Was life in the third reich nice?

Discussions on every day life in the Weimar Republic, pre-anschluss Austria, Third Reich and the occupied territories. Hosted by Vikki.
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ljadw
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#31

Post by ljadw » 05 Apr 2020, 09:02

Sid Guttridge wrote:
05 Apr 2020, 08:36
Hi ljadw,



It is also noticeable that the highest levels of growth under Nazidom at the end of the 1930s occurred just as the first "baby boomers" of the early Weimar years were reaching maturity and having the first children of their own.

Cheers,

Sid.
This is not correct : Weimar started in 1919 and the first Weimar babyboomers were only 20 or younger in 1939 .And youngsters of 20 did not have children : people did not marry at the age of 20, they waited til they finished their military service,which started at 21 and til they had earned enough money .
It is also not so that during Weimar the population increase was bigger than under Hitler .
Population in 1925 :62, 41 million ;in 1933 :65,21 million ;in 1939 :68,47 million ( without Saar, Austria and Sudetenland )
Increase during Weimar : 2,8 million in 8 years
Increase during Hitler : 3,26 million in 6 years .

ljadw
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#32

Post by ljadw » 05 Apr 2020, 09:21

history1 wrote:
05 Apr 2020, 08:44
ljadw wrote:
04 Apr 2020, 12:20
Additional points: [...] About the birthrate during the nazi period , opposite to what people are thinking, it was not lower than during the Weimar period :
1919 : 20 per thousand
1925 : 20,7 per thousand
1932 : 15,1 per thousand
1939 : 20,4 per thousand [...]
The Nazi period didn´t end in 1939, what does your source say about the birthrates from 1940-1945?
And what about the decade after WWII in Austria?
You can't compare a period of war with a period of peace, besides figures for the war are incomplete .Birthrate of WWII should be compared to birthrate of WWI
1940: 20
1941 : 18,6
1942 : 14,9
1943 : 16
No figures available for 1944 and 1945 .
And Austria after WWII was no longer a part of the Third Reich ,thus my source is not mentioning it .
Source =
Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch II
Materialen zur Statistik des Deutshen Reiches 1914-1945


Sejanus
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#33

Post by Sejanus » 05 Apr 2020, 09:36

Regarding the OP's question: The only thing to strive for in Nazi Germany was conformity. There was no freedom. And denunciations to the Gestapo were many. Saying the wrong thing (even merely a joke) could land a person in a concentration camp. Or worse.

And while some have responded in this thread that peacetime life in Nazi Germany was fine, it was also before the war when the planning and research had already begun to carry out mass murder culminating in the T4 Program, beginning with children considered by the Nazis to be "useless eaters" and "life unworthy of life" in institutions. Hitler ordered this (the document survives) and it was done in secret, because it was illegal under German law and also so sensitive that the Nazis feared what the public may do if it was discovered. Even the death certificates of those murdered were faked to further cover-up the truth.

However, illegal mass murder was possible in Nazi Germany because it was a dictatorship and Hitler had the power to get away with it (for all its faults, nothing of the sort ever occurred under the Weimar Republic). Hitler's decision did not make such mass murder right either legally or morally, but if Nazi Germany was really such a great and improved place (as another poster claims) then how could mass murder have even begun there, let alone succeeded on such a scale?

Of course the T4 program expanded to the mass murder of the adult handicapped and mental patients in institutions (some adults and children were also experimented on), and evolved ever further to target inmates of nursing homes and senior citizens homes, and those judged useless and incapable of work. And near the end of the war even some members of the Wehrmacht were murdered as well, again because they had been judged to be useless regardless of their military service to their country.

You see, a system that targets and carries out mass murder with impunity of a particular group, can when it deems it necessary and justifiable, select additional groups for the same treatment and the victims have no recourse. So just because it is Jews being targeted (for example) does not mean that non-Jews are forever safe from state sanctioned murder. Reminds me of Martin Niemöller's "First They Came..."

And for that matter, how about the killings during the Night of the Long Knives (and that also happened during peacetime when things were allegedly so great as well)? Supposedly to suppress an SA coup (when there was none) and to settle old scores by carrying out politically motivated murders. This was also illegal under German law but again, it happened anyway and at Hitler's order. When there are no protections of law checking the desires of a head of state it permits homicidal state excesses like murder and mass murder. Anybody leaving out such details in describing the so-called merits of Nazi Germany is either ignorant or worse in whitewashing history.

Source material examples for T4 and the murder of Wehrmacht members:

http://gedenkstaettesteinhof.at/en/exib ... hof-vienna
http://www.memorialgugging.at/pdf/Czech_Gugging_e.pdf

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#34

Post by Sid Guttridge » 05 Apr 2020, 10:19

Hi Guys,

This is a page from the 1939 Reich Statistical Yearbook regarding births over several decades:

https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 39%7Clog11

There were census in 1933 and 1939, so population totals for individual ears betwee are presumably speculative.

For what it is worth, the Yearbooks give the total population of the Reich, without Saarland and later additions, as 66,165,879 in June 1933 (https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 933%7Clog9) and 66,031,581 for the same area in October 1938 (https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 38%7Clog10). This implies there was a fall in population during the first six years of Nazi rule but, as I say, there was no census during this period, so I wouldn't take that as gospel.

The 1940 edition has updated figures that do show population growth over 1933-1939 (https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 39%7Clog10). However, it is more time consuming to extract the totals for exactly the same area and I have not done so.

Cheers,

Sid.
Last edited by Sid Guttridge on 05 Apr 2020, 10:40, edited 2 times in total.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#35

Post by Sid Guttridge » 05 Apr 2020, 10:35

For anyone wanting to do any serious number crunching on Germany in the first half of the 20th Century, try:

https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/to ... N514401303

Cheers,

Sid.

ljadw
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#36

Post by ljadw » 05 Apr 2020, 18:54

Sid Guttridge wrote:
05 Apr 2020, 10:19
Hi Guys,

This is a page from the 1939 Reich Statistical Yearbook regarding births over several decades:

https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 39%7Clog11

There were census in 1933 and 1939, so population totals for individual ears betwee are presumably speculative.

For what it is worth, the Yearbooks give the total population of the Reich, without Saarland and later additions, as 66,165,879 in June 1933 (https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 933%7Clog9) and 66,031,581 for the same area in October 1938 (https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 38%7Clog10). This implies there was a fall in population during the first six years of Nazi rule but, as I say, there was no census during this period, so I wouldn't take that as gospel.

The 1940 edition has updated figures that do show population growth over 1933-1939 (https://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/im ... 39%7Clog10). However, it is more time consuming to extract the totals for exactly the same area and I have not done so.

Cheers,

Sid.
I have 65,218 million for 1933 and 68,424 million for 1938 .
But, we don't know what the Yearbooks are counting or not counting : what about the Germans living abroad but still having the German nationality ?What about the non Germans living in Germany ?

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#37

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Apr 2020, 11:03

Hi ljadw,

Your figures may be about right.

I have tried to compare the 1940 Yearbook figures for the 1939 census with the Alt Reich (minus Saarland) for the same area in the 1933 census, but as several provinces had gained population from territorial expansion, this is difficult.

However, a quick look at some of the interior provinces that did not undergo expansion shows some population growth in all cases over 1933 and 1939.

Cheers,

Sid

Panzerfaust92
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#38

Post by Panzerfaust92 » 08 Aug 2020, 02:03

I highly suggest watching the short video titled Living in Hitler's Germany by Hans Schmidt (Leibstandarte SS) for an account of what life was like.

Its no longer available on YouTube but you can find links for it by googling the title of the video and his name. Enjoy.

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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#39

Post by luckystrike78 » 08 Aug 2020, 20:24

Panzerfaust92 wrote:
08 Aug 2020, 02:03
I highly suggest watching the short video titled Living in Hitler's Germany by Hans Schmidt (Leibstandarte SS) for an account of what life was like.

Its no longer available on YouTube but you can find links for it by googling the title of the video and his name. Enjoy.
If one wants to read an account from "the other side", I reccomment to read the diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933 - 1945.

history1
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#40

Post by history1 » 08 Aug 2020, 23:00

AllenM wrote:
24 Dec 2019, 20:10
From its start, the Third Reich provided better living conditions for most Germans and jobs. Germany's involvement in the Spanish Civil War is often overlooked. Rearmament became more and more open as war approached. The word Nazi derives from the German NSDAP, or National Socialist Democratic Workers Party.
Big fail! It´s " Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = National Socialistic German Workers Party".

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TheSearchers
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#41

Post by TheSearchers » 09 Aug 2020, 16:47

Octotrooper wrote:
11 Dec 2019, 21:43
I have heard and seen conflicting reports on how life was under nazi rule, was it terrible with the economy in ruin or was life going or even thriving? Please help, thanks in advance!
Some years ago I read in Michael Jones' book "Leningrad: State of Siege" that in spite of all the horrors that went on in that city (incl. cannibalism, etc), there were also Soviet Party members living there who did not only not have to starve a single minute, but actually had the nerve to state that it was "the time of their life" when finally heading off - yes, all throughout that particular time. And they had no problem saying that right in the presence of others who had been starved close to death!

Ruth Irene Kalder, the lover of Amon Göth (commander of the Poznan concentration camp who was featured in the movie "Schindlers List"), still swarmed during an interview with historian Tom Segev in the 1970ies: „It was a great time, we loved being together. My Amon was king and I was his queen. Who would not put up with it?" She regretted that the 'good' times were over, and when asked about the victims, she replied: “They weren't really people like us. They were so filthy.“
Sources:
https://nypost.com/2015/04/05/my-grandf ... lers-list/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Irene_Kalder (DE language)

When I worked for an NGO in Vienna, a colleague (daughter of an Austrian top diplomate and back then married to a half-jewish husband) once said to me that she would have loved to have lived in the 1930ies "for it must have been such a great time if you were into arts". Asked about how she can simply turn a blind eye on the NS crimes coming along with that she simply shook her shoulders, smiled and said that she is not into politics.

It was this kind of statements that made me realize that there is indeed no limit to human ignorance whatsoever... just like there is none to human cruelty, once hell breaks loose. Hence, documentaries like this one about the Auschwitz photo album of Karl-Friedrich Höcker are not surprising me any more at all: https://youtu.be/jUvcmGbtHWA

So to answer your question: Yes, "of course" for many people life was thriving - especially in the years between 1933-1939. Bread and games is a principle that already worked well for the Romans 2000 years ago... and the NS regime managed to even add some perfect mass propaganda to this, leaving indigene Germans with the idea of being superior to anyone else in this world (= deserving to be privileged towards them) - regardless of which social class they actually belonged to. Now how much more appalling is this natural belonging to something that is not even as (seemingly) far away as god, but available right here on Earth compared to accepting that we all are dust and will return to nothing but dust once we pass away, hm?

Yet, some of the time witnesses I met told me that from 9 November 1938 onwards at the latest, they realized that their NS government was indeed criminal. So the progrom night was definitely a cut - at least for those with a still-intact sense for what is right and what is certainly not. Others took a bit longer: But from 1939 onwards, with the first coffins containing German soldiers being returned to their families, the mood slowly but surely started to swing, at least for many of those actually concerned... (although there were still enough remaining fanatic in spite of their sons brought home like that).
Last edited by TheSearchers on 10 Aug 2020, 01:02, edited 33 times in total.
Kind regards,
TheSearchers

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Br. James
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#42

Post by Br. James » 09 Aug 2020, 19:50

So much to absorb from this latest note...and from the many before it, as well. We have MUCH to be thankful for!!

Br. James

history1
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#43

Post by history1 » 09 Aug 2020, 23:29

TheSearchers wrote:
09 Aug 2020, 16:47
[...]
I also read that Ruth Irene Kalder, the lover of Amon Göth (commander of the Poznan concentration camp who was featured in the movie "Schindlers List"), still swarmed during an interview with historian Tom Segev in the 1970ies: „It was a great time, we loved being together. My god was king and I was queen. Who would not put up with it?" She regretted that the 'good' times were over, and when asked about the victims, she replied: “They weren't really people like us. They were so dirty.“
[...]
There was a concentration camp in Poznan? Amon Göth was the commander of the KL Plaszow which is located in the outskirts of Cracow.
By the way, Cracow wasn´t located in Nazi Germany and thus your exemple doesn´t really fit in this thread. And that Jews were considered subhumans in Nazi ideology is neither news.

history1
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#44

Post by history1 » 09 Aug 2020, 23:35

TheSearchers wrote:
09 Aug 2020, 16:47
[...]
And when I worked for an NGO in Vienna, a colleague (daughter of an Austrian top diplomate and back then married to a half-jewish husband) once said to me that she would have loved to have lived in the 1930ies - "for it must have been such a great time if you were into arts". Asked about how she can simply turn a blind eye on the NS crimes coming along with that she simply shook her shoulders, smiled and said that she is not into politics.

There is no doubt that her statement is correct - as long as one made German art.
And again your post has nothing to do with people living in Germany at that time what is the this thread´s matter.
It seems you ´re making things up instead to listen what people have to say. When one states that he loves dogs, does that mean that he hates cats or ignores them? Sure not.
And as YOU confused Plaszow with Poznan it seem´s you´re turning a blind eye on the victims of this camp. How else can one ignore those people´s pain and confuse those cities?

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TheSearchers
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Re: Was life in the third reich nice?

#45

Post by TheSearchers » 09 Aug 2020, 23:46

history1 wrote:
09 Aug 2020, 23:29
There was a concentration camp in Poznan? Amon Göth was the commander of the KL Plaszow which is located in the outskirts of Cracow.
You are correct, indeed Göth commanded Plaszow, not Poznan (Fort VII was only related to as KL Posen for a short period of time and afaik he had nothing to do with that place).
history1 wrote:
09 Aug 2020, 23:35
And as YOU confused Plaszow with Poznan it seem´s you´re turning a blind eye on the victims of this camp. How else can one ignore those people´s pain and confuse those cities?
I know why I confused it, so I feel totally innocent, whether you can imagine this or not. :roll:
history1 wrote:
09 Aug 2020, 23:35
There is no doubt that her statement is correct - as long as one made German art.
And again your post has nothing to do with people living in Germany at that time what is the this thread´s matter.
There is also no doubt that in the years 1933-1939 a lot of things improved for many people in Germany - as long as they were not classified as unwanted for whatever reason the nazis may have found for that. The point is that too many people enjoyed these improvements without even thinking about the price others were paying for them.

"From 1938 to 1945, tens of thousands of Hamburgers enriched themselves from the property of their almost 17,000 Jewish fellow citizens. Without hesitation, they cashed in on the companies and properties of their Jewish neighbors. And almost every day they went to normal Hamburg auctions, on which sofas, armchairs and divans of German, but also Dutch, French and Belgian Jews were sold. The Nazis meanwhile gassed the real owners in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

The National Socialists carted tons of booty from the occupied western areas to the Elbe and sold it to the population at ridiculous prices. "The simple housewives on the Veddel suddenly wore fur coats and had old furniture and carpets from Holland and France," recalls contemporary witness Gertrud Seydelmann, 84, a Hamburg native"
Source: https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7809630.html

"Historian Bajohr estimates that a total of about 100,000 Hamburgers got rich. At the end of the war, furniture from Jewish ownership should have been in almost every second living room in Hamburg.

And it was known where the beautiful pieces came from. Auctioneers quite openly indicated in advertisements that the previous owners were Jews. The Gestapo also had reports about "Jewish removal goods" in the press."
Source: https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7809630.html (DE language; translated with Google)

There is no doubt that life in the 3rd Reich was "nice" - as long as one belonged to the Volk and had neither the empathy, or the conscience to doubt that this was an appropriate way to grow wealth. My point was and still is that this is a matter of human ignorance (at best).

In case of NS Germany, this ignorance went extremely far though: After all German war cemeteries in Northern France etc. had also filled with Jewish tombs only a few years earlier. From 1914-1918, these young men had given their lifes for Germany and this is how the "Fatherland" now thanked it to their relatives in return... Somehow the auction buyers managed to fade even that out, focussing on getting themselves a "nice" life (the NS way) instead.
Last edited by TheSearchers on 10 Aug 2020, 08:30, edited 18 times in total.
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TheSearchers

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