The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
272
The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
272Hardcover
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781784381806 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pen and Sword |
| Publication date: | 01/18/2018 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Richard James Overy is a British historian who has published extensively on the history of World War II and Nazi Germany.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Hitler's Paint Box
This battered, enamelled box of well-used watercolour paints – made in 1910 by the Nuremberg firm of Redeker & Hennis – once belonged to Adolf Hitler. Looted by Belgian war correspondent Robert Francotte from Hitler's office desk in his Munich apartment, on Prinzregentenstrasse, in May 1945, it is evidence of an aspect of Hitler's life and career that rarely receives scrutiny – his artistic pretensions.
If his account in Mein Kampf is to be believed, Hitler decided to become an artist at the age of twelve. Indulged by his adoring, widowed mother, he insisted that he would one day be a famous painter and dropped out of school in 1905 to pursue his dream. Two years later, he travelled to Vienna to enrol in the Academy of Fine Arts. Armed with a portfolio of his sketches, he was convinced, he later wrote, that he would 'pass the examination quite easily'.
Though his paintings are often derided, Hitler was certainly a competent artist. Even before he arrived in Vienna, he was scarcely without his sketchbook, and was constantly scribbling aspects of buildings that pleased him or designs for the stage sets of operas he wanted to write. As his youthful friend, August Kubizek, remembered:
On fine days, he used to frequent a bench on the Turmleitenweg [in Linz] where he established a kind of open-air study. There he would read his books, sketch and paint in watercolours.
By the time he left Linz to live in Vienna, therefore, Hitler was confident of success in applying to the Academy, recalling that he had been 'by far the best student' in his school drawing class and that, since that time, he had made 'more than ordinary progress'. He was to be frustrated, however. Though he qualified to sit the examination for the Vienna Academy, his drawings were deemed 'unsatisfactory' by the examiners, who gave the lapidary explanation that he had included 'too few heads'. Crestfallen, Hitler doggedly pursued his dream, and the following year applied again, though this time without even qualifying to sit the examination. It was a rejection that would torment him until the end of his life.
'Hitler decided to become an artist at the age of twelve.'
In the years that followed, Hitler would scrape a meagre living as an artist, selling his paintings and postcards, first in Vienna and later in Munich. During this period, he claimed to have painted as many as 700 or 800 pictures, asking around five marks for each. His style was straightforward, simple and naturalistic, using as his subjects mainly buildings, flowers and sweeping landscapes: 'I paint what people want,' he once said. He showed a fascination for detail, particularly architectural, but included very few human figures – an echo of his earlier failing.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, Hitler took his watercolours with him to the Western Front, where he painted and sketched his surroundings. The example opposite of his wartime work was painted in December 1914 and depicts a monastery ruined by shellfire at Messines, south of Ypres. It is unclear whether Hitler was still dreaming of a career as an artist by this point, or merely exercising his hobby, but it is notable that he spent his first period of leave in Berlin, visiting the city's galleries.
Though he idly dreamed of once again applying for an art academy after the war, politics would soon take over his life. Thereafter, painting would be relegated to a few doodles and marginal sketches, not least among them some of the architectural sketches that would later resurface in the Germania plan to rebuild Berlin (see 'Hitler's Germania Sketch', pages 101–2). In addition, Hitler's tastes would dictate the artistic tone and cultural style of the Third Reich. He overruled Goebbels's liking for modern art, and decreed that a dull classical style, presenting ideal Aryan families in mawkishly sentimental terms, should be the 'official' art of the Reich. He patronised such traditional artists as the neo-classical sculptor Arno Breker, while those more avantgarde artists who had flourished under the Weimar Republic, such as the Bauhaus designers, were forced into exile.
Hitler's own paintings, meanwhile, were suppressed, with tame buyers dispatched to acquire those that could be located. Only a handful were ever published, and in 1937 exhibiting them was prohibited. By the later years of the twentieth century, they would become quite sought after by collectors, with some examples fetching over &8364;100,000 at auction. Hitler's watercolour set made a rather more modest &8364;8,000, when it was sold in 2010.
Hitler claimed that his failure to be accepted into the Vienna Academy had made him 'tough', but it also rankled. More seriously, it marked a fork in his life; a point at which his dreams of becoming an artist receded, and his frustrations with the world grew. It is impossible to say for sure, of course, but perhaps that rejection contributed to Germany's later catastrophe.
CHAPTER 2Hitler's German Workers' Party Card
On 12 September 1919, Adolf Hitler attended a meeting of a small nationalist political party in a Munich beer hall. The Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (DAP or 'German Workers' Party') had been founded earlier that year, during the chaos of the German revolution, by a Munich rail worker, Anton Drexler, in the hope of combining nationalism with a mass appeal. Hitler, who was still a serving soldier, was there to observe proceedings on behalf of the Army.
The precise process by which Hitler ended up joining the organisation he was supposed to observe is rather unclear, obscured by Hitler's own self-aggrandising account and later Nazi mythology. Yet it appears that Drexler was sufficiently impressed when the shabby-looking Hitler stood up to interject that he later thrust a pamphlet into his hand. According to legend, he said of the newcomer: 'That one's got something. We could use him.'
'The card gives Hitler's membership number as "555", a blatant attempt to make the party seem larger than it was.'
In the days that followed, after Hitler perused the pamphlet, he was surprised to receive a postcard from Drexler informing him that he had been accepted as a member of the DAP and was duly invited to attend the next meeting. The party that Hitler joined was – according to his own account – a somewhat ramshackle outfit; with a tiny membership of barely fifty, it had no fixed political programme or basic organisation. At the meeting Hitler attended, the party's total funds were reported to amount to 7 marks 50 pfennigs.
It was only in January 1920 that the DAP issued formal membership cards. Hitler's card, shown here, was dated 1 January. It gives his address at the army barracks, Lothstrasse 29, and was signed both by Drexler and the party's record keeper, Rudolf Schüssler. It also shows Hitler's name spelt with two 't's, one of which has been crudely crossed out. Most curiously, the card gives Hitler's membership number as '555', a blatant attempt to make the party seem larger than it was. In truth, the membership list began at 501 and Hitler was the 55th member.
By the time that Hitler received this membership card, he was already a rising star in the DAP. After making his speaking debut in October 1919, he began drawing sizeable audiences – larger than the party's events had previously attracted – thereby swelling the party coffers and generating increased publicity. The DAP, it seemed, was on the move.
The breakthrough would come on 24 February 1920, when the party organised its biggest event yet – at the cavernous Hofbräuhaus in central Munich. There, before some 2,000 people, Hitler gave the DAP the direction that he believed it had lacked by promulgating a manifesto – the Twenty-FivePoint Programme – a curious mixture of anti-Semitic, anti-Marxist and anti-capitalist positions. That same evening, Hitler announced that the party had changed its name to express its political principles better; the German Workers' Party was thereby transformed into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP). The Nazi Party was born and, barely six months after his first appearance, Hitler was already its primary motive force.
CHAPTER 3The Blood Flag
If Nazism is best understood as a political religion, then the Blutfahne or 'Blood Flag' was one of its most sacred artefacts. Originally, it was an ordinary swastika banner belonging to the 5th Sturm of the Munich Sturmabteilung or SA, Hitler's 'Brownshirts'. However, during the Nazis' abortive attempt to seize power in Munich in November 1923, it was soaked with the blood of three of the dead, Anton Hechenberger, Lorenz Ritter von Stransky-Grippenfeld and Andreas Bauriedl, killed when the Bavarian police opened fire on the marchers.
'The Blood Flag was essentially accorded the status of a holy relic.'
Restored to Hitler after his release from prison in December 1924, the Blood Flag quickly became the centrepiece of Nazi ceremonial. A new swastika finial was added to the tip of the pole, and a silver collar was inserted beneath it bearing the names of three of the sixteen Nazis – Hechenberger, Stransky-Grippenfeld and Bauriedl – who had been 'martyred' in the 1923 Putsch. After that, the flag was not only ceremonially presented at all major Nazi events, its touch was used by Hitler to 'sanctify' other Nazi flags and standards and to seal the oath of newly enlisted SS men.
The Blood Flag was essentially accorded the status of a holy relic. When not in use, it was given pride of place in the foyer of the Nazi Party Headquarters – the so-called 'Brown House' – in Munich. It was considered so important to the Nazi movement that it was allocated its own attendant – an otherwise unremarkable, toothbrushmoustached SS man by the name of Jakob Grimminger – whose sole task it was to accompany the flag on its ceremonial peregrinations around the country.
Grimminger can be seen in this propaganda postcard from 1937, lowering the Blood Flag before one of the burning pyres in front of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, the focus of the annual commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch. The text beneath reads: 'In memory of 9 November 1923'.
The Blood Flag was last seen in public in Berlin in October 1944, when it was used for the swearing in of the first cadres of the Volkssturm, Nazi Germany's last line of defence, consisting largely of boys and old men. After that, the flag disappeared. It is, of course, possible that it has survived, perhaps folded up in a suburban American attic, having been unwittingly looted by a GI in 1945 and since forgotten. But, it is most likely that the flag was destroyed when the Brown House was severely damaged in an Allied air raid in January 1945, or that it subsequently disappeared in the chaos of post-war Germany. Grimminger survived the war and died in obscurity in 1969.
CHAPTER 4Hyperinflation Banknote
This banknote – for a mind-boggling 100 trillion marks – is a reminder of a dark period in Germany's inter-war politics, a period that arguably contained the seeds of even darker days to come.
After Germany was defeated in World War I, the country not only faced a political crisis of revolution and collapse, but also an economic one. As well as the problems of economic dislocation and the cost of reparations payable to the Allies, it faced the looming catastrophe of hyperinflation. Germany's war effort before 1918 had been largely funded by printing money, in the expectation that – after Germany's victory – their enemies could be made to pay. However, with defeat, those hopes were dashed, and huge inflationary pressure had been built up within the German economy. Already, by the spring of 1920, one US dollar was worth over 83 marks; in August 1914, it had been worth 4 marks.
As if to compound such difficulties, many of Germany's economic experts – including the president of the Reichsbank, Rudolf Havenstein – appeared not only not to know how to deal with the crisis, but also to have only a vague idea of what was causing it. And Havenstein's response to the devaluation was to print more money, thereby causing the currency to devalue still further. Consequently, by February 1922, one US dollar was already worth over 200 marks.
'This 100 trillion mark note would be the largest denomination banknote ever issued in Germany.'
By the summer of the crisis year of 1923, the background hum of inflation had become a roar. That January, French and Belgian troops had occupied Germany's industrial heartland, the Ruhr district, as a punishment for the nonpayment of reparations. In response, the German government had espoused a policy of 'passive resistance', calling for Ruhr workers to withhold their labour, while Berlin continued paying them. This, along with the ongoing political crisis, finally provoked a runaway economic collapse. By July, the dollar exchange rate topped 100,000 marks for the first time; by the following month, it had trebled; a month after that, it had increased tenfold. The German currency was soon in free-fall. It would peak, on 1 December, with one US dollar standing at 6.7 trillion marks: $1 = 6,700,000,000,000.
Of course this collapse had a huge effect on German society. With a loaf of bread or a humble postage stamp costing anything upwards of a trillion marks that autumn, the middle classes saw any savings they had wiped out. Workers meanwhile, were often paid twice a day – to offset the effects of inflation – and were known to take their wages home in wheelbarrows. Bartering goods and services once again became commonplace. Children played with worthless bundles of money; their parents burnt money in the grate for heat, and beggars refused to accept any note below a million. Inevitably, the galloping chaos had a political echo, and for a time, Germany itself appeared to be on the brink of falling apart. Communist risings broke out in Hamburg and Thuringia that summer and, in November 1923, Hitler launched his own abortive attempt to seize power in Bavaria, the Munich Putsch.
The crisis was finally brought to an end over the winter of 1923–4, when the hapless Havenstein died and Hjalmar Schacht succeeded him as president of the Reichsbank. Under Schacht, the currency was reformed, with the introduction of the 'Rentenmark', which effectively lopped twelve zeros off the old 'Papiermark', and stability gradually returned. This 100 trillion mark note, first issued in November 1923 and bearing a pen portrait by Albrecht Dürer, would be the largest denomination banknote ever issued in Germany. It was emblematic of the country's inter-war fragility.
In the years that followed, normality was restored and Hitler retreated once again to the political fringes. But memories were long, and when economic crisis struck again in 1929 – albeit a deflationary crisis this time – the experiences of six years earlier were still raw for many people; the toxic sentiment that 'the system' was simply broken gained credence, and those with the most radical solutions to Germany's problems suddenly moved to centre stage. From taking 2.6 per cent of the national vote in the Reichstag election of 1928, Hitler's Nazis polled 18 per cent in 1930. From there they would not look back.
It is a truism that Hitler was brought to prominence in Germany – if not necessarily to power – by the corrosive effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Yet, even though economics is central to the story, there is more to Hitler's rise than 1929 alone. This banknote is a reminder that the economic collapse of 1923 should also be considered as a major contributory factor, weakening still further popular faith in the economic and political status quo. It is worth remembering that, less than a decade after this note was issued, Hitler was already Chancellor of Germany.
CHAPTER 5Hitler's Moustache Brush
In 1923, Hitler's friend and confidant Ernst 'Putzi' Hanfstaengl tried to persuade him to shave off his moustache. Long bothered by the meagre toothbrush moustache on Hitler's upper lip, which he dismissed as 'puny' and 'an invitation to the caricaturists', Hanfstaengl suggested that Hitler should instead grow a goatee beard, as a demonstration of 'manliness'. Shocked, Hitler replied that Hanfstaengl was kidding himself: 'My moustache will one day be all the rage,' he said, 'You can rely on that!' He was not entirely mistaken.
Aside from the dubious question of manliness, a second part of Hanfstaengl's argument was that Hitler could ill afford the time required constantly to trim and preen his moustache. Yet, as this item shows, Hitler was quite prepared to put in the work. This 7 cm horn-backed 'moustache brush' was Hitler's own and was taken from the bedroom of his Munich apartment after his death, by his housekeeper Anni Winter. According to the recollections of Hitler's entourage, it was an integral part of Hitler's toiletry bag, which travelled with him wherever he went.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Third Reich in 100 Objects"
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Copyright © 2017 Roger Moorhouse.
Excerpted by permission of Pen and Sword Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Foreword zzz
The Objects
1 Hitler's Paint Box 3
2 Hitler's German Workers' Party Card 6
3 The Blood Flag 7
4 Hyperinflation Banknote 10
5 Hitler's Moustache Brush 13
6 Der Stürmer From Page 15
7 Mein Kampf 17
8 The Hitler Greeting 20
9 Horst Wessel Song Original Score 23
10 Runes 26
11 Geli Raubal Bust 29
12 Junkers Ju 52 32
13 Nazi Party Election Poster, 1932 34
14 Last Vorwärts Newspaper, 1933 37
15 Winter Aid Collection Tins 40
16 Golden Nazi Party Badge 42
17 Volksempfanger Radio Set 44
18 Hitler Youth Uniform 46
19 Nazi Party Hauslafel 50
20 Leibstandarle Cuff Band 52
21 Autobahn 55
22 SA Dagger 57
23 Heinrich Hoffmann's Leica 59
24 Stahlhelm 62
25 Honour Temples 64
26 Swastika Flag of Nazi Germany 66
27 Arbeit Macht Frei Gate 68
28 Messerschmitt Bf 109 80
29 Jackboots 72
30 Concentration Camp Badges 74
31 Berghof Plate 77
32 Elastolin Toy Figure 80
33 A 'Protective Custody Order' 82
34 Olympic Stadium 85
35 The 88mm Gun 88
36 Eva Braun's Lipstick Case 90
37 Great German Art Exhibition Catalogue 93
38 Nuremberg Rally Beer Stein 95
39 Gestapo Warrant Disc 98
40 Hitler's Germania Sketch 101
41 Gas Mask and Canister 103
42 Volkswagen Beetle 105
43 Mutterkreuz 108
44 'Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer' Card 110
45 Wilhelm Gustloff Bracelet 113
46 Jerrycans 116
47 Waffen-SS Camouflage 118
48 Badenweiler March 121
49 Georg Elser's Stolperstein 123
50 Ration Cards 126
51 Enigma Code Machine 129
52 Wolfgang Willrich Postcard 133
53 Nazi Eagle 135
54 Stick Grenade 137
55 Type VII U-Boat 139
56 Junkers Ju 87 Stuka 142
57 Mercedes-Benz 770 Limousine 144
58 Luger Pistol 147
59 Glewitz Radio Tower 149
60 German-Soviet Treaty Border Map 151
61 Verdunkelung Poster 154
62 Erkennungsmarken 156
63 Der Ewige Jude Film Poster 158
64 Pervitin 161
65 MP 40 Submachine Gun 163
66 Waffen-SS Recruiting Poster 165
67 Psychiatric Asylum Iron Bed 168
68 Afrika Korps Field Cap 170
69 Flak Tower 172
70 Prinz Eugen Propeller 174
71 Hampel Postcard 177
72 Rudolf Hess's Underpants 179
73 Knight's Cross, Oak Lcaves and Swords 181
74 Judenstern 184
75 Bells of Lübeck Marienkirche 186
76 'Goliath' Miniature Tank 188
77 Sophic Scholl's Matriculation Card 190
78 Tiger I Tank 193
79 Wannsee Villa 196
80 Zyklon-B Canister 199
81 Death Card 201
82 Gate house at Birkenau 203
83 Treblinka Brooch 206
84 Demyansk Shield 209
85 Panzerfaust Anti-Tank Weapon 211
86 Reinhard Heydrich Postage Stamp 213
87 Wehrmacht Mittens 214
88 Hindenburg Lights 217
89 The Stroop Report 219
90 July Bomb Plot Wound Badge 223
91 The Schattenmann 226
92 Forced Labourer's 'Work Card' 228
93 Feldgendarmeric Gorget 230
94 V-1 Flying Bomb 232
95 Messerschmitt Me 262 Fighter 235
96 Volksstrum Armband 238
97 V-2 Missile 241
98 Göring's Telegram 244
99 Admiral Dönitz's Baton 247
100 Göring's Cyanide Capsule 250
Acknowledgemewnts 253
Picture Credits 254
Bibliography 255