Nazi horrors were well publicized (Fall 2001)
New book by Robert Gellately shows Hitler's obsession with public opinion
By Kris O'Reilly
The German people read about the horrors of concentration camps in their daily newspapers, knew about death sentences and inhuman treatment of prisoners, and were vital participants in
the enforcement of Nazi anti-Semitic policies. So says historian Robert Gellately, whose recently released book "Backing Hitler" rebuts the long-held assumption that the Nazis kept their campaign of terror secret from the general public.
In fact, Gellately says, Hitler was a savvy manipulator of public opinion, who used newspaper articles and opinion surveys to gradually desensitize the German people to moral abuses. In the end, the harshest Nazi policies, such as a death sentence for listening to foreign radio or befriending a foreign worker, were supported and enforced by the average German citizen.
"He knew to be powerful, you must be popular. You just have to make sure the people you go after first are the least popular group," he says. "That's why he didn't start with the Jews."
Starting at the bottom
When Hitler took power in the early 1930s, Jews were considered middle class, upstanding and respected citizens. They were shopkeepers, lawyers, judges and doctors. Jewish people had more rights in Germany than in the United States at that time, Gellately notes.
So, Hitler started his terror campaign against the least popular groups: Communists, criminals, gypsies, the mentally ill. Once the German people accepted the cruel treatment of these groups, they started down a slippery slope, Gellately says. Hitler used the media to try to justify how the government could take away the rights of society's "deviants" for the benefit of the community. Then he expanded the definition of "deviant."
"In the 1930s, the regime made sure the concentration camps were reported in the press, held them up for praise, and proudly let it be known that the men and women in the camps were confined without trial on the orders of the police," Gellately writes in "Backing Hitler." "Far from clothing such practices in secrecy, the regime played them up in the press and lauded the modernity and superiority of the Nazi system above all others."
Early in the 1930s, Hitler set the stage for the "Final Solution" by proclaiming himself a prophet, and predicting the Jews would lead Germany into a world war. When war happened, Germans believed his prediction had come true, Gellately says. By 1940, the notion of sending Jews to concentration camps to either work as slaves or be killed outright was accepted by the German people.
Denouncers were vital
Gellately researched the book by poring over newspaper clippings of the time. He noted with surprise how much and what kind of information the Nazis planted in local newspapers.
"Nazi propaganda was not, and could not, be crudely forced on the German people. On the contrary, it was meant to appeal to them, and to match up with everyday German understandings," he writes.
Particularly telling are surviving Gestapo files that detail the important role ordinary German citizens had in enforcing Nazi anti-Semitic policies.
"The Gestapo tended to be reactive and waited for information to come from the outside," he writes. "Most of it came from ‘ordinary' Germans, that is, civilians who were not even members of the Nazi Party."
Concentration camps were undeniably visible to the ordinary German, Gellately contends. Again, Hitler worked with public opinion, at first placing concentration camps in non-visible places and filling them with Communists and other members of disliked groups. By the end of the war, however, Germany was littered with up to 25,000 camps. Prisoners worked as slaves on local farms and cleared debris from bombed-out streets.
Reaction to the book
Gellately considered his research conclusions "fairly radical, but fair minded." He has spoken extensively in Germany, and was featured on German TV's equivalent of "60 Minutes." The reaction to that show surprised him: 80 percent of those who took an Internet survey agreed with his theory that concentration camps were well publicized. Ten percent disagreed, while another 10 percent didn't want to talk about the subject any longer.
"To me that is a positive result, indicating a healthy coming-to-grips with the past by the German people," says Gellately. The book is also being translated into German.
Another interesting phenomenon is the worldwide popularity of "Backing Hitler." Gellately has done interviews with media from all over the world, from Zimbabwe to Argentina.
"No nation is really immune to this type of thing. You need a special set of circumstances, but the idea that this could only happen in Germany is wrong," he says.
Professor Robert Gellately holds the Strassler Family Chair for the Study of Holocaust History. He is also the author of "The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945."
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Robert Gallately's new book
Robert Gallately