the struggle between the Nazi government and the churches was of the same nature as the eternal dispute about what is Caesar's and what is God's. Hitler declared: if pro-Nazi “German Christians” are unable to subjugate the evangelical churches to Reich Bishop Müller, then the government will subjugate them. He always harbored dislike for Protestants, who constituted a tiny minority in his native Catholic Austria and two-thirds of the population in Germany. “You can twist them any way you want,” he once boasted to his assistant. “They obey... Small people, they obey like dogs, and they sweat from embarrassment when you talk to them.” Hitler knew very well that only a small number of pastors and an even smaller number of believers opposed the Nazification of Protestant churches.

By early 1934, the disillusioned Pastor Niemöller had become the soul of the minority opposition in the Confessional Church and the Extraordinary Pastor's League. At a general synod held at the BBL in May 1934, and at a special meeting held in November at Niemöller's Church of Jesus Christ in Dahlem, a suburb of Berlin, the "confessional church" declared itself the legitimate Protestant Church of Germany and established a temporary church administration. Thus, two groups were formed: one led by Reich Bishop Müller, the other led by Niemöller, and each claimed to be the legitimate church of Germany.

It became obvious that the former army chaplain, despite his closeness to Hitler, had failed to unite the Protestant churches, and at the end of 1935, when the Gestapo arrested seven hundred pastors of the "confessional church", he resigned and left the scene. Already in July 1935, Schitler appointed his friend the Nazi lawyer Hans Kerrl as minister of church affairs, instructing him to make another attempt to unite Protestants. At first, Kerrl, who was one of the moderate Nazis, achieved significant success. He managed not only to win over the conservative clergy, who constituted the majority, to his side, but also to establish a committee of churches, headed by the venerable Doctor Zellner, who enjoyed authority in all factions, to develop a common platform. But Niemöller's group, while not refusing to cooperate with the committee, continued to consider itself the only legitimate church. In May 1936, when she submitted a polite but forceful memorandum to Hitler protesting the anti-Christian tendencies of the new regime, condemning its anti-Semitism and demanding an end to state interference in church affairs, Interior Minister Frick responded with brutal repression. Hundreds of Confessional Church pastors were arrested, and Dr. Weissler, one of the signatories of the memorandum, was killed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The cash register of the “confessional church” was confiscated, and the collection of donations was prohibited.

On February 12, 1937, Dr. Zellner resigned as chairman of the committee of churches (the Gestapo forbade him to visit Lubeck, where nine Protestant pastors were imprisoned), complaining about the obstacles caused by the Minister of Church Affairs. Dr. Kerrl answered him in a speech delivered the next day to a group of obedient priests. He in turn accused Zoellner of failing to appreciate the Nazi theory of the "race of blood and soil" and clearly demonstrated the government's hostility towards both the Protestant and Catholic churches.

“The Party,” Kerr said, “stands on the platform of positive Christianity, and positive Christianity is National Socialism... National Socialism is the will of God... The will of God is embodied in German blood... Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen, Catholic Bishop of Munster, tried to instill to me that Christianity implies faith in Christ as the son of God. I felt funny... No, Christianity does not depend on the apostolic creed... The true personification of Christianity is the party, and the party, and first of all the Fuhrer, calls on the German people to support true Christianity... The Fuhrer is the exponent of the new divine will.”

On July 1, 1937, Dr. Niemöller was arrested and imprisoned in Berlin's Moabit prison. On June 27, as always, he read a sermon to the members of his congregation in a crowded Dahlem church, which became his last in the Third Reich. As if sensing what would happen to him, he said: “We no more than the ancient apostles think of using force to save ourselves from the hands of the authorities. And no more than they are ready to remain silent on the orders of man, when God himself commands us to speak. For our duty was and remains to do the will of God, and not of man.”

On March 2, 1938, after eight months in prison, he was tried in a “special court” established by the Nazis for state criminals; on the main charge (“secret subversion against the state”), the court acquitted him, but found him guilty of “abuse of the pulpit” and collecting donations in a church building, for which he was fined two thousand marks and sentenced to seven months in prison conclusions. Since Niemöller had already served more than his sentence, the court ordered his release, but upon leaving the courtroom he was captured by the Gestapo, taken into custody and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. From there he was transported to the Dachau camp, where he remained for seven years until he was liberated by Allied forces.

In addition to Niemöller, 807 pastors and laymen of active adherents of the “confessional church” were arrested in 1937, and hundreds of others were arrested in the next one or two years. If the resistance of the Niemeller wing was not completely broken, then, in any case, it was crushed. As for the majority of Protestant pastors, they, like almost all German citizens, submitted to Nazi terror. At the end of 1937, Dr. Kerrl forced the very venerable Bishop Mararens of Hanover to make a public statement, which could not but seem particularly humiliating to such persistent people, as Niemöller: “The National Socialist worldview, based on national and political teaching, defines and characterizes German maturity. As such, it is also obligatory for “German Christians.” And in the spring of 1938, Bishop Mararens took the last, final step, ordering all the pastors of his diocese to take a personal oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer. Soon the majority of Protestant priests bound themselves to this oath, thereby legally and morally obliging themselves to carry out the dictator’s orders.

It would be a mistake to believe that the persecution of Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi state traumatized the German people or greatly disturbed large sections of them. Nothing like this. A people who easily gave up freedoms in other areas of life - political, cultural, economic, was not, with relatively rare exceptions, going to face death or even expose themselves to the danger of arrest in the name of freedom of religion. What really touched the Germans in the thirties was Hitler's impressive successes in eliminating unemployment, raising economic levels, restoring military power, as well as successive victories in the field of foreign policy. Few Germans lost sleep because of the arrest of several thousand priests or because of the quarrels between different sects of Protestants. Even fewer realized that the Nazi regime, under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler and with the support of Hitler, intended to eradicate the Christian faith, replacing it with the old, pre-Christian religion of the Germanic tribes, combined with the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of Hitler's closest associates, openly stated in 1941, “National Socialism and Christianity are incompatible.”

What Hitler's leadership had in store for Germany was clearly articulated in the thirty-point program for a "national church of the Reich" drawn up during the war by Rosenberg, an outspoken ideologist of paganism. Along with other duties, Rosenberg served as "the Fuhrer's representative in the system of complete intellectual and philosophical education and training in the spirit of the National Socialist Party."

Here are some of the most significant points of this program:

"1. The National Church of the German Reich categorically demands the exclusive right and exclusive authority to control all churches located within the Reich. She declares them the national churches of the German Reich...

5. The national church is determined to completely eradicate... the alien and foreign Christian confessions brought to Germany in the ill-fated year 800...

7. The national church does not have preachers, pastors, chaplains and other priests, but only national speakers of the Reich...

13. The national church demands an immediate stop to the publication and distribution of the Bible in the country.

14. The national church declares... to the German nation that Maya Kampf is the greatest document. This book... represents the purest and truest ethic of life of our nation now and in the future...

18. The national church will remove all crucifixes, bibles and images of saints from its altars.

19. There should be nothing in the altars except “Maya Kampf” (for the German nation and, therefore, for God this is the most sacred book) and... a sword...

30. On the day of the founding of the national church, the Christian cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels... and replaced by the only invincible symbol - the swastika.”

Nazification of culture

On the evening of May 10, 1933, approximately four and a half months after Hitler became chancellor, an event occurred in Berlin that was witnessed by western world haven't been since late Middle Ages. Around midnight, a torchlight procession in which thousands of students took part ended in the park on Unter den Linden, opposite the University of Berlin. They threw their torches into the huge mountain of books collected here, and when they were engulfed in flames, new piles of books flew into the fire. In total, about 20 thousand books were burned. Similar scenes could be observed in several other cities - this is how the mass burning of books began.

Many of the books thrown into the fire that night with the approval of Dr. Goebbels by the jubilant students of Berlin were written worldwide famous authors. Of the German authors whose books ended up in the fire, we can name Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Jacob Wasserman, Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, Walter Rathenau, Albert Einstein, Alfred Kerr and Hugo Preuss. The latter is a German scientist who once drafted the Weimar Constitution. The books of many foreign authors were burned, such as Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, H.G. Wells, Havelock Ellis, Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Andre Gide, Emile Zola, Marcel Proust. According to the student proclamation, any book “that undermines our future or strikes at the foundations of German thought, the German family and driving forces our people." While the books were turning to ashes, the new Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Goebbels, addressed the students, who considered his main task to put a Nazi straitjacket on German culture. “The soul of the German people will again be able to express itself,” he proclaimed. - This fire is intended to illuminate not only the final decline of the old era. It also highlights the advent of a new era.”

The beginning of the new, Nazi era of German culture was marked not only by bonfires of books and a more effective, although less symbolic, measure, a ban on the sale and lending of hundreds of books in libraries, on the publication of many new books, but also by the regulation of all cultural life on a scale previously unknown to any Western state. Back on September 22, 1933, the Reich Chamber of Culture, headed by Dr. Goebbels, was legally established. The law defined its purpose as follows: “In order to implement German cultural policy, it is necessary to gather creative workers in all areas into a single organization under the leadership of the Reich. The Reich must not only determine the direction of intellectual and spiritual progress, but also organize and direct the activities of workers in various spheres of culture.”

To guide and control each sphere of cultural life, seven chambers were created: fine arts, music, theater, literature, press, radio broadcasting and cinema. All persons working in these areas were required to join the relevant chambers, whose decisions and instructions had the force of law. In addition to other rights, the chambers were given the right to exclude persons from their composition due to their political unreliability or not to admit them there. This meant that those who were not particularly enthusiastic about National Socialism could lose the right to pursue their professional activity in art and thereby lose their livelihood. Among those who lived in Germany in the 1930s and were sincerely concerned about the fate of its culture, there was not a single figure who did not note its horrific decline. Naturally, this decline became inevitable as soon as the Nazi leaders decided that the visual arts, literature, radio and cinema should serve solely the purpose of propaganda for the new regime and its ridiculous philosophy. None of the then living German writers, with the exception of Ernst Jünger and the early Ernst Wichert, was published in Nazi Germany. Almost all the writers, led by Thomas Mann, emigrated, and the few who remained remained silent or were forced into silence. The manuscript of any book or play had to be submitted to the Ministry of Propaganda in order to obtain permission for publication or production.

Music was in a more advantageous position, since it was the art most distant from politics and the German musical treasury was filled with outstanding works, from Bach, Beethoven and Mozart to Brahms. But performing the music of Mendelssohn, who was Jewish, was, for example, prohibited, as was the music of the leading modern German composer Paul Hindemith. Jews were quickly excluded from leading symphony orchestras and opera houses. Unlike writers, most prominent figures German musical art decided to remain in Nazi Germany and essentially lend their names and talents to the service of the “new order.” One of the most outstanding conductors of the century, Wilhelm Furtwängler, did not leave the country either. For about a year he was in disgrace for speaking out in defense of Hindemith, but then returned to active musical activity, which he carried on throughout the subsequent years of Hitler's rule. Richard Strauss, the leading contemporary German composer, also remained. For some time he was president of the chamber of music, associating his name with Goebbels’s prostitution of culture. The famous pianist Walter Gieseking, with the approval of Goebbels, toured mainly abroad, promoting German culture. Thanks to the fact that musicians did not emigrate, and also thanks to the enormous classical heritage, during the Third Reich it was possible to enjoy excellent performances of opera and symphonic music. The orchestras of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin State Opera were considered unsurpassed in this sense. Great music helped people forget about the decline of other arts and the many hardships of life under Nazism.

It should be noted that the theater also preserved traditions, but only in productions of the classical repertoire. Of course, Max Reinhardt emigrated, as did other directors, theater directors and actors of Jewish nationality. The plays of Nazi playwrights were laughably weak, and the general public avoided them. The stage life of such plays turned out to be very short-lived. The president of the theater chamber was a certain Hans Jost, a failed playwright who once publicly boasted that when someone used the word “culture” in front of him, his hand involuntarily reached for a pistol. But even Jost and Goebbels, who determined who should act and who should stage, were unable to prevent German theaters from staging the dramatic works of Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare.

Oddly enough, some of Bernard Shaw's plays were allowed to be staged in Nazi Germany, probably because he ridiculed English morals and made scathing comments about democracy, and also because his wit and left-wing political statements did not reach the Nazis.

Even stranger was the fate of the great German playwright Gerhard Hauptmann. During the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II, his plays were prohibited from being staged in imperial theaters because he was an ardent supporter of socialism. During the Weimar Republic, he became Germany's most popular playwright and managed to maintain this position in the Third Reich, where his plays continued to be performed. I will never forget the scene at the end of the premiere of his last play, Daughter of the Cathedral, when Hauptmann, a venerable old man with flowing gray hair falling over his black cape, left the theater on the arm of Dr. Goebbels and Jost. Like many other famous people in Germany, he resigned himself to the Hitler regime, and the cunning Goebbels extracted a propaganda effect from this, never tired of reminding the German people and the whole world that the greatest modern German playwright, a former socialist and defender of ordinary workers, not only remained in the Third Reich , but also continues to write plays that are performed on theater stages.

How sincere or adaptable or simply fickle this elderly playwright was can be inferred from what happened after the war. The American authorities, believing that Hauptmann served the Nazis too zealously, banned his plays in their sector West Berlin. The Russians invited him to East Berlin and gave him a hero's welcome, organizing a festival of his plays. And in October 1945, Hauptmann sent a letter to the communist-led “Union of Culture for the Democratic Revival of Germany”, wishing him success and expressing hope that the union would be able to ensure a “spiritual revival” of the German people.

Germany, which gave the world Dürer and Cranach, was unable to produce a single outstanding master in the field of modern fine art, although German expressionism in painting and the Munich urban school in architecture were interesting and original trends, and German artists reflected in their work all the evolutions and ups , which were characteristic of impressionism, cubism and dadaism.

For Hitler, who considered himself a real artist, despite the fact that he was never recognized in Vienna, everyone modern Art bore the stamp of degeneration and meaninglessness. In Mein Kampf he launched into a long tirade on this subject, and after coming to power one of his first measures was to “cleanse” Germany of decadent art and attempt to replace it with new art. Almost 6500 paintings contemporary artists, such as Kokoschka and Grosz, as well as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and many others, were removed from German museums.

What replaced them was revealed in the summer of 1937, when Hitler officially opened the “House of German Art” in Munich, in a tan building built in a pseudo-classical style. He himself helped design the building and called it “incomparable and unsurpassed.” Some 900 works were squeezed into this first exhibition of Nazi art, selected from 15,000 submitted. The author of these lines has never seen a more absurd selection in any country. Hitler personally made the final selection and, as his party comrades who were present testified, lost his temper at the sight of some of the paintings selected for display by the Nazi jury, chaired by the mediocre painter Adolf Ziegler. He not only ordered them to be thrown out immediately, but also punched several of them with a blow from his army boot.

“I have always been determined,” he said in a long speech at the opening of the exhibition, “if fate brings us to power, not to go into discussion of these issues (appraisal of works of art), but to act.” He did.

In a speech given on July 18, 1937, he outlined the Nazi line regarding German art:

“Works of art that are impossible to understand and that require a whole series of explanations in order to prove their right to exist and find their way to neurasthenics who perceive such stupid and impudent nonsense will no longer be in the public domain. And let no one have any illusions on this score! National Socialism is determined to cleanse German Reich and our people from all these influences that threaten its existence and spirit... With the opening of this exhibition, madness in art comes to an end, and with it the corruption of our people by such art..."

Yet some Germans, especially in an art center like Munich, chose to remain artistically “corrupt.” At the opposite end of the city, in a ramshackle gallery accessible only by a narrow staircase, there was an exhibition of “degenerate” art that Dr. Goebbels organized to show the people what Hitler was saving them from. It presented a brilliant collection of modern paintings by Kokoschka, Chagall, works of expressionists and impressionists. On the day I visited there, having previously walked around the countless halls of the “House of German Art,” the gallery was full of people. A long line lined the creaky stairs and ended in the street. The crowds besieging the gallery became so large that Dr. Goebbels, angry and embarrassed, soon closed the exhibition.

Control over the press, radio and cinema

Every morning, the publishers of the daily Berlin newspapers and correspondents of newspapers published in other cities of the Reich gathered at the Ministry of Propaganda to listen to instructions from Dr. Goebbels or one of his deputies on what news to print and what not, how to present the material and what titles it campaigns to curtail and which ones to expand, what are the most pressing topics for editorials today. To avoid any misunderstandings, a written directive for the day was issued, and oral instructions were also given. For small rural newspapers and periodicals, directives were transmitted by telegraph or sent by mail.

In order to be a publisher in the Third Reich, one had first of all to have a politically and racially pure profile. The Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933 declared journalism a public profession; in accordance with this, it was stipulated that publishers must have German citizenship, Aryan origin and not be married to persons of Jewish nationality. Section 14 of the Press Law ordered publishers “not to publish in newspapers anything that in one way or another misleads the reader, confuses selfish goals with public ones and leads to a weakening of the power of the German Reich from within or without, to undermining the will of the German people, the defense of Germany, its culture.” and the economy, as well as everything that offends the honor and dignity of Germany.” Such a law, if it had been put into effect before 1933, would have meant prohibiting the activities of all Nazi publishers and the publication of all Nazi-related publications in the country. Now it led to the closure of those magazines and the expulsion from work of those journalists who did not want to be in the service of the Nazis.

One of the first newspapers to cease to exist was the Vossische Zeitung newspaper. Founded in 1704 and boasting past support from the likes of Frederick the Great, Lessing and Rathenau, it has become Germany's leading newspaper, comparable to the likes of the English Times and the American New York Times. But it was liberal and it was owned by the Ullstein families, who were Jewish by origin. It closed on April 1, 1934 after 230 years of continuous existence. Another world-famous liberal newspaper, the Berliner Tageblatt, lasted somewhat longer, until 1937, although its owner Hans Lakmaga Mosse, also a Jew, was forced to give up his share of the capital in the spring of 1933. The third German liberal newspaper with a large circulation, the Frankfurter Zeitung, also continued to publish after it parted ways with its Jewish publishers. Its publisher was Rudol Kircher. Like Karl Zileks, publisher of the conservative Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, published in Berlin, he was a correspondent for his newspaper in London. A Rhodesian, passionate Anglophile and liberal, Kircher served the Nazis faithfully. Moreover, according to Otto Dietrich, chief of the Reich press, he, like the former “opposition” newspapers, was “a greater Catholic than the Pope himself.”

The fact that these newspapers survived is partly due to the intervention of the German Foreign Office, which wanted these world-famous newspapers to serve as a kind of showcase for Nazi Germany abroad and at the same time serve as a means of propaganda. Since all newspapers in Germany were told what to publish and how to present those publications, the German press inevitably found itself in the grip of a stifling conformity. Even among people accustomed to regulation and accustomed to obeying authorities, newspapers began to cause boredom. As a result, even leading Nazi newspapers, such as the morning Völkischer Beobachter and the evening Der Angriff, were forced to reduce their circulation. The overall circulation of German newspapers also fell as control over them increased and they passed into the hands of Nazi publishers. During the first four years of the Third Reich, the number of daily newspapers dropped from 3,607 to 2,671.

author Voropaev Sergey

Cinematography in the Third Reich After the Nazis came to power, German cinematography, which had previously received worldwide recognition thanks to the originality and talent of German actors and directors, became an integral part of the Gleichschaltung program - the subjugation of all spheres of life