Motorisierung und "Volksgemeinschaft": Das Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrkorps (NSKK), 1931-1945 (review)

Right from the beginning of the National Socialist movement motorized units were prominent. Fifteen platoons of the SA transport division (founded in 1922) played a crucial part in the Hitler putsch in 1923 and thus demonstrated their quasi-military impact. In the early 1930s, three suborganizations of the NSDAP used motor vehicles: the paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung), the SS (Schutzstaffel), and the National Socialist Motorist Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, NSKK). The assignments included street fighting, but also the transport of party officials during the election campaign, especially in 1932. The use of "well-organized" propaganda convoys was supposed to generate a positive marketing effect. Some of the cars came as a loan for specific events from upper-class supporters of the NSDAP.

After 1933, the NSKK was the main suborganization for motorization propaganda, including its engagement in "motor sports." Despite its focus on National Socialist Weltanschauung, the NSKK was generally perceived as a rather harmless forwarding company or motorist club by the public and the party alike. A lot of people joined the NSKK for careerist reasons. Among them were individuals who would later become prominent in the Federal Republic of Germany; for example, the editors Hubert Burda and Axel Springer, the Bavarian prime minister Franz Josef Strauss, the chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and the social scientist Theodor Eschenburg. These men profited from the judgment by the Nuremberg tribunal that the NSKK was harmless, or at least not criminal.

In Motorisierung und "Volksgemeinschaft," Dorothee Hochstetter shows that this assessment was incorrect, unmasking the myth of the "apolitical" NSKK. It was not just a motorist club; it was also involved in the racist policy of exclusion and discrimination, especially against Jews, and it participated in the pogroms of 1938. And, as we know from Raul Hilberg's studies of the Reichsbahn, participation in the logistics of the Reich contributed to the genocide. Yet the self-perception of those who were involved with the NSKK was technocratic: when interviewed in 1999, a witness to the events of 9 November 1938 distinguished between the NSKK roadblock (his assignment) and the pogrom itself.

From the perspective of the political history of National Socialism, Hochstetter's voluminous study is important as the first monograph about this organization and for the revision of its interpretation. From the perspective of the history of technology, there is something else important. Generally we assume that the history of road safety in western Germany is a story beginning after 1950, as motorization boomed and the number of road casualties reached its peak in 1970 at 19,193, there then being 16 million motor vehicles. In the unified Germany in 1993, there were 9,949 road casualties and 45 million motor vehicles. But in 1936, 7,636 persons died in road accidents, even though there were only 8 million motor vehicles. This was a serious impediment to the propaganda campaign in favor of motorization and led to the NSKK's activities in the realm of safety education. These did not make road traffic safer, nor did the denunciation of traffic offenders as criminals. Nevertheless, the educational work of NSKK had an important impact: many people first learned to drive motor vehicles under the auspices of this organization—some in driving schools, others by education from the Verkehrserziehungsdienst. This is worth more study. Further research, either on the history of National Socialist organizations or on the history of road safety, will have to make extensive use of Hochstetter's book.