Bending Spines: The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic

Chapter 7: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

7 Public and Private Life MMMM Bending spines takes steady pressure in every area of life. Jacques Ellul observes: “Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life.”1 I have earlier discussed the quasi-religious nature of claims made on all aspects of life. Both the National Socialist and GDR systems took power knowing that they would never win over the whole of the population. They wanted conviction but settled for outward assent from many citizens who refused or were unable to be true believers. They accepted varying levels of compliance and found ways of dealing with those who would not bend. In this chapter I shall consider the general demand for public unanimity, then examine specific ways in which citizens were persuaded to behave as if they believed things they did not believe. The appearance of unanimity is critical. An ordinary state does not expect 100 percent agreement. Democratic states, in fact, expect a range of disagreements and even find social benefit in the competition of ideas and opinions. Totalitarian states that make absolute claims of truth cannot allow significant public disagreement. They know that heresy spreads. Goebbels spoke in 1928 of ideas as a gas that moves invisibly from person 131 to person.2 A better comparison is to a disease. Unless totalitarian societies “quarantine” objectionable ideas, they spread, often rapidly. The solution is to make errant ideas invisible by making the consequences of spreading them sufficiently unpleasant to encourage silence. The sudden collapse of the GDR in 1989 surprised nearly everyone, since the system had succeeded in creating a Potemkin village of public unanimity that concealed, even from its own leaders and citizens, the shallowness of its support. Unanimity in the Party Any government prefers to present a united front to its political opponents and the nation as a whole, but for dictatorships with absolute claims such unanimity is crucial. As is often observed, the Nazi leadership squabbled incessantly behind the scenes, but Hitler personally ordered there be no public conflict. A September 1942 directive reminded party leaders that “the Führer has repeatedly said that disagreements between leading party members must under all circumstances be kept from reaching the public.”3 The fact that he said so repeatedly proves a lack of success, but it also suggests the importance a united front had. A party that claims truth cannot have its leaders proposing conflicting truths. The problem is that the more capable the official, the more likely he was to see weaknesses. He either held his thoughts or got into trouble. As Michael Balfour observes about the Nazis, the “scarcity of believers with capacity meant that the replacements tended to be believers with reservations.”4 Maintaining unanimity at lower levels was relatively easy, given the Nazi “leadership principle.” Subordinates owed absolute obedience to their superiors. This did not in practice always prove to be the case, but certainly most Nazis shared the general sense that they were heading in the same direction , “working toward the Führer.” Local leaders could present themselves as doing the will of the Führer, maintaining at least the appearance of unity. The GDR’s approach was different, but the goal was the same. Since learning from the Soviet Union was to learn victory, the GDR followed the Soviet model in which pressure for uniformity pervaded every aspect of life. This began at the top. One almost amusing example is indicative. When Konstantin Chernenko was reporting to his Politburo colleagues in 1980, he stressed the fact that “‘Central Committee plenums last year [1979] were conducted in a spirit of complete unanimity,’ prompting Andropov to remark, ‘That is an entirely proper conclusion. The plenums 132 Chapter Seven really did proceed in complete unanimity,’ and Pelshe to add, ‘And their decisions were also adopted unanimously.’ And when Chernenko mentioned that fifty-one sessions of the Central Committee Secretariat had taken place and that they had passed 1,327 regulations, Suslov and Andropov together piped up, ‘Like the Politburo, the Secretariat also conducted its business in complete unanimity.’”5 The GDR learned from the masters. Günter Schabowski reports only two lively discussions in the Politburo during his membership (1984–1989), one regarding the firing of Konrad...