Other professional groups were somewhat less satisfied, in particular Germany"s vast and ramified state civil service. Despite Hitler"s attempt in 1934 to try and sort out a division of labour between the traditional state service and the Party, tensions and struggles between the normative and prerogative arms of the "dual state" continued and if anything got worse as time went on. While inst.i.tutions like the Interior Ministry felt obliged to warn civil servants not to accept instructions from n.a.z.i Party agencies or individuals without any formal capacity in the state, Hitler himself, notably in a proclamation read to the Nuremberg Party Rally on 11 September 1935, insisted repeatedly that if state inst.i.tutions proved ineffective in implementing the Party"s policies, then "the movement" would have to implement them instead. "The battle against the inner enemy will never be frustrated by formal bureaucracy or its incompetence. "65 The result was that the civil service soon began to seem very unattractive to ambitious young graduates eager to make their way in the world. As the SS Security Service noted in a report in 1939: The result was that the civil service soon began to seem very unattractive to ambitious young graduates eager to make their way in the world. As the SS Security Service noted in a report in 1939: The development of the sphere of the civil service has in general again been in a negative direction. Well-known, threatening phenomena have in the period under review once more increased in dimension, such as the shortage of personnel, negative selection and absence of younger recruits because of the poor pay and public defamation of the civil service, failures in personnel policy because of the lack of any unity of approach, and so on.66 There were serious problems of recruitment already by 1937. The law faculties of Germany"s universities, upon which the civil service largely depended for recruits, had shrunk dramatically in size since 1933, as students went into more fashionable subjects like medicine. On the other hand, the bureaucratization of n.a.z.i Germany - a term actually used in 1936 by the Reich Statistical Office - had led to a 20 per cent growth in public employment in federal, state and local administration between 1933 and 1939. But better-paid administrative posts were still to be had in the Party and its affiliated organizations. By 1938 there were serious staff shortages in state offices at all levels. Yet it was not until the summer of 1939 that the salary cuts imposed by Bruning"s austerity programme during the Depression were at least partially reversed. Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick painted a drastic picture of civil servants" chronic indebtedness and predicted that the civil service would soon be unable to carry out its tasks any more. For the sharp decline in the prestige and position of civil servants, however, the Party and its leaders, who constantly poured scorn upon the state apparatus and those who staffed it, only had themselves to blame.67 In view of these developments, it was not surprising that a thoughtful civil servant, Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, himself a member of the n.a.z.i Party since 1932, voiced his despair at the way things were going in September 1937. He drew Ministers" attention to the new Reich Civil Service Law, which described the civil service as the main pillar of the state. Without it, he pointed out, the Four-Year Plan could not be properly implemented. Yet its efficient functioning was being blocked by a sharp decline in strength as a result of repeated political and racial purges, while the proliferation of Party and state inst.i.tutions had led to a chaos of competing competences that made proper administration virtually impossible. He went on: Although it has considerable achievements to its credit since the take-over of power, it is publicly ridiculed ridiculed as a "bureaucracy" either by the Leader or by the community and decried as alien to the people, disloyal, without anyone being prepared to reject officially this disparagement of a cla.s.s on which the state depends. Civil servants, especially leading ones, are as a "bureaucracy" either by the Leader or by the community and decried as alien to the people, disloyal, without anyone being prepared to reject officially this disparagement of a cla.s.s on which the state depends. Civil servants, especially leading ones, are exposed to attacks exposed to attacks on their work, on their work, which in fact are directed against the state as such which in fact are directed against the state as such . . . The consequences of this treatment of the civil service are that the civil service feels increasingly . . . The consequences of this treatment of the civil service are that the civil service feels increasingly defamed, without honour, and in some degree of despair. Recruitment is beginning to dry up defamed, without honour, and in some degree of despair. Recruitment is beginning to dry up . . . The civil service is largely reduced to the economic status of the proletariat . . . By comparison, business offers many times the salary . . . . . . The civil service is largely reduced to the economic status of the proletariat . . . By comparison, business offers many times the salary . . .68 Among senior civil servants such as Schulenburg, disappointment at the dashing of the high hopes they had held in 1933 was palpable. Things, he declared, were even worse than they had been under Weimar. The long and honourable tradition of the civil service was being destroyed.69 Schulenburg"s disillusion was to lead him rapidly into a position strongly hostile to the regime. As far as the great majority of civil servants were concerned, however, the forces of tradition and inertia proved superior. The civil service had held a special place in German society and politics since its formation in eighteenth-century Prussia. Some of the ideals of duty to the nation, contempt for politics, and belief in efficient administration, survived into the twentieth century and informed civil servants" reaction to the n.a.z.is. Rigid bureaucratic procedures, formal rules, a plethora of grades and t.i.tles, and much more besides, marked out the civil service as a special inst.i.tution with a special consciousness. It was not easily displaced. Some decided to soldier on in the interests of the nation they thought the civil service had always represented. Others were attracted by the authoritarian style of the Third Reich, its emphasis on national unity, on the removal of overt political conflict, and particularly, perhaps, its effective removal of a whole range of constraints on bureaucratic action. Efficiency replaced accountability, and that too was attractive to many civil servants. In every Ministry in Berlin, every regional and local government office, civil servants obeyed the laws and decrees handed down to them by Hitler, Goring and other Ministers to implement because, above all, they considered it their duty to do so. Dissenters, of course, had been weeded out in 1933; but the vast majority of German bureaucrats were in any case arch-conservatives who believed in an authoritarian state, considered Communists and even Social Democrats traitors, and favoured renewed national expansion and rearmament.70 One such bureaucrat, typical in many ways, whose voluminous family correspondence has by chance survived to give us a detailed view of a middle-cla.s.s perspective on the Third Reich, was Friedrich Karl Gebensleben, City Planning Officer in Braunschweig. Born in 1871, the year of German unification, Karl Gebensleben had trained as an engineer and worked for the German railway system in Berlin before taking up his post in 1915. He was obviously a man of integrity who was trusted by his colleagues, and by the early 1930s he was combining his administrative post with the office of deputy mayor of the city. His wife Elisabeth, born in 1883, came from a prosperous farming background, as did her husband. The couple were pillars of Braunschweig society, frequented concerts and patronized the theatre, and were to be seen together at all major public celebrations, receptions and similar events. Their daughter Irmgard, born in 1906, had married a Dutchman, and her presence in Holland was the occasion for most of the family"s letter-writing; their son Eberhard, born in 1910, studied law at a series of universities, as was normal at the time, including Berlin and Heidelberg, and aimed to take up work in the Reich civil service as a career. This was a solid, conventional, bourgeois family, therefore. But in the early 1930s it was clearly in a deep state of anxiety, plagued above all by fears of a Communist or socialist revolution. Elisabeth Gebensleben expressed a widely held view when she wrote to her daughter on 20 July 1932 that Germany was in mortal peril from the Communists, aided and abetted by the Social Democrats. The country was swarming with Russian agents, she thought, and the violence on the streets was the beginning of a planned destabilization of the country. Thus any measures to ward off the threat were justified.71 Well before the n.a.z.i seizure of power, Elisabeth Gebensleben had become an admirer of Hitler and his movement: "This readiness to make sacrifices, this burning patriotism and this idealism!" she exclaimed in 1932 on witnessing a n.a.z.i Party demonstration: "And at the same time such tight discipline and control!"72 Not surprisingly, she was full of enthusiasm for the coalition government headed by Hitler and appointed on 30 January 1933 - in the nick of time, she thought, as she witnessed a Communist demonstration against the appointment ("Has. .h.i.tler grasped the tiller too late? Bolshevism has taken far, far deeper anchor in the people than one suspected"). Not surprisingly, she was full of enthusiasm for the coalition government headed by Hitler and appointed on 30 January 1933 - in the nick of time, she thought, as she witnessed a Communist demonstration against the appointment ("Has. .h.i.tler grasped the tiller too late? Bolshevism has taken far, far deeper anchor in the people than one suspected").73 The ma.s.s, brutal violence meted out by the n.a.z.is to their opponents in the following months did not, therefore, cause her many sleepless nights: "This ruthless, decisive action by the national government", she wrote on 10 March 1933, "may put some people off, but first there surely has to be a root-and-branch purge and clear-out, otherwise it won"t be possible to start reconstruction." The ma.s.s, brutal violence meted out by the n.a.z.is to their opponents in the following months did not, therefore, cause her many sleepless nights: "This ruthless, decisive action by the national government", she wrote on 10 March 1933, "may put some people off, but first there surely has to be a root-and-branch purge and clear-out, otherwise it won"t be possible to start reconstruction."74 The "purge" included the Social Democratic Mayor of Braunschweig, Ernst Bohme, who had been elected in 1929 at the age of thirty-seven. On 13 March 1933 n.a.z.i stormtroopers burst into a council session and hauled him roughly out onto the street. Within a few days he had been forced under duress to sign a paper resigning all his offices in the town. A band of SS men took him to the offices of the local Social Democratic newspaper, stripped him naked, threw him onto a table and beat him unconscious, after which they threw a bucket of water over him, dressed him again as he was, paraded him through the streets and put him in the town gaol, from which he was eventually released some time later, to return to private life. As his deputy, Karl Gebensleben took over temporarily and without demur as the city"s new mayor. Although he was upset by the dramatic and unexpected scene he had witnessed in the council chamber, Karl nevertheless took strong exception to newspaper reports that he had wept as the mayor was carried off to his fate. He had indeed worked closely with Bohme over the past few years, but his probity as a civil servant would not have allowed him such an unrestrained show of emotion. His wife Elisabeth, though disapproving ("I would have wanted Bohme to have a somewhat less ignominious sendoff"), consoled herself with the thought that in the Revolution of 1918 the conservative mayor of the time had himself been humiliated by the "Reds". The "purge" included the Social Democratic Mayor of Braunschweig, Ernst Bohme, who had been elected in 1929 at the age of thirty-seven. On 13 March 1933 n.a.z.i stormtroopers burst into a council session and hauled him roughly out onto the street. Within a few days he had been forced under duress to sign a paper resigning all his offices in the town. A band of SS men took him to the offices of the local Social Democratic newspaper, stripped him naked, threw him onto a table and beat him unconscious, after which they threw a bucket of water over him, dressed him again as he was, paraded him through the streets and put him in the town gaol, from which he was eventually released some time later, to return to private life. As his deputy, Karl Gebensleben took over temporarily and without demur as the city"s new mayor. Although he was upset by the dramatic and unexpected scene he had witnessed in the council chamber, Karl nevertheless took strong exception to newspaper reports that he had wept as the mayor was carried off to his fate. He had indeed worked closely with Bohme over the past few years, but his probity as a civil servant would not have allowed him such an unrestrained show of emotion. His wife Elisabeth, though disapproving ("I would have wanted Bohme to have a somewhat less ignominious sendoff"), consoled herself with the thought that in the Revolution of 1918 the conservative mayor of the time had himself been humiliated by the "Reds".75 Like other conservatives, the Gebenslebens were rea.s.sured by the obeisance to tradition paid in the opening ceremony of the Reichstag at Postdam on 21 March. They dusted off their black-white-red imperial flag and hung it out in triumph, while Karl took part in a celebratory march through the streets of Braunschweig.76 Anything the Gebenslebens disliked, especially acts of violence committed by the stormtroopers and SS, they dismissed as the work of Communist infiltrators. Anything the Gebenslebens disliked, especially acts of violence committed by the stormtroopers and SS, they dismissed as the work of Communist infiltrators.77 They believed implicitly the trumped-up charges of peculation brought by the n.a.z.is against trade union officials and others. They believed implicitly the trumped-up charges of peculation brought by the n.a.z.is against trade union officials and others.78 As Elisabeth reported to her daughter Hitler"s speeches over the radio, what shone through in her words was a strongly reawakened national pride: Germany now had a Chancellor to whom the whole world paid attention. As Elisabeth reported to her daughter Hitler"s speeches over the radio, what shone through in her words was a strongly reawakened national pride: Germany now had a Chancellor to whom the whole world paid attention.79 A staunch Protestant, she joined the German Christians ("So, reform in the Church. I"m pleased") and listened excitedly as her pastor compared Hitler to Martin Luther. A staunch Protestant, she joined the German Christians ("So, reform in the Church. I"m pleased") and listened excitedly as her pastor compared Hitler to Martin Luther.80 The family"s illusions were as significant as their enthusiasms. Karl Gebensleben applauded the "strict discipline" introduced into public life and the economy by "the leadership principle, which alone has validity" and the "co-ordination down to the tiniest inst.i.tutions", but thought that in time a moderate opposition along English lines would be permitted to exist. Towards the end of May, he and his wife finally joined the n.a.z.i Party, not out of self-preservation, but out of a positive sense of commitment to the new Germany. As he wrote proudly if somewhat self-consciously to his daughter: The family"s illusions were as significant as their enthusiasms. Karl Gebensleben applauded the "strict discipline" introduced into public life and the economy by "the leadership principle, which alone has validity" and the "co-ordination down to the tiniest inst.i.tutions", but thought that in time a moderate opposition along English lines would be permitted to exist. Towards the end of May, he and his wife finally joined the n.a.z.i Party, not out of self-preservation, but out of a positive sense of commitment to the new Germany. As he wrote proudly if somewhat self-consciously to his daughter: So your "old" dad has also had to procure for himself a brownshirt, peaked cap, belt, tie and party badge as fast as possible. Mum thinks the uniform fits me fantastically and makes me look decades (?) younger!!! Oh!!! Well, well, my dear, if only someone had told me before! But it"s a grand feeling to see how everyone is trying through discipline to do the best for the Fatherland - strictly according to the motto: The public interest comes first The public interest comes first.81 As an administrator, Karl welcomed the decision to exclude the city council from most future issues and to decide them instead in a small committee. "By this means, time and energy are made available for useful work."82 Before him, he saw a new time of efficiency and coherence in administration. Things, of course, did not quite turn out that way. Before him, he saw a new time of efficiency and coherence in administration. Things, of course, did not quite turn out that way.
This was not the only point on which the Gebenslebens deceived themselves. There were illusions too in the family"s att.i.tude to the regime"s posture towards the Jews. Antisemitism initially played little part in the family"s support for n.a.z.ism. When Elisabeth Gebensleben saw the shattered display windows of Jewish-owned shops in the town in mid-March 1933, she ascribed this to "provocateurs . . . who, as has been ascertained, have smuggled themselves into the NSDAP in order to discredit the nationalist movement at home and abroad . . . Communists and fellow travellers". If any n.a.z.is were involved, it was clear that Hitler disapproved, she thought. . . . who, as has been ascertained, have smuggled themselves into the NSDAP in order to discredit the nationalist movement at home and abroad . . . Communists and fellow travellers". If any n.a.z.is were involved, it was clear that Hitler disapproved, she thought.83 She found antisemitic speeches by Goebbels and Goring "terrible" and was alarmed by the n.a.z.is" disruption of Fritz Busch"s work as a conductor in Leipzig (she thought this was because he was Jewish, although in fact he was not). Such attacks on Jewish artists were "catastrophic", she wrote, and added: "There are rogues amongst the Jews too, but one mustn"t forget all the great men amongst the Jews, who have achieved such an enormous amount in the fields of art and science." She found antisemitic speeches by Goebbels and Goring "terrible" and was alarmed by the n.a.z.is" disruption of Fritz Busch"s work as a conductor in Leipzig (she thought this was because he was Jewish, although in fact he was not). Such attacks on Jewish artists were "catastrophic", she wrote, and added: "There are rogues amongst the Jews too, but one mustn"t forget all the great men amongst the Jews, who have achieved such an enormous amount in the fields of art and science."84 Yet she was soon taking a different view, following the boycott of Jewish shops on 1 April 1933 and the accompanying ma.s.sive propaganda. "The era in which we are now living", she wrote to her daughter with unintentionally prophetic force on 6 April 1933, "will only be judged fairly by posterity." She went on: It"s world history that we"re experiencing. But world history rolls over the fate of the individual, and that makes this epoch, which is so pure and elevated in its aim aim, so difficult, because side-by-side with the joy we are experiencing, there is also sympathy with the fate of the individual. That applies to the fate of the individual Jew too, but does not alter one"s judgement of the Jewish question as such. The Jewish question is a worldwide question just like Communism, and if Hitler intends to deal with it, just as he does with Communism, and his aim is achieved, then perhaps Germany will one day be envied.85
She considered the boycott justified in view of the "smear campaign against Germany" that the regime claimed was being mounted by Marxists and Jews abroad. All stories of antisemitic atrocities in Germany were "pure invention", she roundly declared to her daughter in Holland, following Goebbels"s injunction to anyone who had contacts with foreigners to take this line; either she had forgotten the incidents she had found so shocking only three weeks before, or she had decided deliberately to suppress them. Germany had been robbed of the "possibility of life" by the Treaty of Versailles, she reminded her daughter: "Germany is protecting itself with the weapons it has. That the Jews are partly being shown the door of their offices in the legal system, in medicine, is also also correct in economic terms, as hard as it hits the individual, innocent person." She believed, wrongly of course, that their number was merely being reduced to the same proportion as that of Jews in the population as a whole (though this principle, she failed to reflect, did not apply to other groups in Germany society, for example Protestants, whose share of top jobs was proportionately far higher than that of Catholics). In any case, she said, demonstrating how far she had taken n.a.z.i propaganda on board in the s.p.a.ce of a mere few weeks, perhaps because it built on prejudices already latent in her mind, the Jews were "cunning": "The Jews want to rule, not to serve." Her husband Karl told her stories of Jewish ambition and corruption that seemed to justify the purge. correct in economic terms, as hard as it hits the individual, innocent person." She believed, wrongly of course, that their number was merely being reduced to the same proportion as that of Jews in the population as a whole (though this principle, she failed to reflect, did not apply to other groups in Germany society, for example Protestants, whose share of top jobs was proportionately far higher than that of Catholics). In any case, she said, demonstrating how far she had taken n.a.z.i propaganda on board in the s.p.a.ce of a mere few weeks, perhaps because it built on prejudices already latent in her mind, the Jews were "cunning": "The Jews want to rule, not to serve." Her husband Karl told her stories of Jewish ambition and corruption that seemed to justify the purge.86 By October 1933 she had slipped effortlessly into the use of n.a.z.i language in her letters, describing the Communist-front By October 1933 she had slipped effortlessly into the use of n.a.z.i language in her letters, describing the Communist-front Brown Book Brown Book of n.a.z.i atrocities as a work of "lying Jewish smears". of n.a.z.i atrocities as a work of "lying Jewish smears".87 As far as Karl was concerned, the achievement of the Third Reich was to have replaced disorder with order. "When the National Socialist government took power," he said in a speech welcoming the new n.a.z.i mayor of Braunschweig as he took up his office on 18 October 1933, "it found chaos." The removal of the endlessly quarrelling political parties of the Weimar years had paved the way for orderly munic.i.p.al improvements. Beyond this, Germany"s pride had been restored.88 When disorder seemed to raise its head once more at the end of June 1934, in the shape of Ernst Rohm and the brownshirts, Elisabeth breathed a sigh of relief as. .h.i.tler acted. Unlike her daughter, she expressed no doubts about the rightness of the murders committed at Hitler"s behest. "One feels absolutely insignificant in the face of the greatness, the truthfulness and the openness of such a man," she wrote. When disorder seemed to raise its head once more at the end of June 1934, in the shape of Ernst Rohm and the brownshirts, Elisabeth breathed a sigh of relief as. .h.i.tler acted. Unlike her daughter, she expressed no doubts about the rightness of the murders committed at Hitler"s behest. "One feels absolutely insignificant in the face of the greatness, the truthfulness and the openness of such a man," she wrote.89 After these events, the family had little more to say to each other about politics. Their concerns turned inwards, to the birth of grandchildren, and to Karl and Elisabeth"s son Eberhard, who was planning to study for a doctorate with the conservative, pro-n.a.z.i jurist Walter Jellinek in Heidelberg; after much discussion, Jellinek suddenly disappeared from their correspondence: it turned out that he was Jewish and he therefore lost his job. After these events, the family had little more to say to each other about politics. Their concerns turned inwards, to the birth of grandchildren, and to Karl and Elisabeth"s son Eberhard, who was planning to study for a doctorate with the conservative, pro-n.a.z.i jurist Walter Jellinek in Heidelberg; after much discussion, Jellinek suddenly disappeared from their correspondence: it turned out that he was Jewish and he therefore lost his job.90 Eberhard signed on for paramilitary training with the brownshirts, did his military service, then entered the Reich Economics Ministry as a junior civil servant, joining the n.a.z.i Party on 29 November 1937. The family"s interest in politics did not revive. n.a.z.i Germany for the Gebenslebens provided the stability they had longed for, a kind of return to normality after the upheavals of the Weimar years. In comparison with this, small doubts and niggles about the way in which it had been done seemed insignificant, hardly worth bothering about. The defeat of Communism, the overcoming of political crisis, the restoration of national pride were what the Gebenslebens wanted. Everything else they ignored, explained away, or, more insidiously, gradually took on board as the propaganda apparatus of the Third Reich incessantly hammered its messages home to the population. The conformity of middle-cla.s.s families like the Gebenslebens was bought at the price of illusions that were to be rudely shattered after 1939. Karl and Elisabeth did not live to see this happen. Karl died on the day he retired, 1 February 1936, of a heart attack; his widow Elisabeth followed him on 23 December 1937. Eberhard"s career in the civil service did not last long: by 1939 he had been drafted into the army.91
THE TAMING OF THE PROLETARIAT.
I.
By far the largest social cla.s.s in Germany in 1933 was the proletariat, comprising roughly 46 per cent of the economically active population. The occupational census of 16 June 1933, long planned and carried out largely free of n.a.z.i interference, showed that a further 17 per cent could be cla.s.sed as civil servants, white-collar workers or soldiers, 16.4 per cent as self-employed, the same proportion, 16.4 per cent, as unpaid family a.s.sistants (mostly on small farms), and 3.8 per cent as domestic servants. Looking at the adult population by economic sector, the census-takers reckoned that 13.1 million were active in industry and artisa.n.a.l trades in 1933, 9.3 million in agriculture and forestry, 5.9 million in trade and transport, 2.7 million in public and private service, and 1.3 million in domestic service. German society, in other words, was a society in which the industrial working cla.s.s was large and growing, agriculture was still significant but in decline, and the service sector, which dominates the advanced economies of the twenty-first century, was only relatively small in scale, though expanding rapidly. Modern industries, like chemicals, printing and copying, and electrical products, pointed to the future with between a quarter and a fifth of their workers being women, and women were prominent in some areas of the service sector too. In the traditional and still immensely powerful industries such as mining, metalworking, construction and the like, however, it was still a man"s world. Roughly a quarter of all economically active people in industry were concentrated in metallurgy and engineering in their broadest sense. More than three million people were active in these industries in 1933, and over two million in building and construction; to these, in the core of the traditional industrial working cla.s.s, could be added 867,000 in the timber and woodworking industries, just over 700,000 in mining, saltworking and turf-digging and 605,000 in quarrying and stone-working. Only a tiny proportion of those active in these fields were women - less than 2 per cent in mining and construction, for example. And it was these cla.s.sic areas of male employment - or, in the early 1930s, unemployment - that gave the tone to the working cla.s.s and the labour movement as a whole.92 Ma.s.s unemployment had undermined the cohesion and morale of the working cla.s.s in the early 1930s. It had destabilized Germany"s large and well-organized trade union movement. In the search for a solution, the major working-cla.s.s parties had either lost the capacity for independent action, like the Social Democrats, or deceived themselves with futile and self-destructive revolutionary fantasies, like the Communists. In 1933 they paid the price. Between March and July 1933 the n.a.z.is destroyed the long-established German labour movement, closed down the trade unions and banned the two main parties of the working cla.s.s. Organized resistance by remnants of the old labour movement continued for a while but it too was eventually suppressed.93 In the meantime, the n.a.z.is moved to create a new labour organization that would co-ordinate the workers under the control of the state. The existing n.a.z.i trade union, the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization, was viewed with suspicion by employers, who saw its potential for militancy as a threat. Business did not want to get rid of the old trade unions only to see another, more powerful form of unionism taking their place. Industrialists and bankers were dismayed by the disorder in the factories, as brownshirts and Factory Cell Organization agents attacked and expelled elected union and workers" council representatives and took over the representation of employees themselves. Employers soon began complaining that these agents were interfering in the running of their businesses, making unreasonable demands, and generally disrupting things by throwing their weight around. In Saxony, for example, the n.a.z.i Party Regional Leader Martin Mustchmann even arrested the President of the State Bank, Carl Degenhardt, and held him in custody for a month. Such actions were not welcomed by the business community. In the meantime, the n.a.z.is moved to create a new labour organization that would co-ordinate the workers under the control of the state. The existing n.a.z.i trade union, the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization, was viewed with suspicion by employers, who saw its potential for militancy as a threat. Business did not want to get rid of the old trade unions only to see another, more powerful form of unionism taking their place. Industrialists and bankers were dismayed by the disorder in the factories, as brownshirts and Factory Cell Organization agents attacked and expelled elected union and workers" council representatives and took over the representation of employees themselves. Employers soon began complaining that these agents were interfering in the running of their businesses, making unreasonable demands, and generally disrupting things by throwing their weight around. In Saxony, for example, the n.a.z.i Party Regional Leader Martin Mustchmann even arrested the President of the State Bank, Carl Degenhardt, and held him in custody for a month. Such actions were not welcomed by the business community.94 The disruption was a consequence not least of the radical ambitions of the Factory Cell Organization, whose influence in this period was out of all proportion to its relatively weak membership of a mere 300,000 employees. Backed by the muscle of the stormtroopers and the co-ordinating will of the new regime, its agents had already moved in to trade union offices and were beginning to run their affairs well before the unions were effectively abolished on 2 May 1933. The Factory Cell Organization"s leading figure, Reinhard Muchow, not yet thirty years of age at the time of the n.a.z.i seizure of power, had cut his teeth in a series of bitter labour disputes in the final years of the Weimar Republic, most notably in the Berlin transport workers" strike of 1932, when the n.a.z.is had fought side by side with the Communists. As propaganda a.s.sistant to Goebbels in the latter"s capacity as Party Regional Leader for Berlin, Muchow had directed his appeal to the capital city"s working cla.s.s, to which indeed he himself belonged. In his vision, the Factory Cell Organization would grow into a gigantic trade union organization representing every employed person in the Third Reich. In this capacity it would form a crucial element in the new corporate state; it would determine wages and salaries, present the government with new labour protection measures, and take over the unions" social functions.95 But the n.a.z.i leadership did not want cla.s.s conflict imported from the Weimar Republic into the new Reich. Already on 7 April, Hess had ordered the Factory Cell Organization not to interfere in the running of businesses, or, indeed, to disrupt the work of the trade unions, whose role in paying benefits to unemployed members was crucial during the Depression. The takeover of the unions on 2 May was in some respects a cla.s.sic example of the n.a.z.i leadership"s tendency to try to channel uncoordinated activism into inst.i.tutional forms when it began to become a nuisance.96 The unions were immediately replaced by the German Labour Front, officially celebrated at a ceremony attended by Hitler and the cabinet on 10 May 1933. The man appointed to lead the Labour Front was one of the Third Reich"s more colourful characters, Robert Ley. Born in 1890 as the seventh of eleven children of a West German farmer, Ley had suffered a life-shaping trauma as a child when his father had got deeply into debt and tried to raise insurance money to repay it by setting fire to his farm. To judge from Ley"s later autobiographical writings, the poverty and disgrace that ensued for the family after his father"s conviction for arson left the boy with a permanent sense of social insecurity and resentment against the upper cla.s.ses. Intelligent and ambitious, he chose to rebound by working hard at his studies, and, unusually for someone of his background, entered university. Partly supporting himself through part-time work, he studied chemistry from 1910 onwards. In 1914, however, the war put a temporary halt to all this; Ley volunteered immediately and served in an artillery unit on the Western Front until 1916, when, bored with the constant pounding and the b.l.o.o.d.y stalemate of trench warfare, he trained as a pilot and began to fly spotter-planes. On 29 July 1917 his aircraft was shot down; almost miraculously, his co-pilot managed a crash-landing. But they landed behind enemy lines. Ley was captured, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the French. The incident left Ley with serious injuries, including not just damage to his leg, which was saved only after six operations, but also to the frontal lobe of his brain, which seems to have gradually deteriorated over the years. He spoke with a stammer, and became increasingly p.r.o.ne to bouts of alcoholism and unrestrained behaviour of all kinds. The unions were immediately replaced by the German Labour Front, officially celebrated at a ceremony attended by Hitler and the cabinet on 10 May 1933. The man appointed to lead the Labour Front was one of the Third Reich"s more colourful characters, Robert Ley. Born in 1890 as the seventh of eleven children of a West German farmer, Ley had suffered a life-shaping trauma as a child when his father had got deeply into debt and tried to raise insurance money to repay it by setting fire to his farm. To judge from Ley"s later autobiographical writings, the poverty and disgrace that ensued for the family after his father"s conviction for arson left the boy with a permanent sense of social insecurity and resentment against the upper cla.s.ses. Intelligent and ambitious, he chose to rebound by working hard at his studies, and, unusually for someone of his background, entered university. Partly supporting himself through part-time work, he studied chemistry from 1910 onwards. In 1914, however, the war put a temporary halt to all this; Ley volunteered immediately and served in an artillery unit on the Western Front until 1916, when, bored with the constant pounding and the b.l.o.o.d.y stalemate of trench warfare, he trained as a pilot and began to fly spotter-planes. On 29 July 1917 his aircraft was shot down; almost miraculously, his co-pilot managed a crash-landing. But they landed behind enemy lines. Ley was captured, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the French. The incident left Ley with serious injuries, including not just damage to his leg, which was saved only after six operations, but also to the frontal lobe of his brain, which seems to have gradually deteriorated over the years. He spoke with a stammer, and became increasingly p.r.o.ne to bouts of alcoholism and unrestrained behaviour of all kinds.97 Ley returned to university at the end of the war and completed his studies, gaining a doctorate in 1920 for his dissertation in food chemistry, part of which was published in a scientific journal. With this training, it is not surprising that he secured a good job in the Bayer chemical company, in Leverkusen. This enabled him to marry and start a family. Yet he remained discontented and insecure, his dissatisfaction with the humdrum routine of everyday life fired by his reading of romantic and utopian literature. The French occupation of the Rhineland, where he lived, fuelled his nationalist beliefs, which turned into admiration for Hitler when Ley read reports of the n.a.z.i Leader"s speech at the trial of the Munich putschists early in 1924. Ley joined the n.a.z.i Party and soon became a leading local campaigner, rising to become Regional Leader for the Southern Rhineland in June 1925. As with many other prominent early n.a.z.is, Ley was won over by Hitler"s oratory on first hearing it. He conceived a boundless admiration for the n.a.z.i Leader, perhaps, as psychohistorians have suggested, finding in him a subst.i.tute for the father whose disgrace had cast such a pall over Ley"s childhood. Ley backed Hitler in the disputes that divided the Rhineland branches of the Party from the leadership in the mid-1920s, and helped Hitler to take the reins of power in the Party back into his hands again after his enforced inactivity following the failure of the 1923 Munich putsch. It was for this reason, and because Ley, despite his stutter, proved to be an effective, rabble-rousing speaker, that Hitler repeatedly overlooked complaints from Ley"s colleagues about his financial mismanagement, his high-handed att.i.tude towards subordinates, and his administrative incompetence. Ley was soon running a regional n.a.z.i newspaper, full of antisemitic propaganda whose virulence yielded little to that of the more notorious The Stormer The Stormer, published by Julius Streicher, the Party Regional Leader in Nuremberg. The paper, the West German Observer West German Observer, ran repeated allegations of ritual murder by Jews, and carried p.o.r.nographic stories about the supposed seduction of Aryan girls by their Jewish employers. Such claims led to several prosecutions and fines being imposed on Ley, which did nothing to deter him from repeating them.98 Brought by Hitler to Munich Party headquarters in 1931, Ley stepped into Gregor Stra.s.ser"s shoes on the latter"s sudden resignation as Reich Organization Leader of the Party in December, 1932, though he did not inherit the immense administrative power his predecessor had possessed. Ley"s experience in trying to win over the voters of the strongly working-cla.s.s areas of the Rhineland, coupled with his utopian idealism and his social resentments, gave his n.a.z.ism a discernibly collectivist tinge. It made him Hitler"s obvious choice to work out plans for the remodelling of Germany"s labour organizations early in April 1933. In formal political terms, Ley"s task was to fulfil Hitler"s vision of integrating the working cla.s.s into the new Germany, to win over perhaps the most recalcitrant, most anti-n.a.z.i part of Germany"s population to enthusiastic support of the new order. But Ley lacked the expertise to do this on his own initiative. He was quick to install the Labour Front in the old trade union offices and to incorporate the Factory Cell Organization. But he had little alternative but to make use of the Organization"s officials in setting up the Labour Front"s internal structures. Initially, these just placed existing union inst.i.tutions under new management with new names and arranged them into five large sub-groups. Thus the old trade union organization became one sub-group, with all its subordinate divisions such as its press bureau and its newspaper, while the white-collar unions formed another sub-group, retailers a third, the professions a fourth and business the fifth. The way for the Labour Front to become the nucleus of a Corporate State on the Italian Fascist model, reconciling the interests of all the different sectors of the economy in the service of the new political order, seemed to be open.99 But these ideas, pushed by Muchow and the Factory Cell Organization leaders, did not last very long. Neither the professions nor business were enthusiastic about them, the retailers never had much influence, and Muchow and his friends were by far the most dynamic force in the new structure. Before long, the Labour Front had become what they had wanted the Factory Cell Organization to be, a sort of super-union representing above all the interests of the workers. In this capacity it issued orders regulating paid vacations, wage agreements, equal pay for women, health and safety and much more besides. At a local level, agitation continued, with some officials threatening to send employers to concentration camp if they did not give in to their demands. Muchow declared that ex-Social Democrats and even some ex-Communists were responsible, and inst.i.tuted an investigation of the political past of all the functionaries of the Labour Front with a view to purging 100,000 of them from the organization. But complaints continued to multiply, from the Minister of Labour, the Interior Minister, even the Transportation Minister, all worried that their authority was being eroded by the unilateral actions of lower-level Labour Front functionaries. Things seemed to be getting out of hand, and it was time to bring the situation under control.100 II.
On 19 May 1933, acting under pressure from the employers and from government Ministries in Berlin, the cabinet promulgated a Law on Trustees of Labour. This established twelve state officials whose job it was to regulate wages, conditions of work and labour contracts in each of their respective districts, and to maintain peace between workers and employers. The Trustees were officials of the Reich Ministry of Labour. Only two of them belonged to the Factory Cell Organization; five of them were corporate lawyers and four were civil servants. The rather vague terms of the Law were filled out in detail in a further measure, the Law for the Ordering of National Labour, issued on 20 January 1934 and drafted by a civil servant who had previously been employed by an industrial pressure-group.101 The new Laws swept away the framework of bilateral collective bargaining and regulation between employers and unions that had been one of the great achievements of Weimar labour policy and replaced it with a new structure that incorporated the National Socialist "leadership principle". They stressed that there was no need for antagonism between workers and employers in the new National Socialist state; both would work together in harmony as part of the newly unified German racial community. To underline this, the Laws were couched in a neo-feudal language of reciprocity which, like the real feudalism of the Middle Ages, concealed the fact that real power lay predominantly in the hands of one side: the employers. The powers of the Trustees of Labour included the appointment of Councils of Trust for individual plants, the arbitration of disputes, the confirmation of redundancies, the regulation of working hours and the basis for calculating piece-rates, and the referral of abuses of authority, provocation, disruption, breach of confidence and similar misdemeanours to Courts of Honour which would have a quasi-judicial function and include judges appointed by the Ministry of Justice among their members. The employer was now called the "plant leader" ( The new Laws swept away the framework of bilateral collective bargaining and regulation between employers and unions that had been one of the great achievements of Weimar labour policy and replaced it with a new structure that incorporated the National Socialist "leadership principle". They stressed that there was no need for antagonism between workers and employers in the new National Socialist state; both would work together in harmony as part of the newly unified German racial community. To underline this, the Laws were couched in a neo-feudal language of reciprocity which, like the real feudalism of the Middle Ages, concealed the fact that real power lay predominantly in the hands of one side: the employers. The powers of the Trustees of Labour included the appointment of Councils of Trust for individual plants, the arbitration of disputes, the confirmation of redundancies, the regulation of working hours and the basis for calculating piece-rates, and the referral of abuses of authority, provocation, disruption, breach of confidence and similar misdemeanours to Courts of Honour which would have a quasi-judicial function and include judges appointed by the Ministry of Justice among their members. The employer was now called the "plant leader" (Betriebsfuhrer) and the workers his "retinue" (Gefolgschaft). Replacing Weimar"s system of elected works councils and legally binding contracts of employment, the new system put all the cards into the hands of the bosses in collaboration with the Trustees of Labour. In fact, the Courts of Honour were virtually a dead letter; only 516 cases were brought before them in 1934-6, mostly concerning the physical abuse of apprentices by master-artisans. They might have looked fair and just on paper, but in practice they had little real effect.102 This new system of industrial relations represented a major victory for the employers, backed by Hitler and the n.a.z.i leadership, who badly needed the co-operation of industry in their drive to rearm. While the new Trustees of Labour poured open scorn upon the idea of a corporate state, the chances of the Factory Cell Organization"s ideas gaining wider influence were struck a fatal blow by the shooting of Reinhard Muchow in a tavern brawl on 12 September 1933. This took the driving force out of the radical wing of the Labour Front, and opened the way for Ley, now more versed in the complexities of labour relations than he had been the previous spring, to re-establish his authority. On 1 November 1933, Ley told workers at the Siemens factory in Berlin: We are all soldiers of labour, amongst whom some command and the others obey. Obedience and responsibility have to count amongst us again . . . We can"t all be on the captain"s bridge, because then there would be n.o.body to raise the sails and pull the ropes. No, we can"t all do that, we"ve got to grasp that fact.103 Ley now reorganized the Labour Front, getting rid of the remnants of trade union culture and att.i.tudes, abolishing the last separate functions of the Factory Cell Organization, and acceding to the insistence of the Labour Ministry and the new labour laws that it had no role to play in the negotiation of wage agreements. The Labour Front was restructured along the same lines as the Party, with a top-down organization replacing the previous parallel representation of workers, white-collar employees and the rest. It now had a number of central departments - propaganda, law, education, social affairs, etc. - whose orders went down to the corresponding departments at the regional and local level. The old Factory Cell Organization officials did their best to obstruct the new system, but after the "Night of the Long Knives" they were summarily dismissed en ma.s.se en ma.s.se. Behind these political manoueverings lay the recognition of Hitler and the other regime leaders that rearmament, their princ.i.p.al economic priority, could only be achieved smoothly and rapidly if the workforce could be kept under control. This involved clearing away the more revolutionary elements in the Labour Front, just as it involved clamping down on any ideas of a "second revolution" pushed by the brownshirts and their leaders. By the autumn of 1934 it was clear that in the battle to control labour relations, the employers had come out on top. Yet the struggle had not left them in the situation they really wanted. The organization and structure of the shopfloor under National Socialism certainly had a lot in common with the kind of management and industrial relations system desired by many employers in the 1920s and early 1930s, but it also introduced ma.s.sive interference in labour relations by the state, the Labour Front and the Party, in areas where management had traditionally sought exclusive control. The trade unions were gone, but despite this, the employers were not masters in their own house any more.104 In the meantime, the huge apparatus of the German Labour Front quickly began to gain a reputation as perhaps the most corrupt of all the major inst.i.tutions of the Third Reich. For this, Ley himself had to shoulder a large part of the blame. His position as head of the Labour Front made him comfortably off, with a salary of 4,000 Reichsmarks, to which he added 2,000 Reichsmarks as Reich Organization Leader of the Party, 700 Reichsmarks as a Reichstag deputy, and 400 Reichsmarks as a Prussian State Councillor. But this was only the beginning. His books and pamphlets, which Labour Front officials were encouraged to buy in bulk for distribution to the members, brought in substantial royalties, while profits from his newspaper - 50,000 Reichsmarks a year - went straight into his pocket. Ley made free personal use of the substantial funds confiscated by the Labour Front from the former trade unions, and in 1940 he benefited from a one-off gift of a million Reichsmarks bestowed on him by Hitler. With such funds, he bought a whole series of grand villas in the most fashionable districts of Germany"s towns and cities. The running costs, which in his villa in Berlin"s Grunewald included a cook, two nannies, a chambermaid, a gardener and a housekeeper, were met by the Labour Front up to 1938, and even after that it paid all Ley"s entertainment expenses. He was fond of expensive automobiles and gave two to his second wife as presents. Ley also had a railway carriage refitted for his personal use. He collected paintings and furniture for his houses. In 1935 he bought a landed estate near Cologne and promptly began to turn it into a n.a.z.i utopia, demolishing the old buildings and hiring the architect Clemens Klotz, designer of the n.a.z.i Order Castles, to construct a new house in a grandiose style, confiscated land to increase the acreage of his own, drained marshes, introduced new machinery and set up a training scheme for apprentice farmhands. Here Ley played the neo-feudal landlord, with the staff lined up, standing to attention, to greet him when he flew in from Berlin, and secured the farm"s official designation as a hereditary entailed estate.
Ensconced within such pretentious residences, surrounded by expensive paintings and furniture, Ley spent his leisure hours in womanizing and increasingly heavy drinking, both of which often led to embarra.s.sing scenes in public. The drinking bouts he indulged in with his entourage often ended in violence. One such occasion in Heidelberg ended with the Minister-President of Baden being beaten up. In 1937 Ley was visibly drunk while hosting a visit by the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor, and after driving them in his Mercedes straight through a set of locked factory gates, was hurriedly replaced on Hitler"s orders by Herman Goring for the rest of the visit. Two years earlier, after a string of affairs, Ley had begun a liaison with the young soprano Inge Spilker, whom he married in 1938 immediately after divorcing his first wife. His infatuation with her physical charms led to him commissioning a painting of her, naked from the waist up, which he proudly showed to visiting dignitaries, while on one occasion he was even said to have torn her clothes off in the presence of guests in order to show them how beautiful her body was. Subjected to such pressure, and unable to cope with Ley"s growing alcoholism, Inge herself took to the bottle, became a drug addict, and shot herself dead on 29 December 1942 after the last of many violent rows with her husband. Hitler warned the Labour Front leader about his behaviour on more than one occasion, but he carried on regardless. As so often, the n.a.z.i Leader was prepared to forgive almost anything of a subordinate so long as he remained loyal.105 Corruption within the Labour Front by no means ended with Ley himself; indeed he could be said to have set an example to his subordinates in how to milk the organization for personal gain. A huge variety of business enterprises of one kind and another operated by the Labour Front offered multifarious opportunities for making money on the side. The Labour Front"s construction companies, led by a senior official, Anton Karl, a man with previous convictions for theft and embezzlement himself, paid out more than 580,000 Reichsmarks in bribes in 1936-7 alone in order to secure contracts. Sepp Dietrich, the leader of Hitler"s SS bodyguard, took due note of the gifts showered over him by Karl, including a gold cigarette-case, hunting-weaponry, silk shirts and a holiday in Italy for his wife, and issued Karl"s Labour Front construction firm with a contract to rebuild his unit"s barracks in Berlin. In return for favour and influence, Karl used the Labour Front"s bank to grant leading n.a.z.is cheap credit or even to buy houses for them at well below their market price. Hitler"s adjutants, Julius Schaub and Wilhelm Bruckner, his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and anyone else thought to possess the Leader"s ear were the frequent recipients of bribes from the Labour Front; Ley gave them 20,000 Reichsmarks each as a "Christmas present" in 1935 alone.106 Social Democratic observers gleefully chronicled a whole ma.s.s of corruption and embezzlement cases involving officials of the Labour Front every year. In 1935, for example, they noted that Alois Wenger, a Labour Front official in Konstanz, had been condemned for pocketing funds intended for workers" leisure activities and forging receipts to try and deceive the auditors. Another official, an "old fighter" of the n.a.z.i Party, embezzled his colleagues" Labour Front contributions and obtained 2,000 Reichsmarks - probably with menaces - from his employer to cover the missing money. He spent it all on drink. What was done with Labour Front contributions, reported another Social Democratic agent, could be seen in front of the organization"s headquarters in Berlin: Social Democratic observers gleefully chronicled a whole ma.s.s of corruption and embezzlement cases involving officials of the Labour Front every year. In 1935, for example, they noted that Alois Wenger, a Labour Front official in Konstanz, had been condemned for pocketing funds intended for workers" leisure activities and forging receipts to try and deceive the auditors. Another official, an "old fighter" of the n.a.z.i Party, embezzled his colleagues" Labour Front contributions and obtained 2,000 Reichsmarks - probably with menaces - from his employer to cover the missing money. He spent it all on drink. What was done with Labour Front contributions, reported another Social Democratic agent, could be seen in front of the organization"s headquarters in Berlin: 2 to 3 private cars used to be parked in front of the old Trade Union House up to 1932. They belonged to the Workers" Bank or the Trade Unions. Nowadays you ought just to see them waiting there in a rank, it"s 50 or 60 cars a day, and sometimes even more. The Labour Front chauffeurs have got blank cheques for petrol, they can fill their tanks as much as they like, and they do it often because they don"t have to account for it. The corruption in the Labour Front is vast, and the general standard of morals correspondingly low.107 Ley was far from the only beneficiary of the Labour Front"s funds; his open and obvious corruption was only the tip of an enormous iceberg of peculation. Such goings-on did not endear the Labour Front to the millions of workers who were forced to sustain it with compulsory contributions from their wages.
III.
The n.a.z.i regime was all too aware that the closure of the trade unions and the regimentation and subordination of workers in the corrupt and authoritarian Labour Front might cause discontent in the ranks of Germany"s largest social cla.s.s, a cla.s.s which until 1933 had given powerful support to n.a.z.ism"s bitterest enemies, the Communists and the Social Democrats. Along with its constant propaganda trumpeting of victories in the "struggle for work", therefore, it also sought to provide alternative means of reconciling the working cla.s.s with the Third Reich. Chief among these was the extraordinary organization known as the "National Socialist Community Strength Through Joy", founded as a subsidiary of the German Labour Front on 27 November 1933. Strength Through Joy aimed to organize workers" leisure time rather than allow them to organize it for themselves, and thus to make leisure serve the interests of the racial community and reconcile the divergent worlds of work and free time, factory and home, production line and recreation ground. Workers were to gain strength for their work by experiencing joy in their leisure. Above all, Strength Through Joy would bridge the cla.s.s divide by making middle-cla.s.s leisure activities available to the ma.s.ses. Material prosperity, declared Robert Ley in his inaugural address on 27 November, would not make the German nation happy; that was the vulgar error of the "Marxists" of the Weimar years. The National Socialist regime would use spiritual and cultural means to achieve the integration of the workers into the national community. Borrowing from the Italian Fascist organization "After Work" (Dopolavoro), but extending its tentacles into the workplace as well, Strength Through Joy rapidly developed a wide range of activities, and quickly mushroomed into one of the Third Reich"s largest organizations. By 1939 it had over 7,000 paid employees and 135,000 voluntary workers, organized into divisions covering such areas as sport, education and tourism, with wardens in every factory and workshop employing more than twenty people.108 "Strength Through Joy", proclaimed Robert Ley in June 1938, "is the shortest formula to which National Socialism for the broad ma.s.ses can be reduced." "Strength Through Joy", proclaimed Robert Ley in June 1938, "is the shortest formula to which National Socialism for the broad ma.s.ses can be reduced."109 It would insert an ideological content into every kind of leisure. In attempting to fulfil this task, it commanded very considerable resources. By 1937 Strength Through Joy was being subsidized by the Labour Front to the tune of 29 million Reichsmarks a year, while its incorporation of the huge leisure and cultural apparatus of the Social Democratic labour movement brought in further a.s.sets, including premises such as hiking hostels and sports grounds. With such resources, Strength Through Joy was able to offer heavily discounted leisure activities that were within the financial reach of many workers and their families. By 1934-5, over three million people were taking part in its physical education and gymnastics evenings, while many others took advantage of the cheap coaching it offered in tennis, sailing and other hitherto quintessentially upper-middle-cla.s.s sports. In the cultural field, the organization purchased blocks of theatre tickets to make available cheaply to its members, accounting for over half of all theatre bookings in Berlin by 1938. It laid on cla.s.sical music concerts in factories, creating several touring orchestras to play at them; it built theatres, formed travelling troupes of actors, and arranged art exhibitions. In 1938, over two and a half million people attended its concerts and over thirteen and a half million its "folk performances"; more than six and a half million went to opera and operetta evenings under its auspices, and nearly seven and a half million to plays. One and a half million visited its exhibitions, and over two and a half million partic.i.p.ated in "entertainments" mounted on the Reich motorways. Membership came automatically with membership of the Labour Front, so that 35 million people belonged to it by 1936. It advertised intensively both at home and abroad, winning many enthusiastic supporters amongst those in Britain, the USA and elsewhere who admired its energy in civilizing the ma.s.ses. It would insert an ideological content into every kind of leisure. In attempting to fulfil this task, it commanded very considerable resources. By 1937 Strength Through Joy was being subsidized by the Labour Front to the tune of 29 million Reichsmarks a year, while its incorporation of the huge leisure and cultural apparatus of the Social Democratic labour movement brought in further a.s.sets, including premises such as hiking hostels and sports grounds. With such resources, Strength Through Joy was able to offer heavily discounted leisure activities that were within the financial reach of many workers and their families. By 1934-5, over three million people were taking part in its physical education and gymnastics evenings, while many others took advantage of the cheap coaching it offered in tennis, sailing and other hitherto quintessentially upper-middle-cla.s.s sports. In the cultural field, the organization purchased blocks of theatre tickets to make available cheaply to its members, accounting for over half of all theatre bookings in Berlin by 1938. It laid on cla.s.sical music concerts in factories, creating several touring orchestras to play at them; it built theatres, formed travelling troupes of actors, and arranged art exhibitions. In 1938, over two and a half million people attended its concerts and over thirteen and a half million its "folk performances"; more than six and a half million went to opera and operetta evenings under its auspices, and nearly seven and a half million to plays. One and a half million visited its exhibitions, and over two and a half million partic.i.p.ated in "entertainments" mounted on the Reich motorways. Membership came automatically with membership of the Labour Front, so that 35 million people belonged to it by 1936. It advertised intensively both at home and abroad, winning many enthusiastic supporters amongst those in Britain, the USA and elsewhere who admired its energy in civilizing the ma.s.ses.110 Strength Through Joy"s most striking activity was undoubtedly the organization of ma.s.s tourism for the workers. "For many", it was reported in February 1938, " "Strength Through Joy" is nothing more than a kind of travel organization."111 Already in 1934, some 400,000 people partic.i.p.ated in package tours provided by Strength Through Joy within Germany itself; by 1937 the number had grown to 1.7 million, while nearly seven million took part in shorter weekend excursions and 1.6 million in organized hikes. Although these numbers fell slightly in 1938- 9, there could be no doubt about the success of these operations. Bulk ordering made it possible to put on package tours at a heavy discount - 75 per cent in the case of rail fares, for example, and 50 per cent in the case of hotel and bed-and-breakfast rooms. This could have a major effect on the economies of tourist regions; already in 1934, for example, Strength Through Joy tourists brought in 175,000 people to southern Bavaria, spending a total of five and a half million Reichsmarks on their vacations. Most striking of all were the foreign trips that the organization mounted, whether rail journeys to destinations in friendly Fascist Italy or cruises to Madeira, which was governed by the favourably disposed Portuguese dictatorship of Dr Salazar. In 1939 alone, 175,000 people went to Italy on such organize