NAZISM AND THE GERMAN PEOPLE:

A HISTORIOGRAPHY
Kevin Korst
On April 30th 1945, Adolf Hitler took his sidearm, pointed it at
his head and fired a single shot, killing himself instantaneously. With
this, the German Fuhrer quite unceremoniously ended a war that had
been raging for six bloody years. Around Hitlers body, his beloved
capitol lay in ruins while the reign of his thousand-year Reich was
abruptly cut short. Ever since the extraordinary events of April 1945
unfolded, historians have grappled with the Nazis and their horrific
chapter in history. Numerous questions have been raised regarding
the circumstances of their rise to power and dealings while in control.
Even more important, however, is the inquiry into the attitudes and
actions of the common German citizen during this time. How was it
that so many people seemingly supported a political organization
obsessed with racial purification and bent on world domination?
What exactly was their view of Nazism and their racial policies during
the height of its power? Such complicated questions require equally
complicated answers, leaving historians the great task of searching for
a response through the remnants of Nazism.
The years following the end of the Second World War saw
many historians take a sympathetic view toward the general
population of Nazi Germany. It was believed that they were victims
of a great illusion, one ruled by terror in which numerous atrocities
were allowed to occur. The issue of German denial helped to
encourage this type of thinking until historians began to take a closer
look at the situation, seeking better answers. From the creation of
this new partition came two primary schools of thought. The
functionalist and the intentionalist groups disagree about the core
explanations for the Holocaust. The functionalists believe that this
tragic event came out of the chaos of the Nazi bureaucracy and the
increasing desperation of their circumstances. On the other side, the
intentionalists see the Holocaust as a preplanned event that came to
fruition because of a mad mans twisted dream. Each of these groups
offers a different and unique perspective on the Holocaust, giving
historians several different avenues of thought from which to pursue.
In 1969, historian Martin Broszat released his work, The Hitler
State: The foundation and development of the internal structure of the Third
Reich, which tended to take a functionalist view of Nazism. Broszats
Kevin Korst is a graduate student in History from Plainfield, Illinois. He wrote this
paper for Dr. Lynne Currys HIS 5000 class, Historiography, in Fall 2005.

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book describes the policies of the Nazis and how they operated within
the structure of the state. He believes that Nazi policies did not truly
grow out of their ideology, but were the outcome of the structure and
conditions of government in Germany. Broszat specifically focuses on
a Hitler that, while being the center reference point for the entire
organization, tended to operate on the periphery of actual government
decisions. In reference to ordinary Germans, Broszat does not disclose
much but states,
Even the excessive Fuhrer cult in Nazi Germany, that
persuasive belief in the leader which had a meaning and real
importance far beyond determining ideology, for the integration and
mobilization of the German people in the Nazi era, cannot be
understood simply in terms of personality, as a result of the superior
strength and leadership of Adolf Hitler.1
Even with Hitlers rise to power, the success in overthrowing
the Weimar Republic and in establishing the Hitler regime was
primarily due to the collaboration between the conservative opposition
to democracy and the national Socialist mass movement.2 In other
words, the German people who opposed democracy and wanted a
restoration of conservative and authoritarian principles helped put
Hitler in power and fostered the growth of his cult-like image. While
there were struggles in the beginning as to how the party would be
run within the German government and who would exert their new
power, by 1938 Hitler filled this void when he ceased to be the party
leader and became the Fuhrer.3
Martin Broszat sees the Nazis as an organization that needed
popular support to establish its power in Germany. This was not a
revolution in the usual sense of the word, but merely an exchange of
authority. Once the Nazis grasped this authority, however, the
German people, fueled by Hitler himself, the Nazi propaganda
machine and their own social expectations, allowed Hitler to become
the object of a cult of personality that we see today. His influence
continued to grow with the successful implementation of Nazi foreign
policy and only subsided after 1941 with the tide of the war turning
against Germany. Overall, Broszat suggests that Hitlers special
authority as Fuhrer was not founded like [Joseph] Stalins on the
control of the central organizational apparatus of the Party and state,
but in the last resort of charismatic appeal, and the ability this gave to
integrate the nation as a whole.4 Inevitably, this was just one part of
a larger story brought to life with the consent of many Germans.
1 Martin Broszat, The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of
the Internal Structure of the Third Reich (New York: Longman, 1981), xiii.
2 Ibid., 346.
3 Ibid., 294.
4 Ibid., x.

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Continuing with the precedent set by Broszat, in 1982 historian

Detlev J. K. Peukert published a fascinating study of everyday life in
Germany titled Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism
in Everyday Life. Peukert seems to take a middle course regarding the
question of whether German citizens, both young and old, had been
active participants in Nazism and its subsequent policies. He focuses
on the various groups that existed in Nazi Germany, beginning with
the working class. In this instance, Peukert reveals that the Nazis
use of terror in the working-class districts and the continuous
pressure to conform combined to create a ubiquitous sense of
persecution and insecurity, as in a city occupied by foreign troops.5
He believes that the working class as a whole may have offered some
small measure of token resistance, but because of the Nazi terror
apparatus, could not organize in any significant way.6
Shifting focus slightly, Peukert understands that the young
people of Germany have a slightly different story to tell. Peukert
evaluates the impact of the Hitler youth and sees a program that,
while at first possessing a major influence, lost its grip over younger
Germans. Initially, the systemized Hitler Youth institution offered
many young people opportunities they would not have normally had
access to. However, as the war dragged on, more youth leaders were
called into service and the war reduced the Hitler Youths leisure
activities: playing fields had been bombed, official hiking trips were
cut down and finally discontinued.7 Because of this, opposition
groups known as Edelweiss Pirates began to form and physically
harass the Hitler Youth patrols.8 Youths would gather together
listening to music forbidden by the Nazis, and engage in swing
dancing, helping to create an atmosphere of passive resistance.
Peukert reasons that no major resistance was mounted because of the
Nazi policy of atomizing the public, meaning that numerous social
structures and traditional networks were broken down and swept
away forcing many to see Nazism as a new center of focus.9
Even with these small measures of resistance, Peukert
acknowledges that some aspects of Nazism were generally accepted by
the population. He states that
The terror, directed against political or social trouble makers
was not only not concealed from the population-as many who pleaded
for excuses were to suggest after 1945-but was highly visible, was
documented in the press during the Third Reich, was given legitimacy

in the speeches of the Reichs leaders and was approved and welcomed
by many Germans.10
More important was the public policies of Nazi racism, which
while being decried by churches and some members of society, more
often than not were accepted and even approved, provided that they
were applied within a framework that was outwardly legal.11
Throughout his book, Peukert seems to align himself with the
functionalist camp of Nazism. In reference to the ordinary Germans
stance on the Nazis, he sees a nation that operates under an umbrella
of terror and offers some resistance to its oppressors, yet
acknowledges the dark underbelly of acceptance that did exist. On the
whole, Peukert realizes that terror played an important role in the
Nazis control of Germany, but refuses to believe they were completely
unaware and unwilling to cooperate in the racially and ethnically
charged system of government.
Several years after Peukert released his work, author Ian
Kershaw contributed to the discussion with his work titled The Hitler
Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich. This comprehensive review
on the source behind Hitlers control of the government and its
people, in a minute way, resembles Broszats effort. In his book,
Kershaw takes an interesting approach to the average Germans
outlook on Nazism by separating the Nazi party and Hitler into two
separate and distinct categories. He claims that many citizens,
especially in the early years of the World War II, disliked the Nazi
party and their policies. However, they adored Hitler to the extent
that when things went badly or policies backfired, Hitler was spared
much of the criticism, at least until the defeat at Stalingrad in 1943.12
Before, though, the German people seemed to gravitate to answers
that drew attention away from Hitler by claiming that he was being
misinformed, curbed by the Allies or so engaged in foreign affairs that
he had no time for the home front. According to Kershaw, it was the
Nazi propaganda machine that takes the greatest responsibility for
this feat and states, After 1933, Nazi propaganda, largely uncontested
now that opponents within Germany had been silenced, could almost
deify Hitler. Joseph Goebbels,13 as we saw, ranked his creation of the
public Hitler image as his greatest creation14 Kershaw also looks into
the German peoples thirst for a new leader who could unite and
stabilize a nation which had floundered under the tutelage of the
Weimar government. Hitler provided such an opportunity and using

5 Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, opposition, and

Racism in Everyday Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) 105.
6 Ibid., 104.
7 Ibid., 155.
8 Ibid., 154.
9 Ibid., 236.

Ibid., 197.
Ibid., 219.
12Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) 192.
13 Propaganda minister of the Third Reich.
14 Ibid., 254.

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10
11

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Goebbels machine, he lured the German masses into a state of trust

and misguided belief, a trust that, in certain ways, outlasted the Hitler
and the war itself.15
While Kershaw does portray the Germans as a victimized
group, in his eyes they are not without fault, especially surrounding
the circumstances of the Jewish question. In his book, Kershaw
recognizes that while many Germans were anti-Semitic before Hitlers
arrival, most did not support extreme racial policies. The Jewish
question was therefore avoided by fusing the Third Reich with the
popular and attractive aspects of Nazi rule symbolized by Hitler
himself. Kershaw says that this in itself distracted attention away
from the seamier side of Nazi policy, which in turn ensured at least
passive acquiescence in if not outright approval for escalating
inhumanity of Nazi anti-Jewish policy.16 More frightening are
Kershaws examples of how the Hitler myth, for some people at least,
continued until the end of the war and beyond. In 1968, six percent
of the West German population (compared with four percent in 1965
and 1967) reported their willingness to vote again for a man such as
Hitler.17 Kershaw exemplifies just how powerful the image of Hitler
created by his propagandists was, and how far reaching its effects
could be felt. He believes that the German people fell under the spell
of the image of a man who never really existed, but he is not shy about
condemning their indifference to the most horrific of Nazi policy.
The aforementioned authors, while having slightly different
ideas, tend to agree that Germans citizens were both ruthlessly
deceived and themselves at fault in their sometimes lax views and
approval of Hitler and Nazism. However, the topic of rule by terror is
given only a small amount of reference in proportion to each works
scope. The treatment of this subject was improved upon in 1990 when
historian Robert Gellately published The Gestapo and German Society:
Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945. In his work, Gellately looks into
the Gestapo and how they managed to control an entire nation with
only a small core of individuals. He concludes that it was impossible
for the terror organization to follow the orders that were given to
them, especially as their responsibilities grew during the war.
Gellately claims that it simply did not have the physical resources to
accomplish the task assigned to it, especially as these increased in
number and scope. And this point stands even when one includes the
help it could count on from other organizations of the Nazi party and
German state.18 How then was this task accomplished with such

horrific efficiency? For this answer, Gellately points to the average

German citizen as an accomplice to the Gestapos mission of state
control and racial purification. Since it was impossible for the German
Gestapo to be everywhere at once, they relied heavily on the
information and participation readily given by many citizens.19 Why,
according to Gellately, were Germans so eager and willing to commit
these acts? For starters, the Nazis had done such an impressive job
through their propaganda techniques and examples that many
believed there truly was an agent on every corner, watching their
every move. Gellately presents evidence that a number of Germans
came forward with information because of petty differences including
relationship squabbles, heated competition between businesses, and
disputes involving neighbors.20 This helped to create a society in
which its citizens engaged in a kind of self-regulation, ensuring the
Gestapo could easily control a numerically superior target with little
or no difficulty.
Robert Gellatelys take on Nazi Germany sees a society in
which total control was achieved through active participation. The
average German seemed to view the Gestapo as an omnipotent being,
even though evidence clearly points to the opposite. Even so,
Gellately says that one ought to be cautious, however, in
extrapolating from Wurzburg, the focus of his study, to the rest of the
country. Enforcement may have been easier to achieve in smaller
cities and towns in rural districts.21 He paints the common German
in a way that few authors had up to this point. Through his evidence
and analysis, they appear much more as aggressors, rather than
victims.
Following the course that had been laid out by Robert Gellately
and others, historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen took the case against
the German people to a place few had before. In 1996, with the release
of his book Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust, Goldhagen attacks the German people as a nation that was
willingly and actively participating in the Holocaust. Furthermore, he
asserts that only in Germany could an atrocity on the level of the
Holocaust have occurred, thanks to Germanys highly anti-Semitic
past. Goldhagen sets up a scenario where anti-Semitism had been
rampant in Germany for centuries. He believes this was ingrained
into the German psyche until a particular situation came along to set
in motion an event that was literally hundreds of years in the
making.22 One of the examples he uses to support his thesis is the

Ibid., 264.
Ibid., 252.
17 Ibid., 267.
18 Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial
Policy 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 253.

Ibid., 130.
Ibid., 144-158.
21 Ibid., 256.
22 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1996) 27-48.

15
16

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19
20

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actions of Police Battalion 101.23 This group of men who were mainly
composed of regular German police was sent to Poland to commit the
unthinkable. While most had no affiliation with the Nazi party, they
participated in the killings of innocent people, with apparently very
little remorse. They even told their friends and family about their
actions, leading Goldhagen to state that the Germans openness
about their genocidal slaughtering-making it available to the view of
so many other German men and women who happened to be stationed
in Poland-is but an indication of the perpetrators obvious approval of
their historic deeds.24 According to Goldhagen, this is just one
example of what countless Germans were ready to do, giving little
thought to the extraordinary consequences of their actions.
Hitlers Willing Executioners created a firestorm of criticism
upon its release in 1996. Many historians assaulted the book as
nonsense, saying that he could not adequately defend many of the
controversial statements held within his writings. Goldhagen, in
return, defended his thesis claiming that the perpetrators approved of
the mass slaughter, that they willingly gave assent to their own
participation in the slaughter, is certain. That their approval derived
in the main from their own conception of Jews is all but certain, for no
other source of motivation can plausibly account for their actions.25
If anything, Goldhagen showed that ordinary Germans were much
more involved in Nazi racial policies than historians initially thought.
He seems to conform to the intentionalist view of Nazism but includes
nearly every German in the equation.
However, there are many
flaws within his argument, especially in regard to his point that the
Holocaust could only happen in Germany, but for better or worse, his
assertions led the discussion into relatively uncharted territory.
Following the storm created by Goldhagen, author Eric A.
Johnson published his book, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and
Ordinary Germans, in 2000. Following the lead set by Gellately and
Goldhagen, Johnson analyzes the Gestapo and their impact on the
German population. Reacting as several of the previous authors had,
Johnson sees the Gestapo as a well-trained and staffed organization
without the necessary resources to control the targeted population.
How then did the average German view this organization? First,
Johnson claims that most Germans had little or no contact with the
Gestapo in their daily lives, and for the most part, did not fear them.26
Also, the citizen informer that previous historians, such as Gellately,
point to did not truly exist on a large scale, and if a person did present
Ibid., 239.
Ibid., 245.
25 Ibid., 416.
26 Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary
Germans (New York: Basic Books, 2000) 253.

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information to the Gestapo, many times it was ignored. Johnson sees

that Germany was still indeed a police state and that the Gestapo
was not merely a reactive organization.27 Still, he does not absolve
Germans for their crimes against the Jewish race. He believes that the
evidence of mass deportations reveal that by 1942, most Germans
knew exactly what the Nazi regime was trying to accomplish, and the
Gestapo agents who were shipping Jews away from their homes were
well aware that they were headed to near certain death.28 For their
part in maintaining silence in view of these crimes, Johnson is not
afraid to direct blame squarely at them. Even so, Johnson does reveal
elements of the resistance movement, such as the church, showing that
certain sects of German society did fight the Nazis and their twisted
ideology.29
Johnsons work follows a pattern set in the preceding decades
by fellow historians. As he states in his book, A recent trend in
historical scholarship places the onus of guilt on ordinary Germans for
the perpetration of Nazi crimes.30 However, Johnson is careful to
note that the recent trend in historical scholarship threatens to
underestimate and obscure the enormous culpability of the leading
organs of Nazi terror, such as the Gestapo and to overestimate the
culpability of ordinary German citizens. It needs to be remembered
that some Germans were far more guilty than others.31 Johnsons
book attempts to pursue the middle course, in showing that ordinary
Germans were a greater factor in the Holocaust than first believed,
but they were far from the only factor. Johnson reinforces the idea
that the Gestapo did not rule by fear alone, and were not the everpresent demon in peoples lives. Representing a moderation of the
extreme views held by Goldhagen and others, Johnson understands
that culpability and blame is to be shared by many in Nazi Germany,
but by none completely.
From 1945 to the early 1980s, a majority of historians pointed
the blame for wartime atrocities solely in the Nazi party and their
underlings. Even in Martin Broszats 1969 book The Hitler State, he
makes only a small reference to the German people and instead
concentrates mostly on Hitler and the bureaucracy. Historians saw
German citizens as victims of an elaborate scheme, one in which they
entered a state ruled by terror, and the truths of the Holocaust were
hidden from them. This interpretation held for over thirty years, until
scholars began to question what exactly occurred during the Nazi
reign, along with the German peoples place in it. Harnessing the
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
29 Ibid.,
30 Ibid.,
31 Ibid.,

23

27

24

28

353-354.
395-396.
195.
483.
483-484.

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burgeoning field of social history, coupled with newer quantitative

methods, they poured over voting records, Gestapo files, military
papers, court documents, and other related materials. What they
found was something quite startling and contrasting to previous
sentiments. Historians like Broszat and Peukert saw a Germany
where many of its citizens bowed before Nazi policies and even wanted
a figure such as Hitler to obtain power. They argue, however, that the
German people did not necessarily actively participate in the killings
of Jews and other minorities. Complementing this are historians
Johnson and Gellately, who see German citizens as holding a greater
proportion of guilt than had been previously associated, but still
refraining from the extreme nature of Goldhagens thesis. In addition,
the concept of the Gestapo has changed dramatically over the last
three decades, ranging from a nearly invincible organization that
controlled the whole of the civilian population, to one struggling with
meager resources and relying heavily on citizen participation. In the
end, the field of German studies during the Second World War has
seen drastic changes over the past sixty years. Splintering groups
such as the functionalist and the intentionalists, along with those
debating the true power of the Gestapo have added dimensions once
thought impossible. This rapidly evolving subject continues to divide
scholars, but ultimately clarifies our understanding of one of the most
dramatic eras in human history.

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