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VISIONS OF COMMUNITY IN NAZI GERMANY
Visions of Community in
Nazi Germany
Social Engineering and Private Lives

Edited by
M A RT I N A S T E B E R
and
B E R N H A R D G OT TO

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2014
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2014
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013957911
ISBN 978–0–19–968959–0
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CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Foreword

In 1941 a German letter-writing manual advised its readers in the name of the
new Volksgemeinschaft to stop the old practice of using subaltern and sycophantic
addresses when corresponding with state officials and adopt a more self-confident
style.1 Another manual, dating from 1937, gave similar advice, stressing that
‘our new state is a state of the Volksgemeinschaft’ and therefore ‘the workman is
just as important a member of the whole as the professor or minister’.2 The term
Volksgemeinschaft permeated official Nazi state propaganda and all levels and areas
of everyday life. It was a key term which covered up the authoritarian and bureau-
cratic nature of Nazi rule and functioned as a tool to exclude and exterminate all
those who were not considered part of or beneficial to it. However, it was also con-
sidered by many as an egalitarian and emancipatory concept which defined their
relationship to the state by transforming it into ‘our state’.
Over the last few years the ambivalence of the concept of Volksgemeinschaft has
sparked off a new debate. This partly considers the usefulness of Volksgemeinschaft
as an analytical term and asks whether it should be used by historians to describe
Nazi society. But it also takes up and transforms several older discussions on what
was at the centre of Nazi dictatorship and Nazi society. It comes as no surprise,
then, that the concept is highly controversial and antagonizes the international
community of historians of Nazi Germany considerably. Against this backdrop the
German Historical Institute London (GHIL) and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte
München-Berlin (IfZ) decided to co-organize a conference on this topic, hosted
by the GHIL in March 2010 under the title ‘German Society in the Nazi Era.
Volksgemeinschaft between Ideological Projection and Social Practice’. It was jointly
organized by Bernhard Gotto (IfZ) and Martina Steber (GHIL).
More than once during the conference, comparisons arose with the 1979 confer-
ence which the GHIL had organized at Cumberland Lodge on the ‘Structure and
Politics of the Third Reich’, and where Tim Mason had coined the famous distinc-
tion between an ‘intentionalist’ and ‘functionalist’ camp of historians as regards
the explanation of Nazi rule. Some of the protagonists of 1979 were also present
at the 2010 conference. However, the new dividing lines did not run along the
old trenches. More often old adversaries now found themselves united in either
supporting or denying the usefulness of Volksgemeinschaft as an analytical tool for
the historiography of Nazi Germany. Having published a book on the German
working class and the Volksgemeinschaft, it would have been interesting to see the
position of the late Tim Mason, whose person and work is still so present, especially

1 Alfred Volkland, So musst du deine Briefe schreiben (Mühlhausen 1941), 11.

2 Curt Elwenspoek, Der rechte Brief – zur rechten Zeit. Eine Fibel des schriftlichen Verkehrs für jeder-
mann (Leipzig 1937), 33.
vi Foreword

among British historians on Nazi history, and the twentieth anniversary of whose
untimely death was also commemorated at this conference.
This volume assembles some of the most important papers given at the confer-
ence. They are written by leading British, German, and US historians and not
only outline the theoretical issues at stake, but also give insights into the many
fields of politics and everyday life where this concept was ‘at work’ and needs to be
analysed. As such, this volume provides far more than just an overview of current
research. It makes an important new contribution to the debate on the function
of the concept of Volksgemeinschaft as the core Nazi vision of community for the
structure and politics of the Third Reich.
The 1979 conference not only internationalized a debate which had, up to then,
been one of those famous German historical-political controversies with multiple
internal agendas, but also initiated new research on an impressive scale. This vol-
ume aims to continue this fruitful international exchange on the social and societal
history of the Third Reich and, in particular, to promote the lively Anglo-German
exchange in this still flourishing field of research.
One of the great challenges of internationalizing academic debates, especially
in the field of conceptual history, is to find appropriate translations for frequently
untranslatable terms. This volume would not have come about without the inval-
uable help of Angela Davies (GHIL) and Jonathan Ashby (Winchester), whose
admirable linguistic and editorial skills proved essential for turning the conference
papers into a coherent book. Our thanks go to them and also to Anna Greithanner
and Linus Rapp from the IfZ for their assistance with the editorial work on this
volume. Particular thanks go to the contributors, who not only participated in
the conference, but were prepared to rework their papers for this volume, to the
referees at Oxford University Press who read the manuscript in full and whose
valuable reports helped to improve the book, and to OUP’s delegates who accepted
this volume for publication. Finally, we would like to thank Bernhard Gotto and
Martina Steber for their dedication and energy. The main credit for conceiving
and organizing this highly stimulating conference as well as for editing the present
volume goes to them.

Andreas Gestrich Andreas Wirsching

German Historical Institute Institut für Zeitgeschichte
LondonMünchen-Berlin
 Contents

List of Abbreviations ix
Notes on Contributors xiii
Glossary xvii

1. Volksgemeinschaft: Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime 1

Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto

I. VOL KSG EM EI N SC H AF T: C ON T ROV E R S I E S

2. Volksgemeinschaft: Potential and Limitations of the Concept 29
Ian Kershaw
3. Volksgemeinschaft: A Modern Perspective on National Socialist Society 43
Michael Wildt
4. Echoes of the Volksgemeinschaft 60
Ulrich Herbert

II. A NEW F RAM E O F REF ERENC E : I D E OLOG Y,

ADM IN ISTRATIVE P RAC T I C E S , A N D
S O C IAL C O N TROL
5. Pluralities of National Socialist Ideology: New Perspectives on the
Production and Diffusion of National Socialist Weltanschauung 73
Lutz Raphael
6. The NSDAP’s Operational Codes after 1933 87
Armin Nolzen
7. Mobilizing German Society for War: The National Socialist Gaue 101
Thomas Schaarschmidt
8. Registering the Volksgemeinschaft: Civil Status in Nazi
Germany 1933–9 116
Jane Caplan
9. Exporting Volksgemeinschaft: The Deutsche Volksliste in Annexed
Upper Silesia 129
Gerhard Wolf

III. TH E IN D IVID UAL AN D TH E R E G I ME : T HE

PRO M IS ES O F VO LKSG EM E I N S C H A F T
10. Volksgemeinschaft and the Illusion of ‘Normality’ from the 1920s
to the 1940s 149
Andreas Wirsching
viii Contents

11. Greasing the Palm of the Volksgemeinschaft? Consumption

under National Socialism 157
Birthe Kundrus
12. Volksgenossinnen on the German Home Front: An Insight into
Nazi Wartime Society 171
Nicole Kramer
13. ‘Community of Action’ and Diversity of Attitudes: Reflections
on Mechanisms of Social Integration in National Socialist
Germany, 1933–45  187
Frank Bajohr
14. Social Spaces of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft in the Making:
Functional Elites and Club Networking 200
Rüdiger Hachtmann

IV. VO LKSG EM EI N SC H AF T: A R AT I ON A LE
F O R VIO L EN C E
15. The Holocaust: Basis and Objective of the Volksgemeinschaft? 217
Christopher R. Browning
16. Volksgemeinschaft and Violence: Some Reflections on
Interdependencies 226
Sven Keller
17. Social Control and the Making of the Volksgemeinschaft 240
Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann

V. TH E LIM ITS O F VO LKSG EM EI N S C H A F T P OLI C I E S

18. The Military Elite and Volksgemeinschaft 257
Johannes Hürter
19. National Socialist Blueprints for Rural Communities and their
Resonance in Agrarian Society 270
Willi Oberkrome
20. The End of the Volksgemeinschaft 281
Richard Bessel

Bibliography 295
Index 327
 List of Abbreviations

Abt. Abteilung
BA Bundesarchiv
betr. betreffend
BGH Bundesgerichtshof
BStU Behörde für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der
ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik
CA California
CADN Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes
cf.  confer
ch. chapter
Conn. Connecticut
DAAD Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
DAF Deutsche Arbeitsfront
DAI Deutsches Auslands-Institut
DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei
DDR Deutsche Demokratische Republik
DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
DFW Deutsches Frauen-Werk
Dok. Dokument
DPs Displaced Persons
Dr  Doctor
DVP Deutsche Volkspartei
e.g. egregia gratia
ed(s) editor(s)
edn. edition
etc. et cetera
esp. especially
et. al. et alteri
ff. and the following pages
fo(s) folio(s)
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
GDR German Democratic Republic
Gestapo Geheime Staatspolizei
GfK Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung
GHI Washington German Historical Institute Washington
GHIL German Historical Institute London
GNP Gross National Product
HJ Hitlerjugend
HStA Hauptstaatsarchiv
HTO Haupttreuhandstelle Ost
Kan.  Kansas
KdF Kraft durch Freude
x List of Abbreviations
Ibid.  ibidem
IfZ Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin
IfZ-A Archives of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin
Ind. Indiana
LAB Landesarchiv Berlin
LAV NRW Landesarchivverwaltung Nordrhein-Westfalen
LG Landesgericht
lit. literally
MA Militärarchiv
Mass. Massachusetts
Md. Maryland
MF Microfiche
M-Film Microfilm
MPG-Archiv Archiv der Max-Plank-Gesellschaft
n.  note
n.d. no date given
NARA National Archives and Records Administration
NC North Carolina
Nebr. Nebraska
NG Nuremberg Government [documents of the Nuremberg trials relating to
government agencies]
nos. numbers
Nr.  number
NS Nationalsozialismus, nationalsozialistisch
NSBO Nationalsozialistische Bestriebszellenorganisation
NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
NSF Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft
NSFK Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps
NSV Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt
NY New York
OH  Ohio
OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
OLG Oberlandesgericht
Ostpr. Ostpreußen
PhD Doctor of Philosophy
p.m. post meridiem
PO Politische Organisation
POWs prisoners of war
pp.  pages
pt.  part
pub. publication
RAF Royal Air Force
rev. edn. revised edition
RG Record Group
RGBl Reichsgesetzblatt
RI Rhode Island
RKF Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums
RLB Reichsluftschutzbund
RM Reichsmark
 List of Abbreviations xi
RMBliV Reichsministerialblatt der inneren Verwaltung
RMdI Reichsministerium des Innern
RMJ Reichsministerium der Justiz
RSHA Reichssicherheitshauptamt
RdErl Runderlass
RuPrMdI Reichs-und Preußischer Minister des Inneren
RuSHA Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt
SA Sturmabteilung
SBZ Sowjetische Besatzungszone
SD Sicherheitsdienst
SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands
SS Schutzstaffel
St.  Sankt
StA Staatsarchiv
Stapo Staatspolizei
ThHStA Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv
Thür. Thüringen, thüringisch
USA United States of America
US United States
USSBS United States Strategic Bombing Survey
v.  vom
V-Mann Vertrauensmann
VO Verordnung
Vol.  volume
vols volumes
Wisc. Wisconsin
WHW Winterhilfswerk
 Notes on Contributors
Frank Bajohr is Director of the Centre for Holocaust Studies at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte
München-Berlin. He is an expert in the history of the Third Reich, in particular the his-
tory of the Holocaust, of aryanization, corruption, and resistance. Among his publica-
tions are Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus, ed. (1993), ‘Arisierung’ in Hamburg: Die
Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945 (1997), Der Holocaust als offenes
Geheimnis: Die Deutschen, das NS-Regime und die Alliierten, ed. with Dieter Pohl (2006),
Massenmord und schlechtes Gewissen: Die deutsche Bevölkerung, die NS-Führung und der
Holocaust, ed. with Dieter Pohl (2008), Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft
des Nationalsozialismus, ed. with Michael Wildt (2009), Hanseat und Grenzgänger: Erik
Blumenfeld—eine politische Biographie (2010).
Richard Bessel is Professor of Twentieth Century History at the University of York. His
research covers modern German history, especially social history and the history of vio-
lence. Among others he has published Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm
Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925–1934 (1984), Die Grenzen der Diktatur: Staat und
Gesellschaft in der DDR, ed. with Ralph Jessen (1996), Life in the Third Reich (2001), Life
after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and
1950s, ed. with Dirk Schumann (2003), Nazism and War (2004), Germany 1945: From War
to Peace (2009), Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World, ed. with Claudia
Haake (2009).
Christopher R. Browning is Frank Porter Graham Professor at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. His is an expert in the history of the Holocaust, and is interested
in comparative genocide studies and modern German history in general. His books are
The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (1978), Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992), Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German
Killers (2000), Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September
1939–March 1942 (2004), Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (2010).
Jane Caplan is Professor Emeritus of Modern European History at the University of
Oxford. She specializes is the history of Nazi Germany and the history of identity in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. Her main publications are Government without
Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (1988), Reevaluating
the Third Reich, ed. with Thomas Childers (1993), Documenting Individual Identity: The
Development of State Practices in the Modern World, ed. with John Torpey (2001), Nazi
Germany, ed. (2008), Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories, ed. with
Nikolaus Wachsmann (2010).
Bernhard Gotto is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin.
He has worked on local administration in the Nazi regime, on businesses under
National Socialism, and is currently engaged in research on the history of disappoint-
ment. He is author of Nationalsozialistische Kommunalpolitik: Administrative Normalität
und Systemstabilisierung durch die Augsburger Stadtverwaltung 1933–1945 (2006), Der
Flick-Konzern im Dritten Reich, with Johannes Bähr, Axel Drecoll, Kim C. Priemel, and
xiv Notes on Contributors
Harald Wixforth (2008), ‘Machtergreifung’ in Augsburg: Anfänge der NS-Diktatur 1933–
1937, ed. with Michael Cramer-Fürtig (2008).
Rüdiger Hachtmann is Research Fellow at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
in Potsdam. His research interests are in the history of the 1848 revolution, the his-
tory of National Socialism, and the history of science. Among others he has published
Industriearbeit im Dritten Reich: Untersuchungen zu den Lohn- und Arbeitsbedingungen 1933
bis 1945 (1989), Berlin 1848: Eine Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Revolution (1997),
Hitlers Kommissare: Sondergewalten in der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur, ed. with Winfried
Süß (2006), Wissenschaftsmanagement im Dritten Reich: Geschichte der Generalverwaltung
der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (2007), Das Wirtschaftsimperium der Deutschen Arbeitsfront
1933–1945 (2012).
Ulrich Herbert is Professor of Modern History at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
im Breisgau. He has written extensively on the history of Germany in the twentieth cen-
tury, on the history of migration, the Holocaust, and the Nazi regime. Among his publica-
tions are Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft
des Dritten Reiches (1985), Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung
und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (1996), Die Nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager 1933 bis
1945: Entwicklung und Struktur, ed. with Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann (1998),
Wandlungsprozesse in Westdeutschland: Belastung, Integration, Liberalisierung, 1945–1980,
ed. (2002).
Johannes Hürter is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin.
Being an expert in military history and the history of terrorism of Germany in the twen-
tieth century, his publications include Wilhelm Groener: Reichswehrminister am Ende der
Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (1993), Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz einer Debatte
(2005), Hitlers Heerführer: Die deutschen Oberbefehlshaber im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion
1941/42 (2006), Die bleiernen Jahre: Staat und Terrorismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
und Italien 1969–1982, ed. with Gian Enrico Rusconi (2010).
Sven Keller is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin. His
research focuses on the history of National Socialism. He has published Günzburg und der
Fall Josef Mengele: Die Heimatstadt und die Jagd nach dem NS-Verbrecher (2003), Vom Recht
zur Geschichte: Akten aus NS-Prozessen als Quellen der Zeitgeschichte, ed. with Jürgen Finger
(2009), ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ am Ende: Gesellschaft und Gewalt 1944/45 (2013), Dr. Oetker
und der Nationalsozialismus: Geschichte eines Familienunternehmens 1933–1945, with
Jürgen Finger and Andreas Wirsching (2013).
Ian Kershaw is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. He is an
expert in the social and political history of the Third Reich. Among his numerous publica-
tions are Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria, 1933–45 (1983),
The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (1987), Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris
(1998), Hitler 1936–2000: Nemesis (2000), Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution
(2008), The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45 (2011).
Nicole Kramer is Lecturer at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Her research deals
with gender history, the history of National Socialism, and the twentieth-century welfare
state. Among her publications are Die vielen Gesichter der Zwangsarbeit: ‘Ausländereinsatz’
im Landkreis München 1939–1945, ed. with Elsbeth Bösl and Stephanie Linsinger (2005),
Lieschen Müller wird politisch: Geschlecht, Staat und Partizipation im 20. Jahrhundert, ed.
with Christine Hikel and Elisabeth Zellmer (2009), Volksgenossinen an der Heimatfront.
 Notes on Contributors xv
Mobilisierung, Verhalten, Erinnerung (2011), Ungleichheiten im ‘Dritten Reich’: Semantiken,
Praktiken, Erfahrungen, ed. with Armin Nolzen (2012).
Birthe Kundrus is Professor of Modern Social and Economic History at the University
of Hamburg. She has worked on the social and cultural history of Germany, on the his-
tory of violence, and on colonial history and postcolonial theory. She has published
Kriegerfrauen: Familienpolitik und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg
(1995), Moderne Imperialisten: Das Kaiserreich im Spiegel seiner Kolonien (2003), Die
Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland: Pläne. Praxis. Reaktionen 1938–1945, ed. with Beate
Meyer (2004), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and
its Empires, ed. (2008), Waffen Wissen Wandel: Anpassung und Lernen in transkulturellen
Erstkonflikten, ed. with Dierk Walter (2012).
Armin Nolzen is editor of Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. He is an expert
on the history of National Socialism and particularly the NSDAP. His publications include
Bürokratien: Initiative und Effizienz, ed. with Wolf Gruner (2001), Faschismus in Italien
und Deutschland: Studien zu Transfer und Vergleich, ed. with Sven Reichardt (2005),
Zerstrittene ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus,
ed. with Manfred Gailus (2011), Ungleichheiten im ‘Dritten Reich’: Semantiken, Praktiken,
Erfahrungen, ed. with Nicole Kramer (2012).
Willi Oberkrome is Professor of Modern History at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
Freiburg im Breisgau. He has written widely on the social and political history of Germany,
in particular the history of science and of historiography. Among his publications are
Volksgeschichte: Methodische Innovation und völkische Ideologisierung in der deutschen
Geschichtswissenschaft 1918–1945 (1993), ‘Deutsche Heimat’: Nationale Konzeption und
regionale Praxis von Naturschutz, Landschaftsgestaltung und Kulturpolitik in Westfalen-Lippe
und Thüringen (1900–1960) (2004), Ordnung und Autarkie: Die Geschichte der deutschen
Landbauforschung, Agrarökonomie und ländlichen Sozialwissenschaft im Spiegel von For-
schungsdienst und DFG (1920–1970) (2009).
Lutz Raphael is Professor of Modern History at the University of Trier. His main focus lies
on the social history of Germany and France in the twentieth century, especially on expert
cultures, ideas in their social context and historiography. His publications include Die Erben
von Bloch und Febvre: Annales-Historiographie und nouvelle histoire in Frankreich 1945–1980
(1994), Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeitalter der Extreme: Hauptwerke und Hauptströmungen
von 1900 bis zur Gegenwart (2003), Being Poor in Modern Europe: Historical Perspectives
1800–1940, ed. with Andreas Gestrich and Steven King (2006), Ideen als gesellschaftliche
Gestaltungskraft im Europa der Neuzeit: Beiträge für eine erneuerte Geistesgeschichte, ed. with
Heinz-Elmar Tenorth (2006), Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven der Zeitgeschichte nach 1970,
with Anselm Doering-Manteuffel (2008), Imperiale Gewalt und mobilisierte Nation: Europa
1914–1945 (2011).
Thomas Schaarschmidt is Research Fellow at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in
Potsdam. His research interests cover the history of international relations, modern regional
history, and the history of the Third Reich and the GDR. Among his works are Regionalkultur
und Diktatur: Sächsische Heimatbewegung und Heimat-Propaganda im Dritten Reich und in der
SBZ/DDR (2004), Die NS-Gaue: Regionale Mittelinstanzen im zentralistischen ‘Führerstaat’,
ed. with Jürgen John and Horst Möller (2007), Strafjustiz im Nationalsozialismus, ed.
with Hans-Hermann Hertle (2008), Berlin im Nationalsozialismus: Politik und Gesellschaft
1933–1945, ed. with Rüdiger Hachtmann and Winfried Süß (2011).
xvi Notes on Contributors
Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann is Professor at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. Focusing
on the social and political history of National Socialism and the GDR, his publications
include Anpassung, Verweigerung und Widerstand: Soziale Milieus, Politische Kultur und der
Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland im regionalen Vergleich, ed. (1997),
Nationalsozialismus und Arbeitermilieus: Der nationalsozialistische Angriff auf die proletari-
schen Wohnquartiere und die Reaktionen in den sozialistischen Vereinen (1998), Diktaturen
im Vergleich (2002), Stadtgeschichte in der NS-Zeit: Fallstudien aus Sachsen-Anhalt und
vergleichende Perspektiven, ed. with Steffi Kaltenborn (2005), ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Mythos,
wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheißung oder soziale Realität im ‘Dritten Reich’?: Zwischenbilanz
einer kontroversen Debatte, ed. (2012).
Martina Steber is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin. From
2007 to 2012 she was Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute London. Her
main research interests are German and British political history, the history of regional-
ity, and the history of conservatism. Her publications include Ethnische Gewissheiten: Die
Ordnung des Regionalen im bayerischen Schwaben vom Kaiserreich bis zum NS-Regime (2010)
and Germany and the ‘West’: The History of a Modern Concept, ed. with Riccardo Bavaj
(forthcoming 2014).
Michael Wildt is Professor of Contemporary History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
His research focuses on the history of National Socialism and of consumer society. Among
others he has published Am Beginn der ‘Konsumgesellschaft’: Mangelerfahrung, Lebenshaltung,
Wohlstandshoffnung in Westdeutschland in den fünfziger Jahren (1994), Generation des
Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (2002), Volksgemeinschaft
als Selbstermächtigung: Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939 (2007),
in English: Hitler’s Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion: Violence Against
Jews in Provincial Germany, 1919–1939 (2012), Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur
Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus, ed. with Frank Bajohr (2009).
Andreas Wirsching is Director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin. His
research covers German, French, and British political history in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries and the history of the European Union. Among his numerous publications
are Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg?: Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich
1918–1933/39. Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (1999), Die Weimarer Republik: Politik
und Gesellschaft (2000), Stadtverwaltung und Nationalsozialismus: Systemstabilisieren-
de Dimensionen kommunaler Herrschaft, ed. with Sabine Mecking (2005), Abschied vom
Provisorium: Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1982–1990 (2006), Das Jahr
1933: Die nationalsozialistische Machteroberung und die deutsche Gesellschaft, ed. (2009),
Der Preis der Freiheit: Geschichte Europas in unserer Zeit (2012).
Gerhard Wolf is DAAD Lecturer at the University of Sussex. He focuses on modern
German history, in particular the history of National Socialism, the Holocaust, and
German-Jewish history. His book Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität: Nationalsozialistische
Germanisierungspolitik in Polen was published in 2012; previously he co-edited Deutschland,
die Linke und der Holocaust: Politische Interventionen von Moishe Postone, ed. with Barbara
Fried and Steffen Küssner (2004).
 Glossary
Abitur grammar school matriculation certificate
Altreich Germany as defined by the borders of 1937
Amt Rosenberg Rosenberg Office
Amtsgericht district court
Arierparagraph Aryan Paragraph
arische Abstammung Aryan descent
Arisierung Aryanization
Armee- und Heeresgruppen-Oberbefehlshaber Army Group Commander-in-Chief
Blockwart Party Warden
Bund deutscher Mädel League of German Girls
Bündische Jugend bündisch youth movement
Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF German Labour Front
Deutscher Volkssturm German national militia at the end of the Second World War into
which all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty not yet serving in a military unit
were conscripted
Deutschnational lit. ‘German National’; nationalistic–conservative attitude to politics
Eintopfsonntage Hot Pot Sundays
Flakhelfer anti-aircraft assistant
Frontkämpfergemeinschaft community of front-line fighters
Gau Nazi regional party district
Gauleiter Nazi regional party leader
Gauwirtschaftskammer Gau Chamber of Economic Affairs
Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) Secret State Police
Gemeinschaftsfremde community aliens
Generalgouvernement administrative regional unit encompassing those territories of
German-occupied Poland not incorporated into the German Reich
Germanisierung Germanization
Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums law for the restoration of the civil
service
Gleichschaltung lit. ‘bringing into line’; enforced conformity; coordination with
Nazi norms
Großdeutsches Reich Greater German Reich
Haupttreuhandstelle Ost (HTO) Main Trusteeship Office East; office overseeing the con-
fiscation of property from Polish citizens
Herrenmenschentum specific mentality of racial superiority and arrogance
xviii Glossary
Hitlerjugend (HJ) Hitler Youth
Industrie- und Handelskammer Chamber of Industry and Commerce
Kampferlebnis collective experience of struggle
Kreisleiter Nazi district leader
Kulturkampf lit. ‘culture struggle’, ‘culture war’; conflict between the governments of the
federal states and the Catholic Church, conducted especially fiercely in Prussia by Otto
von Bismarck between 1871 and 1878
Land, Länder German federal states
Lebensraum lit. ‘living space’; Nazi key concept
Luftschutzgemeinschaft im Selbstschutz Air Raid Protection Squads
Nationalsozialistische Bestriebszellenorganisation (NSBO) National Socialist Factory
Cell Organization
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) National Socialist German
Workers’ Party
Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft (NSF) National Socialist Women’s League
Nationalsozialistische Gemeinschaft ‘Kraft durch Freude’ (NSG KdF) National Socialist
Association ‘Strength through Joy’
Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV) National Socialist People’s Welfare
Organization
Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen National Socialist Reich League
for Physical Exercise
Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps (NSFK) National Socialist Flying Corps
Nationalsozialistisches Frauen-Werk (DFW) National Socialist Women’s Welfare
Organization
NSDAP Ortsgruppe local Nazi Party branch
NSDAP Ortsgruppenleiter local Nazi Party branch leader
NS-Rechtswahrerbund National Socialist Lawyers’ Association
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Wehrmacht High Command
Ortsfrauenschaftsleiterin Women’s League local leader
Ortsgruppe local Party branch
Ortsgruppenleiter local Party branch leader
Parteigenosse lit. ‘party comrade’; self-designation of NSDAP members
Politische Organisation der NSDAP (PO) Political Organization of the NSDAP
Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA) Head Office for Race and Settlement
Rassenhygiene racial hygiene
Rassenschande race defilement
(Reichs)arbeitsdienst (Reich) Labour Service
Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung Reich Study Group for Regional Studies
and Planning
Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold lit. ‘black-red-gold banner of the Reich’; Social
Democrat paramilitary organization during the Weimar Republic
 Glossary xix
Reichsschulungsamt der NSDAP Reich Office of Ideological Training of the NSDAP
Reichserbhofgesetz Nazi law governing hereditary land holding
Reichsfrauenführerin Reich women’s leader
Reichsfrauenführung Reich women’s leadership
Reichsführung der NSDAP Reich leadership of the NSDAP
Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums (RKF) Reich Commissioner
for the Strengthening of Germandom
Reichskulturkammer (RKK) Reich Chamber of Culture
Reichsluftschutzbund (RLB) Reich Air Raid Defence League
Reichsnährstand Reich Food Department
Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RSHA) Reich Security Main Office
Reichswehr armed forces of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich up to 1935
Reichswehrminister Minister for the Reichswehr
Schicksalsgemeinschaft community of fate
Schützengrabengemeinschaft trench community
Schutzstaffel (SS) police and security organization run by Heinrich Himmler
Sicherheitsdienst der SS (SD) SS ‘Security’ and Intelligence Service
Sippenamt Kinship Office
Sozialismus der Tat socialism of practical action
SS Oberführer SS Colonel
SS Obergruppenführer SS General
Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten lit. ‘Steel Helmets, Association of Front Line Soldiers’;
right-wing paramilitary group in the Weimar Republic
Standesamt Civil Registry Office
Standesbeamter Civil Registrar
Sturmabteilung (SA) Storm troopers
Volk organic unity of a people, bound by blood, soil, history, and culture
völkisch adjective of Volk
völkische Konsumgesellschaft völkisch consumer society
Volksaufgebot mobilization and conscription of German men, women, and young
people in 1944–5 for various services on the home front, especially the building of
defensive ‘walls’ along the borders of the Reich; based on the terminology of levée en
masse, alluding to the French Revolutionary Wars and the Prussian War of Liberation
in 1813–15
Volksgeist unique spirit of the Volk
Volksgenosse lit. ‘Volk comrade’; National Socialist designation for the members of the
Volksgemeinschaft
Volkskörper collective body of the Volk
Volksschädling parasite
Volkstum character and abstract expression of the Volk
Volkstumskampf battle to maintain the culture and defend the existence of the Volk
xx Glossary
Volkszugehörigkeit lit. ‘belonging to the Volk’
Wehrgesetz Military Service Act
Wehrmacht armed forces of the Third Reich from 1935
Winterhilfswerk (WHW) Winter Relief Organization
Zellenleiter of the NSDAP cell leader of the NSDAP
 1
Volksgemeinschaft
Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime

Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto

In 1938, Bertolt Brecht’s play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich was premiered in
Paris. It presented a dramatized collage of incidents and situations drawn from eve-
ryday life in National Socialist Germany. Brecht had been collecting material for the
play since 1934. The opening scene is entitled Volksgemeinschaft, a term that can be
roughly translated as ‘community of the people’—though, as we shall see, ‘Volk’ has a
significantly more loaded meaning than the word ‘people’ might suggest. In this open-
ing scene, two intoxicated SS officers lurch down the streets of Berlin on the night of
30 January 1933. Brecht introduces them in a short poem which closes with the verse:
Their aim is a People imperious
Respected and powerful and serious
Above all, one that obeys.
Urinating against a house wall and speaking in broad Berlin dialect, the SS officers
discuss their hopes for the future:
the second: And now it’ll be a Volksjemeinschaft. I’m expecting the German people to
have an unprecedented moral revival.
THE FIRST: Wait till we’ve coaxed German Man out from among all those filthy
subhumans . . .
THE SECOND: Think he [the Führer] will really make us a Volksjemeinschaft?
THE FIRST: He’ll make anything.
The two SS officers believe themselves to be in a ‘Marxist quarter’. When an old man
in a nightshirt leans out of the window and calls softly for his wife, one of them pulls
out his revolver and shoots wildly in all directions. The scene closes with the terrible
cry of someone who has been hit.1
This scene brings out Brecht’s angry exasperation at what was going on inside
the ‘Third Reich’. It is far from coincidence that, to describe German society under

1 Bertolt Brecht, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, trans. John Willett (London, 2002),
5–6. In quoting this passage, we have used the original term Volksjemeinschaft (Berlin dialect for
Volksgemeinschaft) instead of Willett’s attempt to render it in English. The original German version is
to be found in Bertolt Brecht, Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches: 24 Szenen (Frankfurt am Main,
1970), 8–9. The authors would like to thank Jörg Arnold, Elizabeth Harvey, Andreas Gestrich, Nick
Stargardt, and Andreas Wirsching, as well as the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on
earlier drafts of this introduction. We are grateful to Angela Davies for the translation of the first draft.
2 Volksgemeinschaft: Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime

National Socialism, he focused on Volksgemeinschaft. Volksgemeinschaft was the

Nazis’ central social concept: it was within it, and via it, that visions of community
in Nazi Germany were expressed, negotiated, and put into practice. This volume
sets out to scrutinize the complex process of multilayered adaptation this involved
and the social dynamic it instituted.
Volksgemeinschaft was the National Socialist social promise. Brecht’s scene
touches on many of the criteria upon which it was based: ethnic origin as the
ultimate point of reference; an appeal to inner experience; tension between uto-
pian expectations and the radical willingness to fulfil them; racist separation;
unconditional trust in the Führer; and a deadly violence which was directed inter-
nally as well as externally. In recent years, historians have explored all of these
aspects, and there has been a rapid growth in our understanding of all that the
Volksgemeinschaft concept evoked. It is not easy to reduce this multifaceted concept
to a common denominator: Volksgemeinschaft encompassed both a social utopia
and precise instructions for realizing it. Its core component was not the individual
but a collective subject, the Volk, being imagined as a timeless racial unit over
which the Führer had been chosen to rule by destiny and could exercise unlimited
authority. Membership of the Volksgemeinschaft, it was believed, overrode all dif-
ferences of social stratification arising out of religious or class affiliation. It centred
on notions of belonging that had to be biologically legitimized and performatively
underpinned by acts and declarations of loyalty. Belonging determined people’s
opportunities of succeeding in the new Germany, and the new social inequalities
were based on how these opportunities were distributed. And, for many, belong-
ing determined much more: whether they could be assigned the right to live. The
means by which the Nazis created the Volksgemeinschaft they projected were means
of violence, and these turned inwards in the form of victimization and extermina-
tion as well as being directed outwards in aggressive territorial expansion.
The concept of Volksgemeinschaft cannot be understood in isolation from the
multilayered historical semantics of the German idea of the Volk.2 Volk clearly dif-
fers in meaning from the English word ‘people’, and therefore the word remains
untranslated in this volume. In the National Socialist view, Volk included all the
members of a race, both living and dead, as well as future generations. The Volk
itself was seen as a timeless entity whose qualities were revealed in its individual
members. Their physical appearance, character, and behaviour were all, in this way
of thinking, determined by racial predisposition.
While the Volk was (supposedly) a pre-existent entity, it had, in the Nazis’ view,
become debased and deprived of its vigour. National Socialists were determined
to rectify this: they wanted to change society to create a true ‘community’, the
Volksgemeinschaft. This was their big project, and they intended to realize their
vision of society by means of social engineering. Any belief that private lives would

2 See Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse’, in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze,
and Reinhart Koselleck (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen
Sprache in Deutschland, 8 vols. (Stuttgart, 1972–92), vii. (1992), 141–431.
 Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto 3

not be affected, that individuals could keep at a distance from ‘politics’ as many
hoped in 1933, would soon prove to be illusory.

WHY THE FOCUS ON VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT?

Increasingly, the regime’s social engineering became entwined with the private lives
of ordinary German citizens during the twelve years of Nazi rule. The propaganda
picture of a young couple’s private moment depicted on the cover of this book—the
couple sunbathing on the beach with swastika bunting above them waving cheer-
fully in the wind—told Germans more about the envisioned Volksgemeinschaft
than any picture of ecstatic masses at the Hitler rallies did. Nazi society demanded
a lot from the individual, but it also had a lot to offer: a place for individual happi-
ness and success was promised to all who belonged to the chosen community. This
was the promise the concept contained. However, the picture also carried another
message: this promise of happiness and success was to be denied to all those classi-
fied unfit to belong to the Volksgemeinschaft. The sunny face hid a dark and deathly
background countenance.
Volksgemeinschaft was the Nazis’ central social concept. This volume takes this
observation as its starting point. Its objective is to clarify the heuristic and explana-
tory potential of the Volksgemeinschaft concept. By drawing on specific examples,
the essays explore the extent to which the concept helps us understand social
change during the period of National Socialism. The authors investigate the spe-
cific forms the concept assumed and how it was used as a guideline for the actions
both of private individuals and of political leaders; they examine interpretations
and perceptions of policies dictated by the notion of Volksgemeinschaft; and they
illuminate how its utopian aims could motivate people and engage their emo-
tions. The volume also attempts to sum up the lively international debate about
Volksgemeinschaft as an approach to research.
Current research on the National Socialist concept of Volksgemeinschaft is espe-
cially interested in the interplay between the various National Socialist means of
exerting power and how life went on in society. The contributions in this volume
therefore focus first on the interaction between the institutions of the National
Socialist state, with their Party organizations and functionaries, and people living
their everyday lives. The people in Nazi Germany were divided into two catego-
ries: Volksgenossen (members of the imagined Volksgemeinschaft) and ‘the others’.
Volksgenossen were granted full citizenship and had access to the provisions of the
welfare state; but the social and legal status of those who deviated from the norms
established through the Volksgemeinschaft concept was significantly less secure, and
such people suffered discrimination of many kinds. In a continual series of chal-
lenges when dealing with Party functionaries, civil servants, or even just officious
supporters of the regime, every individual was repeatedly obliged to choose, and
to show, on which side of the divide he or she stood. Research on the National
Socialist Volksgemeinschaft project therefore is inspired by Alf Lüdtke’s concept
of Herrschaft als soziale Praxis—the exercise of political control through social
4 Volksgemeinschaft: Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime

practice.3 This perspective casts light on the complexities individuals faced at the
time, while also revealing the many ways in which the National Socialist regime
reached out to people directly in their everyday lives.
In a second strand, the essays in this volume are interested in looking at how
the diverse forms of National Socialist rule were combined with ideological con-
victions, patterns of argument, and strategies of legitimization. Ideology and the
structure of rule are not seen as separate spheres, but as being inextricably inter-
twined with each other. Lutz Raphael’s dynamic view of National Socialist ideol-
ogy, which he presents in his essay, offers valuable insights into this. He interprets
the Nazi worldview as a relatively open ‘field’ permitting a contained plurality of
opinions, interpretations, and self-selected emphases.4 In the same way, the con-
cept of Volksgemeinschaft developed its own fairly flexible ‘field’. Its core elements,
listed above, could be combined with each other in different variations, so that a
range of different stresses could emerge.5
This semantic openness contributed enormously to the dynamic of social change
that was such a feature of Nazi Germany. In parallel, and perhaps at an even faster
rate, the regime itself incessantly assumed new forms. This constant change can
be attributed to the Nazis’ decisionistic view of politics. Their political style was
characterized by an actionism and voluntarism that constantly reshaped the power
structures. Numerous historians, following Max Weber, have therefore and for its
Führer orientation characterized National Socialist rule as ‘charismatic’,6 and it is
not for nothing that, from its early days, the National Socialist German Workers’
Party (NSDAP) called itself a ‘movement’.
Despite its diversity and plurality of forms, however, the Volksgemeinschaft pro-
ject and its practices did not lack direction. The Second World War marked a clear
turning point. In the pre-war period, the priorities of the Volksgemeinschaft had
been the affective integration of its members, the Volksgenossen, and the imple-
mentation of racist segregation, as shown in the restructuring of the welfare state.
Mechanisms of selection based on racial biology were put in place, and for the
broad sections of the population accepted as ‘belonging’, there were rewards—
above all, the promise of the new consumerism. During these years, contem-
poraries experienced the Volksgemeinschaft as a blend not only of ‘coercion and

3 See Alf Lüdtke (ed.), Herrschaft als soziale Praxis: Historische und sozial-anthropologische Studien
(Göttingen, 1991).
4 See the essay by Lutz Raphael in this volume; in addition, Frank-Lothar Kroll, Utopie als
Ideologie: Geschichtsdenken und politisches Handeln im Dritten Reich. Hitler, Rosenberg, Darré, Himmler,
Goebbels (Paderborn, 1998).
5 Taking the Swabian Gau as an example, see Martina Steber, ‘Region and National Socialist
Ideology: Reflections on Contained Plurality’, in Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann and Maiken
Umbach (eds), Heimat, Region and Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism (Houndmills,
2012), 25–42.
6 See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 5 vols. (Munich, 1987–2008), iv:
Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949 (2003);
Rüdiger Hachtmann, ‘Elastisch, dynamisch und von katastrophaler Effizienz: Zur Struktur der Neuen
Staatlichkeit des Nationalsozialismus’, in Sven Reichardt and Wolfgang Seibel (eds), Der prekäre
Staat: Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main, 2011), 29–73; Ludolf
Herbst, Hitlers Charisma: Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias (Frankfurt am Main, 2010).
 Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto 5

consent’, but also of ‘restoration and revolution’.7 But from the summer of 1939,
the emphases changed. The Volksgemeinschaft utopia was now projected as a valiant
‘community of struggle’ (Kampfgemeinschaft) in a transformation of its image the
regime had engineered as it prepared for hostilities.8 Plunged into war, Germans
on the home front profited from the plundering of the occupied areas and from
the seizure of Jewish property all over Europe.9 At the same time, while they suf-
fered the tribulations of the air war, stoic ‘solidarity’ was expected of them, in
line with the Volksgemeinschaft ideal.10 By the end of the war, it has been sug-
gested, soldiers in the Wehrmacht were experiencing a similar duality. They went
through sacrifice, but could truly believe that, piece by piece, the utopian ideals of
Volksgemeinschaft were becoming reality: the strict social distinctions and bounda-
ries they had known in the old Germany had seemingly begun to dissolve as shared
political loyalties towards Führer and nation bound comrades together.11 As an
Allied victory looked more and more inevitable, the regime tried to present an
increasingly fragmenting society as a ‘community of fate’ (Schicksalsgemeinschaft).
This was in a desperate attempt to mobilize the resources that remained to it.
Employing a mixture of threats of violence, warnings of horror scenarios of down-
fall, and ambivalent religious slogans, the regime urged people to hold out. At the
same time, it still appealed to social solidarity.12 And, remarkably, in a situation
of defeat in which people had to think first of their own survival, German society
was not totally atomized: its people shared the same existential troubles, fears, and
hopes, and were aware of this commonality.13 The notion of a ‘community of sacri-
fice’ (Opfergemeinschaft) was revived. The roots of this topos go back to the Weimar
Republic, but it was reframed to fit German self-perceptions during the final phase
of the war. Even afterwards it permeated the culture of remembrance in the Federal

7 Christopher R. Browning and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, ‘Frameworks for Social Engineering: Stalinist
Schema of Identification and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft’, in Sheila Fitzpatrick and Michael Geyer
(eds), Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge, 2009), 231–65, at 248.
8 See Nicole Kramer, Volksgenossinnen an der Heimatfront: Mobilisierung, Verhalten, Erinnerung
(Göttingen, 2011), 124–48; Hans-Ulrich Thamer, ‘Die Widersprüche der “Volksgemeinschaft”
in den späten Kriegsjahren’, in Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann (ed.), ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Mythos,
wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheißung oder soziale Realität im ‘Dritten Reich’: Zwischenbilanz einer kon-
troversen Debatte (Paderborn 2012), 289–300.
9 This is shown by Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State
(New York, 2006).
10 Dietmar Süß, Der Tod aus der Luft: Kriegsgesellschaft und Luftkrieg in Deutschland und England
(Munich, 2011), 425.
11 Felix Römer, Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht von innen (München and Zürich, 2012), 83; opposed
to Römer’s interpretation of the impact the Volksgemeinschaft concept had is Sönke Neitzel and Harald
Welzer (eds), Soldaten: Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben (3rd edn. Frankfurt am Main,
2011); Thomas Kühne also underlines the significance of the Volksgemeinschaft concept for under-
standing Hitler’s army: Thomas Kühne, Kameradschaft: Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges
und das 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006).
12 Süß, Tod aus der Luft, 578.
13 This view is not universally shared. See, for instance, Richard Bessel’s essay in this volume, and
Neil Gregor, ‘A Schicksalsgemeinschaft? Allied Bombing, Civilian Morale, and Social Dissolution in
Nuremberg, 1942–1945’, Historical Journal, 43/4 (2000), 1051–70.
6 Volksgemeinschaft: Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime

Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and
can be understood as the last manifestation of Volksgemeinschaft rhetoric.14
Volksgemeinschaft was the main concept informing the Nazi social utopia, and it
can be thought of as summing up the new order to which the National Socialists
aspired. It is therefore a key for understanding the developments and changes that
took place in German society in their time—which spaces of opportunity were
opened up and which ones closed down, how the regime organized processes of
inclusion and exclusion, and how it changed or cemented relations of inequality.
The concept served as a justification for excluding so-called ‘asocial elements’ and
the ‘work-shy’ from social benefits offered by the state and community services,
but it was also used as an integrative formula for resocializing released prisoners.15
It held out distinct social promises: for the Volksgenossen a seemingly meritocratic
system offered chances of advancement for all, regardless of social background.
Meanwhile, however, ‘Jews’ (as defined by the Nuremberg Laws), Sinti, Roma,
black people, the mentally and physically disabled, and the openly homosexual
were all excluded from these opportunities, as were many others branded as ‘aso-
cial’. The blunt discrimination drew new social boundaries: while certain victim
groups experienced deprivation and denigration, the social and moral status of the
‘true’ Volk was correspondingly enhanced.16 Especially for the workers, there was
the enticing promise of social advancement. In the first scene of his Fear and Misery
of the Third Reich, quoted at the beginning of this introduction, Brecht was espe-
cially scathing about this aspect of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft concept. Led by his
Marxist beliefs, he denounced it as a deadly con trick. But the attractiveness of the
promise to contemporaries should not be underestimated: Volksgemeinschaft really
did appear to offer them a chance to free themselves from the confining restrictions
of an industrial class society.17 For historians therefore, using the Volksgemeinschaft
concept as a practical research key is highly illuminating: it allows us to decode
how the various actors appropriated the rhetoric and semantics of the National

14 See Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (London, 2009); Malte Thießen, ‘Schöne
Zeiten? Erinnerungen an die “Volksgemeinschaft” nach 1945’, in Frank Bajohr and Michael Wildt
(eds), Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main,
2009), 165–87.
15 See Bernhard Gotto, Nationalsozialistische Kommunalpolitik: Administrative Normalität
und Systemstabilisierung durch die Augsburger Stadtverwaltung 1933–1945 (Munich,
2006), 187–99; Christopher Bittenberg, ‘“Wiedereingliederung des Gestrauchelten in die
Volksgemeinschaft”: Hamburger Entlassenenfürsorge 1933–1945’, in Silke Klewin, Herbert Reinke,
and Gerhard Sälter (eds), Hinter Gittern: Zur Geschichte der Inhaftierung zwischen Bestrafung, Besserung
und politischem Ausschluss vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 2010), 159–73. A for-
mer Communist street fighter provides an especially impressive example. His reintegration, with the
help of various Party organizations, after incarceration in a concentration camp was so successful
that the Gestapo appointed him a V-Mann (confidential informant); Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann,
‘Utopie und Realität der nationalsozialistischen “Volksgemeinschaft”: Das Verhalten der Bevölkerung
zwischen Selbstmobilisierung, Anpassungsdruck und wirksamen Kontrollmechanismen’, in Manuel
Becker and Christoph Studt (eds), Der Umgang des Dritten Reiches mit den Feinden des Regimes (Berlin,
2010), 43–55, at 51; also instructive is the regime’s stereotyping of ‘traffickers’: Malte Zierenberg,
Stadt der Schieber: Der Berliner Schwarzmarkt 1939–1950 (Göttingen, 2008), 163–76.
16 Neitzel and Welzer (eds), Soldaten, 57–8.
17 Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, iv, 684–90.
 Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto 7

Socialist regime, how they interpreted and applied the decrees and pronounce-
ments, expectations and pressures that assailed them, and, of course, what conse-
quences this all had.18
It is crucial to see Volksgemeinschaft not as a static condition, but as a
forward-looking social policy project vigorously promoted by the regime. Though
the concept of a German Volk was timeless, the National Socialists believed, when
they seized power in 1933, that a living community based around the Volk had yet
to be realized and it was their duty to achieve this.19 Volksgemeinschaft was therefore
the unifying blueprint for National Socialist social engineering initiatives at all
sorts of levels. It gave rise to a considerable social dynamic; the initiatives it set in
motion affected many political fields, areas of activity, and segments of society; and
these initiatives opened up a vast potential for radicalization. Each Volksgenosse and
Volksgenossin could feel legitimized, even charged, to make a personal and active
contribution to the realization of the utopia: it is in acknowledgement of this
that Michael Wildt speaks of ‘self-empowerment’.20 In a constantly accelerating
process of participatory effort, individuals vied with each other to serve the new
ideal. This explains the immense centrifugal spread the people’s response to the
Volksgemeinschaft idea unleashed: individual initiatives extended it to ever wider
spaces and fields of activity. In Ian Kershaw’s view, these individual initiatives
were a product of the charismatic power structure of the Third Reich. By ‘work-
ing towards the Führer’, people in the Party and the state administration outbid
themselves in order to enhance their chances of individual advancement, a process
which was responsible for the ever-increasing radicalization of policies.21 Ordinary
citizens, however, were stimulated less by the distant Führer than by the new and
immediately accessible spaces of opportunity afforded by the Volksgemeinschaft pro-
ject.22 The project did not only become any more radical as more and more people
espoused it, but it became visibly more pluralistic and multifaceted. To explore this
process, this volume investigates local, temporal, institutional, and actor-specific
variants of how Germans appropriated and realized Volksgemeinschaft.
The specific forms taken by the Volksgemeinschaft idea did not grow out of thin
air, but were embedded within an accretion of previous notions that had been

18 For a similar approach, see Nicole Kramer and Armin Nolzen (eds), Ungleichheiten im ‘Dritten
Reich’: Semantiken, Praktiken, Erfahrungen (München, 2012), esp. the editors’ introduction, 9–26,
at 18–9; for the semantics of regionality see Martina Steber, Ethnische Gewissheiten: Die Ordnung des
Regionalen im bayerischen Schwaben vom Kaiserreich bis zum NS-Regime (Göttingen, 2010).
19 See Beate Meyer, ‘Erfühlte und erdachte “Volksgemeinschaft”: Erfahrungen jüdischer Mischlinge
zwischen Integration und Ausgrenzung’, in Bajohr and Wildt (eds), Volksgemeinschaft, 144–64, at
146–7; Michael Wildt, ‘“Volksgemeinschaft”: Eine Antwort auf Ian Kershaw’, Zeithistorische
Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 8 (2011), 102–9.
20 See Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung: Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen
Provinz 1919 bis 1939 (Hamburg, 2007), published in English as Hitler’s Volksgemeinschaft and the
Dynamics of Racial Exclusion: Violence Against Jews in Provincial Germany, 1919–1939 (London, 2012).
21 See Ian Kershaw, ‘“Working towards the Führer”. Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler
Dictatorship’, Contemporary European History, 2/2 (1993), 103–18.
22 See Bernhard Gotto, ‘Dem Gauleiter entgegenarbeiten? Überlegungen zur Reichweite
eines Deutungsmusters’, in Jürgen John, Horst Möller, and Thomas Schaarschmidt (eds), Die
NS-Gaue: Regionale Mittelinstanzen im zentralistischen ‘Führerstaat’ (Munich, 2007), 80–99.
8 Volksgemeinschaft: Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime

formed long before 1933, as had the term Volksgemeinschaft itself. It is therefore
necessary to take a serious look at the historical development of the idea.23 It
came into popular usage during the First World War as an integrative concept of
national longing. After the November Revolution of 1918, almost all political par-
ties ascribed to it and attached their dreams of a better future to it. It became the
‘dominant formula of political interpretation’ in the Weimar Republic.24 Through
its origins in First World War thinking, the vision of Volksgemeinschaft was intrinsi-
cally intertwined with nationalistic aspirations. Germans who used it envisioned
an ‘imagined community’ which was essentially a community of the nation,25 and
this meant that it acquired a social dimension.26 Here a fusion with the semantics
of community proved decisive. From the turn of the century in German intel-
lectual and political discourse, the concept of ‘community’ (Gemeinschaft) had
been pitted against the concept of ‘society’ (Gesellschaft) and had been invested
with a highly nationalist meaning. ‘Community’ was held to represent an organic
form of social life that was quintessentially pure and German, whereas ‘society’
was associated with what was thought of as the deadeningly rational, mechanical,
decaying civilization of ‘the West’. In the Weimar Republic, a quest for ‘unity’
in a national German community became deeply ingrained in political culture.27
Moreover, because the concept of Volksgemeinschaft had been shaped in the con-
text of wartime nationalism, it contained within it an aggressive defiance of other
nations. After 1918/19, due to general non-acceptance of defeat and disgust at the
Versailles Peace Treaty, this defiance was carried into the thinking prevalent dur-
ing the Weimar Republic. In evocations of Volksgemeinschaft in these years, there
always reverberated a demand for the restoration of Germany’s imperial status.28
23 See Norbert Götz, Ungleiche Geschwister: Die Konstruktion von nationalsozialistischer
Volksgemeinschaft und schwedischem Volksheim (Baden-Baden, 2001); Paul Nolte, Die Ordnung der
deutschen Gesellschaft: Selbstentwurf und Selbstbeschreibung im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2000), 169–
71 and 187–207; see also the essay by Michael Wildt in this volume.
24 Hans-Ulrich Thamer, ‘Volksgemeinschaft: Mensch und Masse’, in Richard van Dülmen (ed.),
Erfindung des Menschen: Schöpfungsträume und Körperbilder 1500–2000 (Vienna, 1998), 367–88, at
367; and Michael Wildt, ‘Volksgemeinschaft und Führererwartung in der Weimarer Republik’, in Ute
Daniel et al. (eds), Politische Kultur und Medienwirklichkeiten in den 1920er Jahren (Munich, 2010),
181–204; Steffen Bruendel, Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat: Die ‘Ideen von 1914’ und die Neuordnung
Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2003).
25 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism (London, 2006).
26 See Jörg Echternkamp, ‘At War, Abroad and at Home: The Essential Features of German Society
in the Second World War’, in Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Germany and the Second World War, ix. pt.
1. German Wartime Society 1939–1945: Politicization, Disintegration, and the Struggle for Survival
(Oxford, 2008), 1–101; Sven Oliver Müller, ‘Nationalism in German War Society 1939–1945’, in
Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Germany and the Second World War, ix. pt. 2. German Wartime Society 1939–
1945: Exploitation, Interpretations, Exclusion (Oxford, 2014), 11–93.
27 See Detlef Schmiechen Ackermann, “Volksgemeinschaft”: Mythos der NS-Propaganda,
wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheißung oder soziale Realität im “Dritten Reich”?—Einführung’, in
Detlef Schmiechen Ackermann, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, 13–53, at 37–40; Nolte, Ordnung, 159–87; com-
prehensive: Manfred Riedel, ‘Gesellschaft, Gemeinschaft’, in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck (eds),
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ii (Stuttgart, 1975), 801–62; for German readings of ‘the West’ see
Riccardo Bavaj and Martina Steber (eds), Germany and ‘the West’: The History of a Modern Concept
forthcoming (Oxford, 2015).
28 See Lutz Raphael, Imperiale Gewalt und mobilisierte Nation. Europa 1914-1945 (München,
2011), 213.
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In the four species of marine turtles, the feet are flat and fin-shaped.
In one the shell is rather leathery than horny. Some of these marine
turtles are carnivorous, living on fish, mollusks, and crustaceans;
others are strictly vegetarian, feeding only on roots and various sea-
weeds. The flesh of some of the sea turtles is rich and delicious, and
a favorite and costly article of food; but of some others the flesh is
coarse and strongly flavored, so as to be quite uneatable. The eggs
are always sweet, good, and wholesome food. The shell of the sea
turtle is a valuable article of commerce, boxes, cases, handles for
knives, jewelry and other delicate ornamental things being made
from it; it is susceptible of a high polish, which brings out clearly its
rich brown and golden shades and markings.
Next to the marine turtles, come the fresh-water or river turtles.
These eat both animal and vegetable food. They enjoy lying in a bed
of mud, their heads lifted above the surface of the stagnant water,
their long necks moving snake-like to and fro as they take mouthfuls
of air. The fresh-water turtles are generally gregarious in their habits,
large numbers of them being found together. They are fond of lying
in the sun on logs or banks, near the water, into which they promptly
slide at the first hint of danger. They are timid creatures, but if caught
will snap and bite furiously.
Salt and fresh water terrapins are a variety of turtle. Some scientists
distinguish the turtle from the tortoise thus: the turtle is a marine
animal, does not hibernate, cannot draw its head and feet inside its
shell. The tortoise never goes to sea; can draw itself entirely within
its shell, though only the box tortoise can close the shell fast when
so withdrawn, and finally, the tortoise hibernates. Some of the best
and latest writers on the subject call all these animals turtles, giving
the name tortoise to the box tortoise of the wood.
Clumsy as turtles appear in their box-like covering, they can walk
rapidly on land, are climbers of some distinction, and all of them can
swim. The head, neck, and legs of a turtle are of a uniform color,—
bronze, blackish green, or deep brown. The shells or boxes are
beautifully marked, glossy, ribbed, ridged, or carved, and made up of
closely united many-sided plates, fitted upon a thickened, lighter-
colored, uniform plate. This shell is not brittle and lime-like, as the
shells of mollusks, but is more like horn.
In general, the shell or flat covering of the under part of the body is of
a lighter color than the upper case, being light brown, yellow, or
cream color, with yellow lines dividing the plates, and bordering
bands of red, yellow, or purple. The upper shell is usually of a very
dark color, marked and lined with darker and lighter tints, and often
with a bevelled yellow edge.
The painted turtle receives its name from the beauty of its many-
colored shell. The spotted turtle, often called the wood turtle, is
distinguished by fine yellow spots sprinkled over its black back. The
turtle which I saw feasting on the fungus was the common box
tortoise. This box tortoise prefers dry woods, and dislikes the water.
It is a long-lived creature. Some specimens have been known to live
over a hundred years. A box tortoise that I had, ate meat, insects,
and bread and milk from my hand, but if I put berries in its mouth it
wiped them out with its front foot used hand-wise, in a very funny
way. When it wanted to get away from the balcony, it crawled along
the edge looking over, its neck outstretched; when it seemed to
decide to go over it suddenly drew itself close into its shell, and
making some quick jerk while quite shut up, over it went, came down
safe in the grass, and walked away. I watched it do that many times
and was never quite sure how it flung itself “overboard” after it was
safely shut up.
The snapping turtle is a common variety. It has a box or shell too
small to close over it and hide it completely. To make up for this lack,
it has a bold and hasty temper, and snaps vigorously when
disturbed.
The gopher is the turtle of the southern pine countries. It is a large,
strong animal, with a shell fifteen inches long. These gopher turtles
live in troops, a number of families digging their dens or burrows
near together. The entrance to the den is about four feet long and
expands into a spacious room. In each burrow lives a single pair of
gophers. Gophers’ eggs are as large as pigeons’ eggs, and the eggs
and flesh are prized by the negroes as food. By day gophers stay at
home, by night they wander out and devour yams, melons, corn, and
other garden produce. They dislike wet, and go indoors when it
rains.
A near relative of the gopher is found in Europe, and is often kept
about the house for a pet. If it can find its way into a garden in the
autumn it digs a hole and hibernates, coming forth in the spring. A
friend of mine in London had one of these animals which lived in the
kitchen. It was fond of creeping into the fire-place and getting under
the grate, where it would lie until the hot coals and ashes dropped
upon its back and burnt its shell. When winter came this little animal
wanted to take its long sleep, and dug so persistently into boxes,
baskets, drawers, and closets that finally a box of earth was given to
it, into which it worked its way until out of sight, and there stayed until
April. It ate potatoes, carrots, turnips, and bread and milk, which it
specially liked.

FOOTNOTES:
[75] The harpies, we are told, frightened Æneas by saying he
would be so hungry that he would eat his plate. But as the Trojans
at one of their meals used big cakes of bread for plates, the
prophecy was harmlessly fulfilled.
 LESSON XLII.
A REAL LIVE MERMAID.

“The waters pushed, the waters swelled,

A fisher sat near by,
And earnestly his line he held,
With tranquil heart and eye;
And while he sits and watches there
He sees the waves divide,
And lo! a maid with glistening hair
Springs from the troubled tide.”

—Goethe, Trans.
When I was a child I was greatly fascinated with tales of mermaids,
fabulous damsels who lived in the ocean. They had beautiful faces
and arms, and long, pale green hair, which they combed with golden
combs, and decked with sea-weeds and pearls. They swain like fish,
and sang most sweetly. When I learned that mermaids were only
creatures of fancy, and did not really exist, I felt as if I had been
robbed of friends. A few years later a bronzed, wrinkled old
fisherman restored to me my mermaids as real creatures, even more
interesting than the sea maids of myth. And so there is a real live
mermaid!
Where shall we find her? My old sailor said he first met her some
miles out at sea, in the latitude of Florida. She was swimming along
at ease, her head held above water, and she carried on her arm her
baby, whose head she stuck up above the waves.
Was she beautiful? Had she large, lovely eyes? No; her face was
something like that of a cow, but instead of the large black eyes of a
cow, she had tiny eyes, smaller than those of a pig. But were not her
arms beautiful? No; her arms were flat, short, somewhat of an oval
shape; in fact, they were flippers rather than arms, though she had
free use of the elbow, shoulder, and wrist joints. She had no hands,
no fingers, but at the end of each flipper were three small, flat nails.
Had she long, waving hair? No; she had a few coarse hairs about
her face, and a scanty covering of very fine, short hairs over her
body. Could she sing? Unfortunately all real mermaids are dumb.
Finally, was she of a sea-green color? Not at all; her skin was very
thick, and of a dark gray, finely wrinkled all over, very like the skin of
an elephant. Her upper lip was divided into two deep lobes, and she
had no lower limbs, but instead a tail, with a wide, strong fin.
Oh, an ugly, horrible creature! By no means; on the contrary, as
amiable, mild, gentle, playful, kindly a creature as ever drew breath.
A fish, of course! Indeed not: a mammal; a mammal of the sea.
The class mammalia has orders of animals that live in the sea; other
orders of creatures that live mostly in the air, and very many other
creatures that live on the land, and some that spend their lives under
ground. Any animal that suckles its young is a mammal, whether a
swimming, flying, walking, climbing, or burrowing creature. The sea
mammals are the whales, dolphins, porpoises, dugongs, and this
mermaid.
Our mermaid is called by sailors a “sea cow” from the shape of its
head and face; a “river calf” from its size and habit of living in rivers;
the most common and best name for it is that given it by the early
Spanish colonists, the manatee, or handed animal, because it can so
skilfully use its fore limbs or flippers.
Once there were manatees in many different parts of the world. They
were numerous in the Indian Ocean and in Behring Sea; but they
have been so recklessly slaughtered that now the creature is nearly
unknown, except a few in Africa near Cape Verde and the Cape of
Good Hope; some few along the coast of South America, and those
that inhabit the rivers of Florida. The manatee, like the buffalo of the
Western plains, is likely soon to be extinct.
The manatees of the Eastern hemisphere seem to have been much
larger than those of Florida.[76] Eight or ten feet is the usual length of
the American manatee. Efforts have been made to raise the animals
in captivity, but they do not thrive. One was kept sixteen months in
the aquarium at Brighton, England, and was fed on lettuce, cabbage,
turnips, thistles, and dandelions. Let us now look at the animal in its
favorite home, the Santa Lucia River in Florida.
Manatees live in droves or herds, and prefer shallow to deep water.
When they move up the river they keep well to the centre of the
stream, as they are very timid. They rest near to the banks where
they find plenty of grass and lily-pads to shelter them. Manatees
come from the West Indies and Central and South America to the
Santa Lucia River, to rear their young among the thick vegetation.
They arrive early in May and remain until late in the autumn.
Here is our manatee; let us take a good look at it. It has a gray
wrinkled skin; no fin on the back; a stiff, thick, shovel-shaped tail,
with a flat tail-fin; a moderate sized oval head with small eyes; a very
small under lip. The nostrils are two slits of a half-moon shape; the
ear is a little orifice, set not far behind the eye. The sight of the
manatee is good, but its hearing is something extraordinary.
Probably no other animal has ears so acute. If a blade of grass or a
leaf drops into the water the manatee hears it and darts away, for it
is as timid as it is harmless.
To the shoulders of the manatee are attached the flipper-like arms,
which it uses so readily. When in shallow water the creature supports
itself on the ends of the flippers and the tail, and thus raising its body
it moves slowly about the sandy river bottom. Its food is purely
vegetable, and it is interesting to watch it eat. If you notice a
caterpillar, or a silkworm feeding on a leaf, you get a notion of the
method of the manatee in eating, and its use of its odd double lip.
Hold out a cabbage leaf to a manatee which has been kept in a tank
as a pet—for though timid they are affectionate when kindly treated;
the gentle beast extends its head toward the leaf, and in so doing
parts the lobes of the upper lip, leaving a wide gap. As soon as the
leaf is within this space, the lip lobes come together and hold the leaf
firmly with their bristly surfaces. Then the lobes draw backwards, and
the leaf is thus pushed into the mouth where there are some twelve
teeth to chew it. The mermaid has in all twenty-two teeth, but some
fall out before others come, so it generally has twelve in its mouth at
one time.
While the manatee lives constantly in the water, it breathes air
through its nostrils into its lungs. To secure air it comes to the
surface of the water once in every three or four minutes. When it
thus rises it will blow like a whale and send a spout of spray and
water twelve or fifteen feet into the air. It seems to enjoy this blowing;
it also enjoys rolling itself on the sand and fine pebbles in the bottom
of the stream. It rolls and plunges to cleanse its skin; it is its way of
making its toilet. After a roll the manatee rises to the surface, parts
its lip lobes, gives a good blow, draws in all the air it can, and returns
below.
Lily pods and pads, bananas,[77] a coarse river grass called manatee
grass, are its favorite food. A large manatee will eat three bushels of
lily-pods in a day.
The manatee is a strong, swift swimmer, and dives with wonderful
agility. In its favorite haunt, the Santa Lucia River, the mermaid’s
babies are born among the lily-leaves, and in that green and
pleasant nursery, the clean white sand for their bed, the fragrant lilies
rocking on the water, the butterflies and dragon-flies darting out and
in among the shadows, and the birds singing and sporting above
them, they live for several weeks. When they are quite small their
mothers carry them around in their flippers if they seem tired or do
not go fast enough, but the manatee baby can swim as soon as it is
born.
Being now very scarce, the manatee is largely increased in value.
One fifteen feet long would cost two or even three thousand dollars.
A large skeleton is worth a thousand dollars. The hides and flesh
have been so much sought after that the creatures have been
hunted nearly out of existence. Formerly the Indians made light,
strong, and handsome canoes of manatee skins.
The manatee is very hard to kill; being timid, it darts away at the first
alarm, and its swimming speed is exceedingly rapid if it is frightened;
its thick skin, remarkably large, strong bones, and a thick layer of fat
under its skin protect it in a great measure from injury by a bullet.
The general method of securing the animal is to drive it into a very
large, strong net. One side of the net is sunk to the river bottom, the
other rises to the top of the water, and is then drawn about the
hiding-place of the manatee. After a little training it will come when it
is called, will eat from one’s hand, and likes to be petted and to have
its head rubbed.

FOOTNOTES:
[76] The rhytina and dugong are not, as some suppose,
manatees, but animals closely allied to true manatees.
[77] When in captivity.
 LESSON XLIII.
GREAT WHALES ALSO.

“So far I live to Northward

No man lives North of me;
To the East are wild mountain chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the Westward, all is sea.”

—Longfellow.
Many people think that a whale is a huge fish, the largest of the fish
class. This idea is entirely wrong; a whale is not a fish, but a
mammal. It belongs to the same class as the cow, sheep, horse, lion,
monkey, and man, because all these widely differing creatures are
born alive, and not in an egg, and when young are nourished by their
mothers’ milk. The mammalian class, distinguished in this way by
suckling the young, is divided into many orders, and to one of these,
the cetacean, or whale order, the whales give their name.
The whale is the largest of all living mammals; it is a mammal of the
sea, and has a fish-like body because its home is constantly in the
waters. A whale is entirely helpless when cast upon the land; it is
unable to move itself, or to find anything to eat. Out of water it will
soon die, but not because it is unable to breathe air, as is the case
with the fishes.[78]
The whale breathes air through its nostrils into lungs; it does not
have gills, and therefore while in the water it must constantly come to
the surface for air. Thus the principal motion of the whale in the
water is up and down, coming to the surface, and then seeking the
depths. To aid it in this motion the whale’s tail expands sidewise or
horizontally, and not up and down or vertically, as do the tails of most
fishes which chiefly swim straight forward, or in large curves.
Let us look at a whale. Its body is cone-shaped; the head is very
large, sometimes one-third of the animal’s entire length; there is no
notch of the body to mark the neck;[79] the body tapers to the tail,
which is widely expanded on each side into what are called flukes,
and thus becomes a very strong propeller. Just behind the head we
find a pair of fore limbs, called paddles or flippers. These are flat and
oval, and have externally no marks of joints, fingers, or nails. But if
you examine the skeleton of a whale, you will find that this limb is
divided into arm and hand bones, very much like those of your own
arms and fingers. There are no external signs of hind limbs, but in
some kinds of whales we find in the skeletons some small, soft
bones like a hint of legs.
The skin of the whale is smooth, of a dark gray or black color, and
without hair except a few bristles around the mouth. Under the skin
is spread a layer of several inches of fat, called blubber. This layer of
blubber serves to keep the whale warm, and also to render its huge
body light, so that it will float easily; it also keeps it from being readily
injured. Most whales have a low, narrow fin down the centre of the
back, to aid them in keeping a proper position in the water.
Let us now examine more particularly the whale’s big head; it has
small eyes, and a pair of tiny holes for ears. These ears are close
behind the eyes, but the nostrils are usually placed on top of the
head. In nearly all varieties of whales we find teeth inside the large
mouth. In one very important species there are no teeth, but instead,
we find a large number of horny plates. The whale’s mouth opens
very wide, and the lips are stiff and immovable, not soft and flexible
like our own.
Most people have read of the blowing or spouting of the whale, when
it sends a double stream of water from its nostrils up into the air. The
general idea is that the whale takes this water in at the mouth, and
then spurts it up into the air through the nostrils, as a matter of
amusement. This is not true. When a whale comes to the surface he
takes in a large amount of air, and returns below; most of this air
becomes changed to steam or vapor, as the animal remains below
for some time. Then the whale comes up for more air, and the first
thing is to free his lungs of the heated, vaporized air that is already in
them. The animal drives this air violently from its lungs through the
nostrils, and rising into the cold atmosphere it is at once changed to
spray by condensation. The whale frequently begins to blow before it
reaches the top of the water, and so drives surface-water up with the
vapor which it expels from its lungs.
Fishes, we know, have very little red blood; reptiles are cold-blooded
animals; but whales have plenty of warm, red blood. They are very
strong and active creatures in spite of their unwieldy size. The
lightness afforded by their blubber, or sheath of fat, and the large
amount of air they can contain in their great lungs, and the strength
of the tail with its wide flukes,[80] enable them to dash through the
water with amazing swiftness.
Most of the “true whales” are flesh-eaters, with very fierce appetites.
They devour fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, and even seals or other
whales. They need enormous quantities of food to support such
large bodies, for a Greenland sperm whale is sometimes seventy
feet long, and from twenty to thirty feet thick through the shoulders.
To secure the needed amount of food, the vast mouth opens wide. In
some whales a man can stand upright between the extended jaws.
In the “right whale,” which has no teeth, the mouth is lined along the
upper jaw with long, narrow plates or flakes called baleen, of which
whalebone is made. Every piece of whalebone is a strip of this
baleen, from within the mouth of a right whale, and every such piece
has a wonderful history behind it, for it has been floating, perhaps for
many years, through the cold Arctic seas. It could tell us rare tales if
it could speak.
These plates of baleen are sometimes seven yards long, and the
mouth of one whale has about seven hundred plates. The chief food
of this right, or whalebone whale, consists of very small brown
crustaceans, one of the numerous crab family. These creatures are
so abundant in the northern seas that they lie in banks many leagues
long and several feet thick. The whale feeds on these beds of living
animals, as a cow browses on grass or hay.
Whales are mild and inoffensive in disposition, unless greatly
irritated by wounds and attack. They seldom quarrel among
themselves, but are playful and affectionate, while the mother shows
intense fondness for her young. Whales are social animals, and go
in herds, or groups; one is seldom found alone.
In the spring the whales pair, and move off together to find some
place where they may rear their young. As they travel together they
seem very lively and happy; they stop to feed, and indulge in frolics,
leaping out of the water, tumbling over and over each other, turning
somersaults, and striving to show what they can do. As they come to
inlets or deep, quiet bays, which may afford them a safe home, the
male whale goes to explore their fitness, or to see if the spot is
already taken by some other couple. This is the spring house-
hunting of this famous family, and while Mr. Whale enters to make
inquiries, Mrs. Whale waits outside. Finally, an abode is selected,
and here the mother remains, until in autumn, one, or at most two,
little baby whales are born. Compared with their big mother they are
small, but compared with human children they are giants.
To her little ones the mother whale gives devoted attention. She
suckles them for about two months, at the end of which time they are
able to feed on crustaceans and small fish. Then the mother sets off
with her family to complete their education by taking them abroad in
the water-world. The baby whales can swim as soon as they are
born, but not so fast as their big mother, and she carefully
accommodates her pace to theirs. If danger threatens, she places
herself between it and her child, and hastens the little one’s flight by
pressing against it, and so shoving it through the water.
If there is need to go still faster, she sometimes grasps the young
one between her flippers and her neck, and so swims with all her
might, carrying the little one off. If attacked, she will sacrifice her life
rather than abandon her baby. When the baby whale is attacked, the
usually mild mother shows great fury.
A male whale also will defend his mate if she is attacked, swimming
round and round her, blowing, lashing the waves with his powerful
tail, and trying to overturn boats with his mighty head; he will die
rather than desert her. Such noble, loyal qualities shown by these
animals deepen our regret that through promiscuous slaughter, they
are rapidly diminishing in numbers, and are likely to disappear from
the Northern hemisphere. Sharks, narwhals, and white bears are
enemies of the whale, but none of these brute hunters are as
reckless and destructive in their warfare as men.
The sperm whale is more nearly allied to the porpoise than to the
right whale. From the sperm whale, oil, ivory, ambergris, and
spermaceti are obtained, but no whalebone. The spermaceti, from
which this whale derives its name, is found in a cistern-like reservoir
over two yards deep, placed near the brain cavity at the back of the
whale’s head. This reservoir contains many gallons of spermaceti.
Dolphins, narwhals, and rorquals, all belong to the whale family. The
rorquals have larger fins than the other whales. The blue whale is
the largest of all the family.[81] The humpbacked whale is shorter and
thicker than the other varieties, has a queerly shaped back fin, and
large flippers.

FOOTNOTES:
[78] See Nature Reader, No. 3, pp. 243-4.
[79] Neck or nick, or notch. Notice etymology.
[80] A fluke is either half of the tail of a cetacean, so called from
the resemblance of the tail to an anchor, as the teeth of an anchor
are called flukes.
[81] This Balænoptera sibbaldii gets its common name from its
bluish gray color; it is supposed to be the largest of living animals.
 LESSON XLIV.
THE STORY OF A SEAL-SKIN COAT.

“And there we hunted the walrus,

The narwhal and the seal.
Ha! ’twas a noble game!
And like the lightning’s flame,
Flew our harpoons of steel.”

—H. W. Longfellow, in The Discoverer of the North Cape.

GARMENTS OF PRICE.
The Arabian legends tell us of a magical carpet, upon which one can
seat himself, and then, wishing to be in a certain place, the carpet
rises into the air, and safely and swiftly carries him where he would
be. When Catherine showed to me a costly seal-skin coat, her
Christmas gift, I proposed to her that we should use it as a magic
carpet, and flying to the home of the fur seal, should trace the coat
through all the changes of its history.
“Let us go at once!” cried Catherine.
“If we go now,” I said, “not a seal shall we behold, for they are now
far off at sea. It will be useless to make our trip before the fifteenth of
May.”
On the fifteenth of May, accordingly, Catherine and I spread out the
seal-skin coat and began our journey. We went northwest, crossed
the high Rockies, left behind us the new State of Washington, moved
still west by north, and finally arrived at three small islands in Bering
Sea, called the Pribylov Islands, from a Russian who discovered
them in 1786. “Our fortune is good,” said I to Catherine; “this is just
such weather as seals like. They delight in cool, moist, foggy days,
so that the sun is obscured, and casts no shadows. This is the usual
weather on the Pribylov Islands, where the sun shines clearly but
few days in the year. Seals spend about eight months in the water,
and four months chiefly on the land. When they land they choose a
dry locality of hard sand and pebbles, shelving toward the sea, so
that no water or slime shall be left on the ground, for if their fur
becomes matted with mud it falls out at once.”
“Here we are at St. Paul’s Island; date, May eighteenth; day, mild
and hazy. We stand on a ledge of rock, and to the left of us we see
five or six giant seals walking. They come up on the rocky beach and
calmly take their places on large rocks and sit looking seawards;
they are watching for their mates, friends, and neighbors to arrive.
We need not fear to approach them; unless attacked, even the
largest seal is entirely gentle. His eyesight is good, but only for
moderate distances, but his sense of smell is as keen as the hearing
of a manatee. If we keep on the side to which the wind is blowing, so
that he cannot detect us by his sense of smell, we may approach
close to him.
“Look at him now. He is seven feet long, and weighs four hundred
pounds. He has a small, round head, the skull bones are thin and
light, and the brain fills almost the entire skull cavity, for the seal is a
highly organized and very intelligent animal. The eyes are large, of a
bluish hazel, and very beautiful; the nose is like that of a
Newfoundland dog, but the mouth has not loose skin like the dog’s
mouth, but firm, well-outlined, human-like lips.
“Open the mouth and there are large, sharp, dog-like teeth. A gray
moustache ornaments the upper lip, outdoing Victor Emmanuel’s in
length, and sweeping down upon the breast. At the back of the round
head are two small, pointed, drooping ears. The neck and shoulders
are very large and heavy; the tail is merely an apology for a tail,
being but four inches long. The seal has four limbs or flippers. The
front flippers are hairless, blue black, ten inches broad at the body,
eighteen inches long, and taper to a point. There are no fingers, and
the arm and the forearm are embraced in the body, and hidden
under the skin and blubber. In fact, the flippers are only hands, the
arm part remaining enclosed in the covering of the chest. These fore
flippers are used as feet, the seal stepping on them with alternate up
and down movements, and carrying his head three feet from the
ground, in an erect and graceful attitude.
“The hind flippers are very odd. They are much longer than the front
ones, light, slender, and ribbon-like; they look like a pair of empty,
wrinkled, black kid gloves. They are twenty-two inches long, and at a
little distance from the ends have each three strong nails. The heels
are horny and projecting, and on them the seal rests the hinder part
of the body, for the upper part of these hind flippers, bones, and
joints are embraced in the body, as are the fore limbs. At every other
step the seal pauses and gives his hind flippers a sidewise fling, as if
to keep them out of harm’s way.
“Having slowly walked up the beach, this seal, who is an adult male,
seats himself and surveys the ocean, his front flippers hang idly
down, but he fans himself in the most comical style with his long,
ribbon-like, hind flippers. He is exceedingly fat; under his skin lie
several inches of blubber, and well it is for him that he is so provided,
for now that he has come out of the water, he will not return there nor
taste food or drink for the next three or four months.[82] All the time
that he is on land he maintains an absolute fast. In the water his food
is fishes, crustaceans, and squids,[83] of which he eats enormous
quantities.”
“But the fur!” cries Catherine, “the fur! I see nothing on this beast like
my lovely, soft, dark cloak. This creature is covered with coarse gray
hair.”
“Step a little closer, my Catherine, and let us examine into this
important matter. The seal wears two coats: the outer one is this
coarse, grizzly hair, the inner one is a short, close, soft, elastic, silky
fur. This fur is darkest on the back and shoulders, lightest on the
flanks and breast. This adult male seal does not have that glossy
nut-brown, or that delicate light gray or cream-colored fur which
belongs to young seals, and to the females, and which presently we
shall see prepared for your use.
“These big seals have come out of the water to make ready for
spring housekeeping. Each one selects a dry, sloping place which
will suit the mothers and their little ones, and this home he is
prepared to defend against all intruders. About the fifteenth of June
the mother seals begin to come out of the water. They are obliged to
come out and nurse their little ones on land, as even a human baby
will not be more helpless in water, or drown more quickly than a baby
seal.
“As we watch the mother seals swimming toward land and walking
up the beach, we shall see that they are only about one-sixth of the
size of the big seals we have been examining. They are of a much
more slender and graceful make, have remarkably handsome heads
and necks, and are not encumbered with the mass of blubber under
the skin. They do not need the blubber, for they go regularly into the
water to feed, and even remain away two or three days, leaving the
male seals to keep house and defend the children. Meantime these
big seals fast and use up their store of blubber to maintain their
vitality.
“The big seals meet the mothers coming up the beach, and escort
them to their homes and to comfortable seats among the rocks. The
mother seals sit down and fan themselves with their flippers, and
croon or sing. They turn their pretty heads artlessly from side to side,
and croon to each other. No mother seal will stay alone for a minute;
from six to fifty mothers always keep together in one home.
“The big male seal has four distinct calls or notes. He has a
chuckling whistle whereby he converses with the mother seals; a
loud, angry roar for any other big seal who meddles with his family; a
low growl, with which he talks to himself; and a sound like a cat
spitting, when he is alarmed. Mother seals have the crooning song
for their mates, and a bleat like a sheep for their little ones. Baby
seals cry just like little lambs.
“A mother seal seldom has more than one baby or “puppy” at a time.
These mothers are exceedingly gentle, patient creatures, and very
quiet. On shore they fan themselves, croon, and curl up for cosy
naps, but the big seals are nervous and restless, and never sleep
when ashore more than a few minutes at a time.
“Baby seals cannot swim. They make their ba-a-a-ing cry all the time
that they are awake. Their eyes are wide open at once; they are not
blind at first, like kittens and puppies, but they do not know their
mothers from any other seals. The mother seals know their own
children by their cries, though to human ears their looks and cries
are all exactly alike. No matter how far off the puppy may roll, no
matter how many scores of puppies are heaped into a warm, furry
ba-a-a-ing heap, the good little mothers can find each her own.
Perhaps the sense of smell aids them as well as the bleating cry.
“The mother seal is not a very anxious nurse. She pays no heed if
any one picks up her baby, carries it off, or treads on it. She leaves it
for two or three days at a time, while she is off in the water enjoying
herself; meantime the little one sleeps and ba-a-a-s, and does not
seem to suffer from hunger. When the mother returns from her
excursions she curls down by her baby and gives it plenty of rich
milk. These baby seals have dark blue eyes, but the eyes become
browner after a while. All seals have long, thick eyelashes.
“As the baby seals grow older they begin to roll about the shore,
which from much trampling has been worn into hollows filled with
tide-water. These hollows are muddy and the seal mothers do not
wish their babies to get into them. The naughty little seals, like
frolicsome children, trot to the puddles and go into them a dozen
times a day, and their mothers pull them out.
“As the little ones reach the age of three months they go nearer the
water’s edge in their rambles and venture in. At first they cannot
swim, and clamber out, sputtering and spitting and crying ba-a-a at
the top of their lungs. Still, after a little nap, they go back and try it
again and again, and in a few days they know how to swim; but they
are a full year old before they know how to dive, swim, fish, roll, and
sleep in the water, as well as the adults.
“In swimming the seal carries his long hind flippers stretched
backwards to serve as a rudder, and uses the fore flippers for
propulsion. When the little ones can swim they are weaned, and they
betake themselves to the water to stay, and are able to catch squids
and crustaceans for themselves. They are three or four months old
when they thus go to the water to find a home, and they do not come
back for two years. A seal can sleep as comfortably on the water as
on shore. To sleep it turns on its back, holds its nose and feet above
the surface, and takes a profound nap, gently rocked by the waves.
“While the young seals are on shore the big seals defend them and
take care of them so long as they keep at home. If they wander
away, even though they do not go out of sight, they pay no attention
to them.
“By the middle of September the homes are broken up and the seals
return to the water to remain until May or June. Now, my Catherine,
that we have thus observed the seals in general, let us look after the
making of your coat. The fur came neither from a big male seal, a
baby seal, nor a mother seal. Then from what seal did it come?
“Let us, on a July day, turn our eyes from the crowded rookeries, or
seal homes on the rocks, and at some distance off on the shore we
shall see thousands of other seals which the Indians call ‘bachelors.’
These are seals from two to six years old, young males fresh from
the water, but not allowed by the big adult seals to approach the
homes on the rocks. They do not seem troubled by the decree of
exile; they are in good temper and high spirits, and they have very
jolly times at play. They roll and tumble and gambol as do kittens and
puppies. They lie on the grass, shut their eyes, and roll to and fro;
they sit and fan themselves; they stretch out and gently comb
themselves with the nails on their hind flippers; they take naps; they
run races; they play leap-frog over each others’ backs, and snort and
roar with great hilarity.
“These young seals have the long, coarse over-hair, less gray than
the big seals, and the soft, rich under-coat is silken and of a delicate
brown color. The down and feathers on a duck’s breast are arranged
much as the hair and fur on a seal. In August seals begin to shed
and renew their coats: in June and July they are at their best. These,
then, are the seals from which the skins for commerce are to be
taken, and in June and July it must be done. They are so docile and
gentle that it is very easy to kill them.
“The seal-killers are Indian natives of the islands who understand
their work. A number of these natives go to a herd of bachelors, and
passing around them just at daybreak ‘cut out’ from one to two
thousand, just as a shepherd ‘cuts out’ a drove of sheep from a great
flock. Surrounding and gently driving them, they turn them to the
slaughter-houses. Seals walk easily and quickly, and they go as they
are driven with the docility of sheep. Arrived at the houses, they are
allowed to lie down and rest and cool for half an hour.
“Then an expert man goes out with several others armed with clubs.
The expert points to different seals and says: ‘Don’t kill him, he is too
young.’ ‘Don’t kill that one, he is shedding his coat.’ ‘Don’t kill that
one, he is too old.’ ‘Let that one go, he is sick.’ And so on. When he
has thus pointed out the exceptions, the men with the clubs lift the
clubs high and bring down a crashing blow on the skull of each seal,
killing it instantly. As the seal is killed it is dragged from the group,