Liberty Is Dead: A Canadian in Germany, 1938

5 Germans and Germany in 1938

123 gerMans and gerMany in 1938 5 The letters and diary of Franklin W. Wegenast offer a thoughtful contemporary look at Europe in early 1938, before the final slide into war, through the eyes of an outsider, a well-educated German Canadian, and a man who read such books as Mein Kampf and Myth of the Twentieth Century—works that formed the backbone of Nazi thinking. Newspaper reporting in Canada—whatever its deficiencies might be—had clearly given him enough information to know that he was visiting a troubled area, certainly troubled as far as the rest of the world was concerned. A review of the Globe and Mail reveals, however, that the voice of the German people somehow remained silent. What was it like to live under the Hitler regime and how did people feel about the situation? It was, of course, known at the time that Germans did not have the right to express themselves openly about either German conditions or about any potential deficiency of the Nazi party, but that made all the more tantalizing the issue of their opinions or even what a national opinion concerning such questions might be. These were difficult questions to answer in the 1930s, but they interested Wegenast. He provided a particularly important commentary on German thinking, as well as life in Germany and the surrounding countries, because of his ability to speak various languages. He could communicate with everyday people. It is interesting to note that his success as a lawyer and his resulting social position in Canada did not disincline him to speak to ordinary people from all walks of life. And people seemed to respond to him, discussing rather openly and surprisingly how they felt about the situation. Because he was not a public figure, it was less dangerous to talk openly to him, and that fact probably made many converse with him more candidly than might otherwise have been the case. Frenchmen, Austrians, Germans, and Luxembourgers; farmers, truck drivers, barbers, doctors, ministers, and Mennonite Brethren told him how they saw the European situation, and what they made of 124 Chapter 5 Hitlerism. He focused on talking to people in the countryside. Wegenast wrote remarkably little about the large European cities that he visited: he believed that all major cities shared common characteristics, and characteristics that undermined the distinctive culture of a nation. If one wanted to know how Germans or Frenchmen thought, one should talk to those living in small villages or on farms, it seemed to him. Wegenast offered rather interesting ideas on how Nazism sustained popularity. For one thing, he believed that support rested on an ability to avoid thinking about aspects of Hitlerism that were unacceptable to western democracies. In Wegenast’s discussions with Germans, he often noted their intense concern, usually seen in consort with support of Hitlerism, with what the rest of the world thought of them. Virtually every German he talked to asked him what opinions were held in the Ausland of Germany. Not only that, but any sign he made of appreciation of German things—hotels, for example—met with pleased responses because it meant appreciation of what Germany stood for. This suggested to the Canadian visitor that Germans knew that their general philosophy was unacceptable to others, and that therefore they were conscious that they were playing a dangerous game. Germans were fully aware of the murky path they had set out for themselves, Wegenast believed, and also recognized to what extent many outside Germany feared and despised them because of Hitlerism. “No one likes me, so I’ll go in the garden and eat worms,” was the way he put it. This obsession with what the world thought, observed by Wegenast, was evidenced in the extreme reactions of Hitler to comments made by people in the American press— LaGuardia, for example, and Dodd. The overwhelming concern with the views of other nations means something else—Germans were more aware of the terrible things that were going on in Germany than they often later admitted, and didn’t want to think about it. Wegenast also believed a significant number of individuals exuded lethargy, and often angry lethargy at that, over the situation. He interpreted this feeling as evidence of passive (but often hidden) resistance to certain Nazi policies. Most people outside Germany in adjacent countries (certainly all non-ethnic Germans) that Wegenast spoke with shared his general anti-Nazi point of view. He realized, however, that it could often...