intellectuals had been inattentive, more absorbed in avant-garde and ideological hairsplitting than in the slums and farms of their own backyard.
The Nazis' strategy was simple: to exploit the fissures of Weimar political culture. Germany was rife with opportunity. The countryside, the mass media, and the streets were the three main targets.
Traditional parties were vulnerable on all three fronts. The Social Democratic government had an unfortunate history of cronyism, favoring its own affiliated trade unions and civic organizations. The leftist parties cultivated urban areas at the expense of rural constituencies. The Nazis exploited the vacuum by attacking civil society from the grass roots. Mildred Harnack had watched them move in on her college town. Between 1924 and 1928 the Nazis infiltrated local singing societies, sports clubs, and even church groups. Some towns resisted the onslaught. Others rancorously divided into two biking clubs, two drama societies, and, in one Hessian community, two competing volunteer fire companies. 13 In one small town, the forty-six local members of the Nazi Party belonged to no fewer than seventy-three religious and civic organizations. 14
The party grew rapidly, with a unique organizational structure. As of 1928 there were 100,000 Nazi Party members organized into tightly knitcadres throughout the country. Over the next two years, the party quadrupled its membership, with over 3,400 branches, and 2,000 trained speakers for its national recruitment efforts. It continued to expand quickly over 1931 and 1932. 15
The Nazis' success was fueled by sheer panic. Between 1928 and 1932 suicide rates rose fourteen percent among German men, and nineteen percent among women. 16 The Nazis offered a reassuring message: if Germany was failing, it was because the country had been weakened by internal divisions and victimized by foreign enemies. That condition could be reversed if Germans could unite under a banner of strength and self-discipline.
The Nazis were ready to take the lead, participating in the electoral process only in order to destroy it. This philosophy was spelled out in April 1928, in an essay by Joseph Goebbels, a candidate for the Reichstag.
We are an anti-parliamentarian party that rejects for good reasons the Weimar constitution and its republication institutions. We oppose a fake democracy that treats the intelligent and the foolish, the industrious and the lazy in the same way.… We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy's weapons.…
If we succeed in getting sixty or seventy of our party's agitators and organizers elected to the various parliaments, the state itself will pay for our fighting organization. That is amusing and entertaining enough to be worth trying.…
The Nazis needed someone who could market their message to the underdogs of German society, and Joseph Goebbels was their man. Under slightly different circumstances, he might have been another of Adam Kuckhoff's protégés. The two men had much in common.
Like Kuckhoff, Goebbels was born a Catholic Rhinelander, a small, frail man left crippled by a childhood infection. He studied at a succession of German universities in search of a vocation, and finally earned his doctorate in German literature and drama in 1922 from Heidelberg. Goebbels, too, aspired to be a writer, and had high hopes for his autobiographical novel, written just after he received his degree. His melodramaticwork was called
Michael: ein Deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblät-tern
(“Michael: A German Destiny in Journal Pages”). It told the story of a young student who is inspired by German folk ideals but driven to suicide by his despair over Germany's decline. 17
Young Goebbels submitted
Michael
to leading publishers, only to have it rejected by all. He wrote two plays—one of them,
Der Wanderer (The Wanderer),
was based on the life of Jesus Christ—but they went un-produced. Goebbels offered dozens of articles to
Berliner
The Nazis' strategy was simple: to exploit the fissures of Weimar political culture. Germany was rife with opportunity. The countryside, the mass media, and the streets were the three main targets.
Traditional parties were vulnerable on all three fronts. The Social Democratic government had an unfortunate history of cronyism, favoring its own affiliated trade unions and civic organizations. The leftist parties cultivated urban areas at the expense of rural constituencies. The Nazis exploited the vacuum by attacking civil society from the grass roots. Mildred Harnack had watched them move in on her college town. Between 1924 and 1928 the Nazis infiltrated local singing societies, sports clubs, and even church groups. Some towns resisted the onslaught. Others rancorously divided into two biking clubs, two drama societies, and, in one Hessian community, two competing volunteer fire companies. 13 In one small town, the forty-six local members of the Nazi Party belonged to no fewer than seventy-three religious and civic organizations. 14
The party grew rapidly, with a unique organizational structure. As of 1928 there were 100,000 Nazi Party members organized into tightly knitcadres throughout the country. Over the next two years, the party quadrupled its membership, with over 3,400 branches, and 2,000 trained speakers for its national recruitment efforts. It continued to expand quickly over 1931 and 1932. 15
The Nazis' success was fueled by sheer panic. Between 1928 and 1932 suicide rates rose fourteen percent among German men, and nineteen percent among women. 16 The Nazis offered a reassuring message: if Germany was failing, it was because the country had been weakened by internal divisions and victimized by foreign enemies. That condition could be reversed if Germans could unite under a banner of strength and self-discipline.
The Nazis were ready to take the lead, participating in the electoral process only in order to destroy it. This philosophy was spelled out in April 1928, in an essay by Joseph Goebbels, a candidate for the Reichstag.
We are an anti-parliamentarian party that rejects for good reasons the Weimar constitution and its republication institutions. We oppose a fake democracy that treats the intelligent and the foolish, the industrious and the lazy in the same way.… We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy's weapons.…
If we succeed in getting sixty or seventy of our party's agitators and organizers elected to the various parliaments, the state itself will pay for our fighting organization. That is amusing and entertaining enough to be worth trying.…
The Nazis needed someone who could market their message to the underdogs of German society, and Joseph Goebbels was their man. Under slightly different circumstances, he might have been another of Adam Kuckhoff's protégés. The two men had much in common.
Like Kuckhoff, Goebbels was born a Catholic Rhinelander, a small, frail man left crippled by a childhood infection. He studied at a succession of German universities in search of a vocation, and finally earned his doctorate in German literature and drama in 1922 from Heidelberg. Goebbels, too, aspired to be a writer, and had high hopes for his autobiographical novel, written just after he received his degree. His melodramaticwork was called
Michael: ein Deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblät-tern
(“Michael: A German Destiny in Journal Pages”). It told the story of a young student who is inspired by German folk ideals but driven to suicide by his despair over Germany's decline. 17
Young Goebbels submitted
Michael
to leading publishers, only to have it rejected by all. He wrote two plays—one of them,
Der Wanderer (The Wanderer),
was based on the life of Jesus Christ—but they went un-produced. Goebbels offered dozens of articles to
Berliner
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