The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic
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Bending spines takes steady pressure in every area of life. Jacques Ellul observes: “Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life.”1 I have earlier discussed the quasi-religious nature of claims made on all aspects of life. Both the National Socialist and GDR
systems took power knowing that they would never win over the whole of the population. They wanted conviction but settled for outward assent from many citizens who refused or were unable to be true believers. They accepted varying levels of compliance and found ways of dealing with those who would not bend. In this chapter I shall consider the general demand for public unanimity, then examine specific ways in which citizens were persuaded to behave as if they believed things they did not believe.
The appearance of unanimity is critical. An ordinary state does not expect 100 percent agreement. Democratic states, in fact, expect a range of disagreements and even find social benefit in the competition of ideas and opinions. Totalitarian states that make absolute claims of truth cannot allow significant public disagreement. They know that heresy spreads.
Goebbels spoke in 1928 of ideas as a gas that moves invisibly from person 131
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to person.2 A better comparison is to a disease. Unless totalitarian societies
“quarantine” objectionable ideas, they spread, often rapidly. The solution is to make errant ideas invisible by making the consequences of spreading them sufficiently unpleasant to encourage silence. The sudden collapse of the GDR in 1989 surprised nearly everyone, since the system had succeeded in creating a Potemkin village of public unanimity that concealed, even from its own leaders and citizens, the shallowness of its support.
Unanimity in the Party
Any government prefers to present a united front to its political opponents and the nation as a whole, but for dictatorships with absolute claims such unanimity is crucial. As is often observed, the Nazi leadership squabbled incessantly behind the scenes, but Hitler personally ordered there be no public conflict. A September 1942 directive reminded party leaders that
“the Führer has repeatedly said that disagreements between leading party members must under all circumstances be kept from reaching the public.”3
The fact that he said so repeatedly proves a lack of success, but it also suggests the importance a united front had. A party that claims truth cannot have its leaders proposing conflicting truths. The problem is that the more capable the official, the more likely he was to see weaknesses. He either held his thoughts or got into trouble. As Michael Balfour observes about the Nazis, the “scarcity of believers with capacity meant that the replace-ments tended to be believers with reservations.”4
Maintaining unanimity at lower levels was relatively easy, given the Nazi “leadership principle.” Subordinates owed absolute obedience to their superiors. This did not in practice always prove to be the case, but certainly most Nazis shared the general sense that they were heading in the same direction, “working toward the Führer.” Local leaders could present themselves as doing the will of the Führer, maintaining at least the appearance of unity.
The GDR’s approach was different, but the goal was the same. Since learning from the Soviet Union was to learn victory, the GDR followed the Soviet model in which pressure for uniformity pervaded every aspect of life. This began at the top. One almost amusing example is indicative.
When Konstantin Chernenko was reporting to his Politburo colleagues in 1980, he stressed the fact that “‘Central Committee plenums last year
[1979] were conducted in a spirit of complete unanimity,’ prompting Andropov to remark, ‘That is an entirely proper conclusion. The plenums This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:52 UTC
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really did proceed in complete unanimity,’ and Pelshe to add, ‘And their decisions were also adopted unanimously.’ And when Chernenko mentioned that fifty-one sessions of the Central Committee Secretariat had taken place and that they had passed 1,327 regulations, Suslov and Andropov together piped up, ‘Like the Politburo, the Secretariat also conducted its business in complete unanimity.’”5 The GDR learned from the masters. Günter Schabowski reports only two lively discussions in the Politburo during his membership (1984–1989), one regarding the firing of Konrad Naumann, the Berlin SED first secretary, the second in September 1989 as things were already crumbling.6 Otherwise, unanimity prevailed.
Erich Honecker even voted for his own removal in October 1989.
Unanimity prevailed in the very language the leadership used. Party leaders generally spoke in a “Party Chinese” packed with Marxist-Leninist jargon and quoted the appropriate sources. In 1961 Honecker sent Walter Ulbricht his comments on a document about to be published. Honecker observed: “By the way, I noticed that the report did not mention even once that the Central Committee under the leadership of its First Secretary had done a great deal to carry out the decisions of the V. Party Congress.” Ulbricht underlined the passage and added “!!” in the margin.7 Party leaders packed their interminable speeches with jargon and standard phrases.
If the leaders practiced unanimity among themselves, the pressure on underlings was even more intense. The SED operated under rules that allowed for little public discussion. It was governed by the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. The final edition of the Concise Political Dictionary defined the term clearly: “Leadership of the party by an elected central, periodic election of all leading party organs by lower bodies, collective leadership, periodic reports of the party organs to those who elected them; firm party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority; absolute execution by lower organs and members of the decisions of higher organs . . . [and] active participation by party members in their organizations to implement these decisions.”8 Since the lower bodies had little real say in electing the higher ones and since the higher bodies did not report accurately to the lower ones, the result was a system that was centralized but not democratic.
The preamble to the 1975 SED party statute stated: “Any sign of faction-alism or group-building contradicts the nature of a Marxist-Leninist party and is incompatible with party membership.”9 Most party members, subject to discipline for any slight deviation from the party line and with numerous examples in mind of the penalties for deviation, knew better than This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:52 UTC
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to break rank. As those who questioned the wisdom of the SED’s decisions were sometimes told: “Do you think you are smarter than the collective wisdom of the party?”10 “Yes” was not the expected answer.
Party officials knew that disagreeing with their superiors was not a wise career move, nor was expressing any public doubt. Wolfgang Leonhard, a member of the GDR’s founding group who later fled to the West, wrote: “I have often seen it myself, that in conversation with people from the West an official who is wrestling with the severest internal doubts will stubbornly, and apparently with complete conviction, defend the official Party line. His Western interlocutor then leaves him with the firm conviction of having been talking to a 150% Stalinist.”11 With nearly everyone trying to persuade both subordinates and superiors of his or her ideological orthodoxy, there was general uncertainty as to what people really thought.
The system found other ways to emphasize obedience to authority. For example, late in the GDR’s history Landolf Scherzer published a small book titled Der Erste. It followe
d the first secretary of the SED Kreisleitung in Bad Salzungen as he went about his business and was relatively open (for the GDR) in discussing real problems. The book sold out immediately. Scherzer describes a meeting of party members unhappy to learn that the area will not get the new housing they had requested. The first secretary noted he had shared their hopes: “But I am a party worker and I will therefore not discuss the matter any longer. And I demand of each functionary here that we make this decision our opinion and that we collectively present it as our opinion.”12 The first secretary, portrayed as a dedicated and hard-working man doing his best for the people, saw the will of the party as his first obligation, regardless of his personal preferences. He modeled what was demanded of his subordinates and of all citizens.
Ninety-nine Percent Electoral Victories
That Nazi and SED leaders and members were in at least public agreement is not surprising. But what about the mass public appearance of support?
No one doubted in 1939 that Hitler was widely popular, and the scholarly literature has numerous embarrassing statements by leading scholars as late as 1989 who were confident that the GDR had a long and stable life ahead of it, based on its evident ability to maintain public support.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler distinguished between the members and the followers of a political organization. The members were those committed to the organization, those willing to fight and die for it. The followers might This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:52 UTC
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vote for a party but could not be relied on in times of crisis. In his closing speech at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, he looked to the day when every German would be a National Socialist, but only the best National Socialists would be members of the party. Speaking to those in radio in March 1933, Goebbels made his goals clear. The goal was to win 100 percent of the German people. “Once we have it, radio must help us hold it, defend it; it must so drench them with the spiritual message of our day that no one is any longer able to break free of it.”13
Both Hitler and Goebbels hint at the dilemma. The Nazis could not expect to win over entirely 100 percent of the population. Not everyone was a true believer. The “best” Germans might be party members, but what about the remaining 90 percent? How could they be kept from breaking through the miasma of propaganda? The solution was to create the impression of overwhelming public support for the regime, one so strong that few with doubts would dare express them in public. As Otto Dietrich said at the 1935
Nuremberg rally: “The public opinion of the German people is National Socialism.”14 That left little room for those who thought differently.
Elections are an illuminating illustration of the drive for unanimity. The Nazis got 37 percent of the vote in the July 1932 Reichstag election. In the manipulated but partially free election in March 1933, they received just under 44 percent of the vote. Eight months later, the party secured 92 percent in the November 1933 referendum. Normal methods of persuasion do not secure such drastic and rapid changes. The official figure for the August 1934 referendum, called after Hindenburg’s death, was 88 percent, but in some districts it was under 70 percent. This was an unpleasant surprise. An article in Unser Wille und Weg observed: “19 August has proven that 10 percent of the German people are still standing to the side. We may leave no means untried to win the greater part of them for the National Socialist state.”15 The word “win” suggests an honest effort to persuade, with the possibility of losing. But a loss was not acceptable. The party made sure that the 1936 and 1938 referendums produced results of 99 percent. No one believed that almost everyone in Germany thought the same way, but neither could a reasonable person know how many people did not think as Hitler wished. That uncertainty was critical. In the face of uncertainty, people held their tongues.
The GDR was no less fond of electoral unanimity. In sixteen of the seventeen Volkskammer (the national parliament) and communal elections, the official figures had over 99 percent of the participants voting for the candidates of the National Front, the SED-approved slate of candidates. The This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:52 UTC
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figure was allowed to drop to 98.85 percent in the final communal elections on 7 May 1989.16 Enormous effort went into encouraging voter turnout. Elections even provided opportunity for ordinary citizens to exert pressure. A hint that one might not vote sometimes moved an otherwise stubborn bureaucracy to respond to a citizen’s request.
The election of 17 September 1961, a month after the Berlin Wall was constructed, was particularly interesting. The GDR did everything it could to produce the illusion of mass support. Hundreds of thousands of election meetings encouraged citizens to vote. Bezirk Magdeburg alone held 25,072
meetings by 22 August, with 644,326 in attendance, 53 percent of the voting population. These meetings were often targeted to specific groups, such as physicians or Christians. With an average meeting attendance under 30, this was a great commitment of resources to encourage voting.17 The election results were never in doubt (particularly since the percentages could be manipulated to the appropriate number of digits after 99). The goal was not to win an election but to pressure citizens to make a public ceremony of obedience, to give a vote of approval to the Wall. Although citizens had the right to vote secretly, the expectation was that citizens would publicly cast their votes. As a slogan in Halle in 1961 put it: “He who is not willing to openly cast his vote for the candidates of the National Front votes for war.”18 With that clearly expressed, few GDR citizens took advantage of the secret ballot.
Elections were relatively unproblematic. Voting the wrong way had unpleasant consequences and little gain. The vast majority of those less than enthusiastic about the regimes made pragmatic decisions to avoid unnecessary difficulty. But what about day-to-day behavior? People complained, and often.
Tipping Points
The Nazis produced enormous numbers of reports on public attitudes, with various degrees of accuracy. Reports like this one from the Münster area in 1935 were common: “The mood of the population, especially workers, merchants and laborers, is depressed. A series of indications show that the enthusiasm of the broad masses for the National Socialist movement is not as it was in previous years.”19 The wartime reports of the SD are filled with critical comments from the population. The GDR had its share of similar reports. Dealing with the innate human tendency to complain required complicated mechanisms. Complaining could not be eliminated (“the This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:52 UTC
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bowel movement of the soul,” in Goebbels’s words), but it could be made less visible.
Ellul observes that all modern propaganda systems, democratic ones included, strive for unanimity, which is impossible when many complain in public.20 The difference is that totalitarian systems need more of it since they claim truths that they assert are beyond dispute. Both the Nazis and the Marxists knew it was necessary to be ever vigilant against any form of public disagreement.
Malcolm Gladwell develops an argument that ideas resemble epidemics.21 Some ideas, like some diseases, are more “contagious” than others. It is not always possible to predict in advance which variant of the flu or which idea will spread widely. At a certain “tipping point,” however, a disease or an idea that has spread sufficiently throughout the population becomes epidemic, often with startling suddenness. The flu and fashion spread in similar ways. They can also be stopped in similar ways. Everyone does not need to be vaccinated for a vaccine to be effective. If enough people are, the disease diminishes rather than spreads. In the same way, if enough people are reluctant to spread an idea, the idea d
iminishes. Totalitarian leaders recognized that some ideas had to be stopped from spreading. They further realized that reducing the number of people willing to express an idea can lead to the death of that idea in public discourse.
In May 1939 a Kreisleiter (Nazi county leader) wrote to the Gestapo about a citizen who had complained in public about Hitler and the party: “I urge you to do all you can to see that this man receives the most severe punishment. . . . Ch. seems to have had an infectious impact on the population of Neukirchen and the area around it.”22 The man was apparently well thought of, and his public comments were influential. The leaders of both systems had what Klaus Höpke, the GDR’s “minister for literature,”
later called a “fear of the word.” Words were contagious, the spoken word even more than the written.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence theory of public opinion suggests that we have a fine sense for distinguishing opinions that can be safely expressed from those that cannot.23 “Dangerous” opinions fade from public discussion. Even bringing them up risks, at the least, unfriendly looks from fellow citizens. We know what may lead to unpleasantness and seek to avoid it. Timur Kuran suggests a better phrase is the “spiral of prudence.” People commonly go beyond concealing their true opinions, beyond censoring themselves, to making statements in public that contradict This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:52 UTC
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their private beliefs but which they know will bring them advantage or allow them to avoid disadvantage.24
Public unanimity was reached in two ways: on the one hand, the systems encouraged desired behavior by various forms of social bribery, and, on the other, they discouraged undesired behavior by intimidation and force. The result, outwardly at least, was mass public support.
Much behavior was encouraged by the rewards it brought or the annoyances it avoided. I have already discussed voting; there was little cost to voting and considerable inconvenience to not voting. The mass organizations are another example. The Nazi Party and the SED were themselves mass organizations. Hitler’s goal for party membership, never quite reached, was 10 percent.25 A sixth of the adult population of the GDR belonged to the SED in 1988. Being a party member in either system put one under party discipline, greatly encouraging conformist behavior. For the majorities who were not party members, there was every manner of other organization, membership in which represented conformity to the demands of the system.