Amy Gearhart
Special Studies Berlin
7/23/08
Persuasive Essay


List some ways that prove or disprove the notion that Hitler was hypersensitive in his desire to accommodate the Aryan Germans and to keep their approval.

Adolph Hitler was a leader dedicated to achieving, and later keeping, high public approval rates among his Aryan German people. One reason often given for the collapse of German power in WW1, especially in Hitler’s vantage point, was the lack of support back home. In the many cases that I will discuss, Hitler made a very distinct effort to ease the ‘Aryan’ Germans into his goal for the expansion of Germany’s territory and its purification of race. Details of the Kristallnacht pogrom, concentration camps and the relocating of wealth all support this claim.
Kristallnact, or English “the night of broken glass”, displayed the Nazi’s true force to many of its citizens that hadn’t witnessed it before. When a young Jewish man’s parents were killed, he retaliated by storming into a German embassy in Paris and shooting an officer. As a reprisal the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels incited the German public in such a way that “unleashed the hatred of Stormtroopers and other Nazi activists” against Jews all over Germany (Bergen, 2003). Many Jewish businesses and residential areas were hit hard, hard enough that it was very much a display that citizens couldn’t ignore. According to Bergner, “certainly the German public as a whole was less enthusiastic about Kristallnact than the pogrom’s instigators had hoped” (2003). Although there wasn’t an outright objection from the public, it was obvious that the noise and disorder was not appreciated. Even this subtle dislike for the pogrom was noticed and taken into consideration. It is no coincidence that this subtle dislike by the German population would steer the Nazi’s towards a policy of less open displays of violence for unwilling ‘Aryans’ in Germany and Germanic Austria.
This point ties into the way concentration camps were monitored and operated. From the ways that inmates reached the camps to the way the bodies were disposed, public approval and sensitivity was nearly always considered, especially in Germany and Germanic areas. The public did not have to try hard to realize that things might be going on that they did not know fully about. On the other hand though, many citizens that did not search for answers could ignore what was happening. One such instance of this is how certain concentration camps would import detainees by train. Where they would get off, Nazi’s would build a friendly looking fake train station, accessorized even with flower beds. Yes, this also helped to keep the prisoner’s calm but it also had an effect on local communities. To the public this didn’t seem like an ominous stop for Jews and other exiles on their way to death and despair. Often members of the inhabited areas around concentration camps would complain of the foul stench of death that exuded from within compounds. According to Bergen, “by the spring and summer of 1942, the area around Chelmno was filled with the stench of rotting bodies. German officials ordered ovens brought in so that the mass graves could be opened and bodies exhumed and burned” (2003). This particular camp had a mass grave dug up to have the bodies burned, to try to relieve the annoyed public of the horrible and distinct odor accompanied by rotting flesh. Hitler did not want to give the Aryan Germans cause to not support his war, even minimal ones. Hitler’s positioning of thousands of concentration camps also was an example of how he wanted to the general German population to not have to face the unpleasant truth that went on. There was virtually never a concentration camp located in the residential heart of Berlin or other Germanic areas where Aryan’s were populated. Instead victims were removed out of sight. Hitler realized that the general population wouldn’t want to see the display everyday; instead the sense of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was used. If people only experience the plus sides of the war and policies without too much of the bad, it might a lot more support and approval.
Another way to appease the general population was for Hitler to keep them happy and to develop something that would keep people wanting more advances of the race and space goals. When Jewish homes, for instance, were forcefully vacated many individuals broke into those properties and stole things, or the government would sell the acquired goods for a drastically cheapened price. Especially when the expanse of the German military pushed eastward many ethnic groups were kicked out of their homes, leaving them open, only for peoples considered Germanic, to move in. Hitler wanted to find ways of making his people comfortable and approving of his actions. Certainly, if citizens objected about things going for sale Nazi troops would have bored them up or left the goods inside. Hitler was sensitive to the wishes that his people had. Always wanting their full support, he would find ways to encourage it.
Hitler employed a tactic that most defiantly helped his mission by obtaining and keeping public support. From his policies and (skewed) legal justification, Hitler knew how to keep his ‘special race’ happy. His policy of not reprimanding an officer who didn’t want to have anything to do with mass killings (while just relocating him) only helped him stay a ‘loved’ or at least respected leader for many Germans. Hitler was extremely sensitive to his people’s desires and attitudes, helping him to achieve all that he did.













Works Cited

Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Maryland: Rowman & Litterfield Publishers, 2003.