Kroener B.R., Müller R.-D., Umbreit H. Germany and the Second World War. Volume IX/II. German Wartime Society 1939-1945: Exploitation, Interpretations, Exclusion

New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. — 1143 p.A WAR on two fronts, a second world war against the anti-Hitler coalition to create a new world order, and at the same time a war against the 'enemies' of the Volksgemeinschaft and a 'race war' against the Jews: this was, for the Nazi regime, what the years between 1939 and 1945 were mainly about. Volume IX of the Germany and the Second World War series consequently looks at the war's social context, and conversely at how it affected the population seen from this perspective as a 'war society'. The overall concept for this volume, the main questions, theoretical premises, and methods adopted, were discussed in the main introduction. The first half-volume began by highlighting the determining features of everyday wartime experience: the ubiquity of the NSDAP, the close presence of concentration-camp inmates and the Holocaust, and the air war over Germany. It went on to consider the coherence of military society, its social profile, and the resistance movement. In this second half-volume German war society is studied from two further angles. Part I looks at the significance given to the events of the war in various quarters. Taking most of all a cultural history approach, the authors tackle the question-a decisive one for the kind of war it was and how long it lasted-of how people saw the 'war on two fronts'. How much had pre-war perceptions and conceptions changed by the time the war ended? What feelings were aroused by the events of the war, and how did these in turn affect how people saw it? An insight into the internal logic of perceptions and conceptions of the war, both private and public, helps answer a central question posed in Volume IX: why did the Germans
carry on fighting until the spring of 1945, when defeat had long since been beyond any doubt?
First to be considered is what Max Weber terms their deep-rooted and widespread world view (' Weltbild'), or interpretation of reality, which German nationalism-the term, like its adjective 'nationalistic', is neutral in our research and carries no value judgement-had since the nineteenth century been used as a basis, taken from the history of mentality, for interpreting war, and not least for inclusion and exclusion in the 'war on two fronts'. The Nazi regime constantly supplied interpretations ex cathedra, albeit always geared to the mood among the population. This calls for closer examination of 'cultural' warfare waged through the media offilm, radio, and theatre, as well as oftwo aspects ofNazi propagandaanti-Semitism, and the specific explanation of the progress of a war hanging between victory and defeat. The reach ofthe propaganda is gauged on the one hand from what Allied officers learned when interrogating German prisoners of war, and on the other from the private perspectives revealed in soldiers' letters home, which are used in, for instance, studying the emotional side of wartime life among the military. For the civilian aspect, finally, there is a study ofthe self-portraits provided by an influential social group that determined working relationships in the war economy-the business elite of the armaments industry. Part II is devoted to the daily life of the non-German workforce. This means primarily foreign civilian workers, forced labourers, and prisoners of war, but also includes those in the deportation areas themselves: in a word, the 'Others'.
The nationalism of the Nazis was a product of war. It arose in 1914, and came to an end in 1945. Talk of nation and war was heard everywhere in the era covered by the two World Wars. There was hardly an area of public life in Germany that was not covered by nationalistic stock interpretations and arguments. Sven Oliver Mitller consequently investigates the composition and scope of consensual and particular ideas of nation held in the German Reich at war. In a cross-section of the civilian and military sections of the war sociery he analyses the spread of central
nationalistic ideas, seeing nationalism as in particular a medium for communication between those at home and those at the front. The political and cultural polyvalence of nationalism was evident especially under the conditions of war, and all conflicting hopes and desires could be brought together under 'Volk' and 'nation'.
Nationalistic interpretation models gave struqure to what was happening in the war, and allowed the connection between combat, suffering, and death to recede into the background. The widespread effect of the nationalistic view of the world can be explained more convincingly in this way than by seeing it as mainly the product of coercion and propaganda: the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft promised at one and the same time more equality and more inequality. The precondition for the well-being of the Volksgenossen was the rigid exclusion of outsiders and enemies, who by definition were never part of the new community. The National Socialists were helped by the fact that they could latch onto a broad nationalistic consensus that already existed among the entire German population.
The ideas of nation held among members of the Wehrmacht reflected those among German society as a whole. Many soldiers valued and defended the social ideals that they had watched becoming reality in the 1930s. During the Second World War the German ideas of nation provided many of those serving in the Wehrmacht with a fixed landmark, and in their letters these ideas lend 'reality' to th imagined national community that linked front and homeland. At the same time the nationalistic category of the Volksgemeinschaft that had been learned back in the Reich supplied the framework for thinking about the war in eastern Europe. Nationalistic views of life and the world played an important and varied role by giving meaning to the war's everyday violence. Taking the German nation as one's point of reference made it possible to see inequality as something natural, to believe in one's own superiority, and to justify the killing. In their wartime everyday life the nationalistic view of the world around them instilled by Nazi propaganda lent the men's ideas on order and neatness a political dimension.
Next to be looked at is wartime propaganda, and its indirect and direct forms and content. Birthe Kundrus begins by examining the place that entertainment held between 1939 and 1945. What importance did mass and high culture have for the regime's conduct of the war? Did the Nazis calculate on keeping the Volksgenossen loyal to the regime, and on keeping up their morale during the war, by means of 'total entertainment'? The strategies used for merging entertainment and propaganda, and giving it a political function, are analysed. In the Third Reich, it is found, politics and entertainment became inextricably intermingled, not only through being used as a tool but also through the way they were experiencedbecause of the meaningful atmosphere that listening to the radio and going to the cinema or theatre evoked among listeners and audiences. Here Joseph Goebbels, as the minister in charge, always saw providing diversion as at the same time giving clear or subtle directionVolume I
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