LTI is an eyewitness account of the Third Reich as seen from within – not of how life inside it harshened and became ever more brutalized throughout the 1930s and on into the 1940s, but rather of how the language changed. Klemperer kept a diary, its first entries are dated the spring of 1933, at the time he still holds his professorship and thereby a prominent position in society, and while his entries exhibit concern, such concern is mild in nature: a mere disquiet. Gradually, all that is Jewish is separated from the German, and the German bolstered everywhere. In Leipzig a commission is established for the nationalization of the university. A bulletin board in Klemperer’s department carries the words: “If a Jew writes in German, he is lying.” The word Volk – most simply “people” in English – is all over the place, in every context: Volksfest (public festival), Volksgenosse (ethnic comrade), Volksgemeinschaft (ethnic community), volksnah (in touch with the people), volksfremd (alien to the people), volksentstammt (descended from the people). Hitler himself is der Volkskanzler – the people’s chancellor – and the elevation of the nation becomes the National Socialist revolution. A ceremony is held at the grave of “Rathenau-eliminators.” By summer Klemperer senses that the people are weary of Hitler, as if they are exhausted by all the propaganda. On August 22 he writes:
Frau Krappmann, the deputy concierge, married to a postal inspector: “Professor Klemperer, by 1 October, the ‘Hospitality’ club of the postal workers of section A 19 will be brought into line [gleichgeschaltet] by the Nazis. But they will not receive any of its capital; a sausage dinner will be organized for the gentlemen, followed by coffee and cake for the ladies.” Annemarie, clinically blunt as ever, relates the remark of a colleague wearing an armband with a swastika: “What is one supposed to do? It’s like a lady’s sanitary towel.” And Kuske, the grocer, recites the new evening prayer: “Dear Lord, make me dumb, so that to Hohnstein I never come.” Am I deceiving myself if I derive some hope from all this?
Three days later Klemperer writes that his vice-chancellor has politely asked if he might hold back on publishing an article he has written; instead he approaches another publishing house, receiving a speedy rejection on the grounds that the piece is lacking the necessary national angles (völkische Gesichtspunkte). On August 28 he writes that he does not believe the people are going to go along with things much longer. He tells of going on a bus trip, a “mystery tour,” some eighty people in two busloads, “the most petty-bourgeois company imaginable.” During a coffee stop entertainment is laid on, a compère recites a pathos-ridden poem in praise of the Führer, the savior of Germany, and the new national community; the audience is silent and apathetic, the applause that follows entirely without enthusiasm. To top things off the man tells a funny story about something that happened at the hairdresser’s, a Jewish woman wants a permanent, only to be refused, for as the hairdresser says, “The Führer solemnly promised on the occasion of the boycott of the Jews that no one is to harm a hair on a Jew’s head.” The story meets with laughter and enthusiastic applause. Three weeks later he relates some scenes from the party rally at Nuremberg that he has seen at the cinema. Hitler blesses new members of the Sturmabteilung by allowing them to touch the Blutfahne, the Blood Banner, from the failed coup attempt of 1923. Other Nazi banners are touched by the Blutfahne, thereby becoming consecrated, and cannon are fired in celebration. Klemperer reflects upon the name: “Blood Banner.” He ponders the way that whatever has to do with the National Socialist party is elevated from the political to the religious sphere. He descibes those in attendance, how devout they appear toward the scenes that are played out before their eyes. The rallies are cult ceremonies, a ritualistic action, he writes, National Socialism is a religion. He learns of Jewish colleagues dismissed from their jobs. A colleague of Klemperer asks if Klemperer and his wife can receive a guest, “an enemy of the state” unexpectedly released from prison, the man had written about Marx and was deemed “politically unreliable” (politisch unzuverlässig). Klemperer notes that the philological journals are pervaded by Third Reich jargon: “science on a National Socialist footing,” “the Jewish spirit,” “the Novembrists.” Deductions are made from his salary, a “voluntary winter charity” donation; he reflects on the the words “tax” and “charity,” the way the latter appeals to the emotions. October 29, a sudden directive: every Tuesday afternoon the students are to gather for military sporting exercises – Wehrsport – instead of attending lectures. He notes the same word used for a brand of cigarettes: Military Sport brand (Marke Wehrsport). He hears about some communists who have been interned in a concentration camp. He reflects on the word Konzentrationslager (“concentration camp”). When he was a boy, he writes, the word had an exotic, colonial, and quite un-German ring to it, he heard mention of it in talk of the Boer War conducted by the English, after that the word disappeared from common usage, but now suddenly it had reappeared to describe a German institution, a permanent peacetime establishment directed against Germans, and he considers that the word will henceforth through all time be associated with Hitler’s Germany.
He asks himself if it is heartless of him, a manifestation of some pedantic schoolmasterly streak, that he keeps returning to this philology of misery? He searches his conscience, he writes, and comes to the conclusion that it is not heartless, but a matter of self-preservation.
Disconcertingly few students find their way to his lectures. The Jewish students carry yellow cards, the stateless blue, the German brown. He lectures in French, in itself unpatriotic, and he is a Jew; attending his lectures requires courage, he writes. Besides, the students are more interested in “military sports exercises” or else are helping out with propaganda or taking part in demonstrations and rallies ahead of the upcoming referendum. He rages about Hitler’s “unified list of candidates” (Einheitsliste) and maintains that it means the end of the Reichstag as a parliament. All wear little buttons with the word Ja on their lapels, he writes, and one cannot turn the button sellers away without being viewed with suspicion. He calls it such a “rape of the general public” that it must surely work against itself. But he has held this belief for some time; Goebbels addresses an intoxicated common herd, Klemperer is an intellectual and has been wrong all along. He mentions having a Jewish couple he refers to as “K” over for coffee. He finds Frau K snobbish and uncritical, a person who repeats the dominant opinion in any circumstance, but has more respect for her husband. When Herr K says that he is intending, in line with the central committee of Jewish citizens, to vote yes in the referendum, Klemperer loses his temper and thumps his fist on the table. His voice raised in anger, he demands to know if the man considers the policies of the government to be criminal or not. The man replies with composure that he has no right to ask such a question. The woman says that one must acknowledge that the Führer is a most brilliant and captivating man whose extraordinary charisma cannot be denied. Later, while intending to apologize for his behavior, he hears similar judgments from other Jews in his circles, from all walks of life, including intellectuals.
“Some kind of fog has descended which is enveloping everybody,” he writes. At that time the Nazis had been in power for only a few months.
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The new came not from without, but from within, and not in the guise of the unfamiliar, but as an amplification of the already known. And it came not as a negative force, and was not associated with destruction and death; reading accounts from early 1930s Germany, there is a striking optimism radiating from everywhere. Something new has begun, enterprise is strong, and the new party assuming power brings with it new career opportunities for a new people. Much is unproven, established and shaped as they go along; reading Albert Speer’s memoir, Inside the Third Reich, the sense of empowerment and freedom it gives out is clear; as a young architect straight out of school he joins the NSDAP, is commissioned to renovate a party building in the provinces, does the job to everyone’s satisfaction, receives further commissions, is noticed, entrusted with greater responsi
bilities, handpicked by the party’s central offices, and one day finds himself standing before Adolf Hitler himself. The optimism of shaping one’s own future blows like a wind through Speer’s account of the era. The Nazis were of course continually on the lookout for young talent, there were positions to be filled, and many. The new optimism and momentum emanated too from all the parades, the marches, the rallies, and the meetings, which made the public space a stage, and what was shown on that stage came not from the outside, was not some alien element belonging to some other, it was the people themselves as they were in community, together, that found their form in these scenes.
But it was not the case that the people were deceived, that they were unaware of the propaganda, of the fact that behind what they were seeing and hearing there was a will and a particular intention, and that this was directed toward them in order to make them act or think in a certain way. That aspect was so obvious it was impossible not to be aware of it. It is similar to advertising in our day; we know full well it is trying to manipulate us and make us buy some product, but this does not prevent us from watching the ads, which can be good or funny, subtle or just plain silly, but even if we dislike them we do not necessarily dislike advertising in itself, and although we know there is no difference between this or that product and that all the glamor associated with one and not the other belongs to the image and not the product, which can be a different thing altogether, we nevertheless still buy what we associate with the glamor. We know that someone always will, and we know that the association between a product and its advertising is arbitrary, so buying the product or not buying the product is entirely up to us. No one has deceived us.
What is peculiar about advertising is that it works and does not work at the same time. The same is true of the propaganda of Hitler’s Germany. They knew it was propaganda and seldom took it seriously, as is evident from Klemperer’s notes, people regarded it more as a phenomenon, easy to see through, and yet they could be taken in by it, and when it came to the matter of the Jews it was an exaggeration, a hang-up Hitler had, any reasonable person knew this even if not necessarily distancing themselves from what it involved. Klemperer despised the propaganda, but was also affected by it; his emotions reacted even though his mind shunned the idea that there might genuinely be something inferior about him. Klemperer is interesting too because he was both Jewish and German, which is to say he was born into Judaism, but converted later to Protestantism, so he considers what is going on around him as both an intellectual German citizen and a Jew.
This is how he describes one palpable instance of propaganda in 1933:
10 November, evening. I heard the apogee of propaganda this afternoon on Dember’s radio (our Jewish physicist, already dismissed, but also already negiotiating for a professorship in Turkey). On this occasion the organization by Goebbels, who also served as the compère of his own show, amounted to a masterpiece. The emphasis is on work and peace in the service of peaceful work. First the sound of sirens wailing across the whole of Germany and then a minute of silence across the whole of Germany – they have picked this up from America of course, and from the peace celebrations at the end of the Great War. This is followed by the framework around Hitler’s speech, perhaps not a great deal more original either (cf. Italy), but executed to absolute perfection. A factory floor in Siemensstadt. For a few minutes the noise of all the machines at work, the hammering, rattling, rumbling, whistling, grinding. Then the sirens and singing and the gradual falling silent of the wheels as they are brought to a standstill. Then quietly, out of the silence, Goebbels’s deep voice with the messenger’s report. And only after all of this: Hitler himself, he speaks for three quarters of an hour. It was the first time that I had heard one of his speeches from beginning to end, and my impression was essentially the same as before. For the most part an excessively agitated, hectoring, often rasping voice. The only difference was that on this occasion many passages were declaimed in the whining tone of an evangelizing sectarian. He advocates peace, he proclaims peace, he wants the unanimous support of Germany not out of personal ambition, but only in order to be able to defend peace against the attacks of a rootless international clique of profiteers, who for the sake of their own profit unscrupulously set populations of countless millions against each other …
All of this, together with the well-rehearsed heckling (“The Jews!”), I had of course been conversant with for a long time. But in all its hackneyed overfamiliarity, its deafening mendacity – audible surely to the deafest of ears – it acquired a special and novel authority from a peculiarity of the foregoing propaganda, an aspect which I consider to be the most outstanding and ultimately decisive among its succesful individual ingredients. The advance notice and radio announcement stated: “Ceremony between 13:00 and 14:00. In the thirteenth hour Adolf Hitler will visit the workers.” This is, as everyone knows, the language of the Gospel. The Lord, the Savior visits the poor and the prodigal. Ingenious, right down to the timing. Thirteen hundred hours – no, “the thirteenth hour” – sounds too late, but he will work miracles, for him there is no such thing as too late. The Blood Banner at the rally was of the same order. But this time the dividing line separating it from ecclesiastical ceremony has been broken down, the antiquated costume has been shed and the legend of Christ has been transported into the here and now: Adolf Hitler, the Redeemer, visits the workers in Siemensstadt.
The present is charged with the weight and suggestive force of the myth, the proximate, normally trivial, becomes meaningful and ultimately sacred. The quotidian becomes a magical world. It is elevated. Like Klemperer, one can see through it, but not without being touched by it at the same time. The sound of sirens is magnificent; once a month they are heard in this country too, and when they sound out it is hard not to stop what you are doing and look out the window if you are inside, or up at the sky if you are out; their sound pierces everything, ominously they pervade the air, as if it were doomsday itself. The sirens call out, call out to us, to all who hear them. Collective silence works in much the same way, within it we are never alone.
After the two invocations of this great “we” come Goebbels’s and Hitler’s speeches about peace. The footage I have seen of Hitler’s speeches, two generations on, shows a screeching, gesticulating man, his face contorting as he spits out his words to an audience that receives everything he says with huge enthusiasm. But those images are part of a course of events, containing a before and after, which show something else. I once saw one of Hitler’s speeches in its entirety, it too began with Goebbels bellowing slogans, arms gesturing, eyes flashing, a warm-up man, and when finally he introduced Hitler the crowd erupted in exultation. Suddenly Hitler is there, utterly impassive on the stage. He mumbles some politeness into the microphone, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps, or dear countrymen, something like that. He seems ill at ease, as if he wishes he could be anywhere else but there. He fidgets uneasily with some papers on a table at his side, sips water from a glass, hitches up his trousers. He says nothing, but stares down before this enormous crowd whose attention is directed entirely toward him. His silence is almost unbearable, what can be wrong, has he lost his nerve? Is he really that nervous? Why is he not saying anything? He takes another sip of water. And then he leans forward toward the microphone. He speaks quietly, slowly, hesitantly. But everyone is listening, the silence is total, everyone wants him to succeed. I too wanted him to succeed. Even before he has spoken, he has established a very strong feeling of identification with himself on the part of his audience, the crowd is on his side, he is one of them. After that there is only one way, his speech rises and rises again in intensity, gripping each and every individual present, soon he has them all in the palm of his hand, they obey his every motion, he can say anything and they will never deny him but give him whatever he might ask them for. The important thing about Hitler’s speeches was not what he said, the nature of the arguments he presented, but his winning over the crowd. The people were with him.
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Albert Speer was twenty-eight years old when he saw Hitler for the first time, at Hasenheide, a beer hall in Berlin, where Hitler was to speak to the students of the university. In his autobiography Speer writes that he was expecting a caricature, a shrieking, gesticulating demagogue in uniform with a swastika armband. What he saw was something quite different. Hitler was dressed in a neat navy-blue suit, giving an impression of respectability, and when he started to talk he spoke softly and self-effacingly, Speer writes, and what he then witnessed was more like a talk on history than a political speech. Sober, self-conscious, respectable, these are the words Speer uses to describe Hitler. After a while the shyness and hesitancy vanished, his voice became more forceful, he stressed his words and spoke with great persuasion and more and more hypnotically, and this enthusiasm washed away all reservations, all skepticism, Hitler was no longer speaking to persuade and convince, yet nor did he seem to be saying what his audience expected of him. Speer writes that he had forgotten what Hitler had said only hours later, whereas the mood stayed with him, the passion and the optimism: he had seen the new, he had seen the future. All this was written in hindsight, and certainly with the aim of exonerating Speer himself, portraying him as someone who had been pulled along by something of considerable substance rather than by something lesser, thereby in a way being duped – at the same time there are many other sources that say exactly the same thing: there was something more to Hitler than the historical caricature.
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 56