Zu den Inhaltsverzeichnissen[Beilage SM, Nr. 48, 1943] |
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HITLER'S TOTAL WAR
AND THE REACTIONS OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE
INSIDE INFORMATION and REPORTS |
At the Beginning of March the Executive of the German Social Democratic Party, London Headquarters, received a first survey on the reactions of the German people towards the measures introduced by the Hitler dictatorship for 'total war'. The report is compiled from observations inside Germany up till the middle of February 1943.
They give the following particulars:
[Hitler's total war and how the German people react to it]
1. Bitterness of the middle-class
2. Growing unrest inside the army
3. Mutiny among U-Boat crews
[Hitler Germany, end of 1942]
4. Women in Munich are demanding peace
5. Peace demonstrations in Hamburg
6. Work slow
7. Sabotage in inland-shipping
8. Increased terror against munition workers
9. Punitive actions against soldiers
10. Doubting Nazis
11. The day of reckoning is anticipated
12. Growing confidence in the socialist opposition
[Fortsetzung: Hitler's total war and how the German people react to it]
13. The situation inside the factories
14. In bombed Cologne
15. The hope for the end.
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Hitler's total war
and how the German people react to it
The following three reports come from an industrialist from Western Germany, who until Hitler seized power, belonged to a right wing party, but not to the Nazis. He reports as follows:
Bitterness of the middle-class
The closing down of business premises and artisan shops of the independent middle class, which has been announced by the nazis and which has already been partly carried out, has led to a very great bitterness amongst this class of people, which has always furnished the most faithful follower of Hitler.
The closing down of shops and businesses is carried out with utter ruthlessness.
The action resembles in many instances the terror actions which had been carried out against the Jews. The shops are simply closed down, the goods still in stock are taken away and the owner gets only a voucher, which he can exchange at the local branches of the Reichsbank for State-bonds.
Especially violent is the reaction among the wives of those business-owners who are front-line soldiers. It has to be reckoned with that these measures will have repercussions among these soldiers, who see themselves robbed of all their possessions and who see, that their wives and families are being left to misery and starvation. The women are forced to take up jobs in war industries. Doctors certificates are of no avail. Only the Nazi medical officer can certify a person unfit for war work. Many of the closed business premises are being converted into SS barracks, for the units which are being withdrawn from the front in greater and greater numbers.
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Growing unrest inside the army
The frontline soldiers home on leave are in a very ugly mood. Many of them grumble quite openly in pubs and restaurants against the nazis and the nazi-bosses. The most hated people are the SS men.
In many cases, especially at the eastern front there have been fights between soldiers and SS men. Soldiers refuse to be billeted together with SS men. Now the authorities try to prevent soldiers and SS men meeting in camps and places of entertainment.
In Hamburg, the following happenings have been reported:
An U-boat, which was to sail against the enemy, left harbour, loosened its torpedoes at random into the sea and returned a few days later, reporting that its actions had been "most successful".
A traitor informed the Admiralty of the true happenings and thereupon the officers of the U-boat were shot and the crew was sent to prison.
The description of these happenings comes from a naval officer.
In other cases, the crews of U-boats, who have returned from their journeys against the enemy, refuse to go to sea again in their "death carts".
The temper among the Hamburg population - not only among the workers - is catastrophic. Nobody believes the Nazi figures of sinking of enemy vessels, everybody believes them to be "bluff". Against the Nazis, everybody is so infuriated and embittered that this may well lead, in the not too far distant future, to open outbursts.
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Hitler Germany, end of 1942
Growing unrest on the inner - German front.
The information received by the executive of the German social democratic Party, at present in London, is proof of the fact that the unrest inside Germany is growing, under the impact of the German defeats in Russia and North Africa.
Women in Munich are demanding peace
In the middle of December, a peace demonstration was held in Munich, which was mainly supported by women. They marched through the streets, shouting: "Down with the war" and "we want peace".
Eye witnesses report that at certain places the police did not interfere at all.
At other places police and SS took numerous prisoners. The demonstration was the reaction against the great depression, prevalent in the whole of southern Germany. In many places whispering propaganda spreads the tale, which is believed by many, that the especially heavy losses sustained by Bavarian and other southern German regiments have also been the outcome of a deliberate Nazi policy, which wants to decrease the population of southern Germany in order to safeguard after the war a superiority of Prussia.
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Peace demonstrations in Hamburg
At one of the vegetable markets in Hamburg a spontaneous peace demonstration of women shoppers took place. A young woman made a speech and closed with the appeal: "We want peace!"
The cry was taken up all over the place and repeated over and over again. Ten minutes later police appeared and took several prisoners at random.
The following has happened several times at the Hamburg Underground: On the line Hauptbahnhof - Rothenburgsort [!], the trains go past several signal boxes and the light is temporarily extinguished. At the same moment - especially at the time of the change of shifts [...] and the trains crowded [ - ] the following slogans are shouted: "The Nazis may perish, hang the war criminals."
When the lights go up again, everybody is quiet, but everybody smiles.
About the middle of November on the Quay of the Hamburg-Rhein shipping line, there have been disputes during loading and unloading of ships.
The ships crew was not at all eager to go out again into the mined waters of Holland, all the less, now that everybody could see, how the war was going to end. The dockers could not want, the ships crew to risk their lives unnecessarily so near the end.
Thereupon the dockers stopped work.
When the harbour authorities appeared and demanded that work was to be resumed immediately, the gangplanks were withdrawn into the ships.
Two representatives of the Nazi-works organisation, which were on the ship, were refused leave and they were threatened that they would be thrown into the harbour, in case they should prove reticent.
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In the meantime the police had been informed and they appeared together with several Gestapo men.
They demanded from the two nazis the names of the gang-leaders. The unexpected happened: the two nazis refused to give names and they tried to bagatellise [!] the whole happenings. Thereupon the Gestapo took four dockers and the second engineer prisoner and the names of the two nazis were taken down.
In the meantime darkness had fallen and work could not be resumed. The ship had to stay in harbour until the next day.
Because the railways are overworked, the traffic on the Trave-Elbe canal has increased substantially.
Recently it has happened several times, that ships and barges have been grounded or turned broadside in the canal and in this way stopped traffic for long periods. The Nazi authorities suspect sabotage and two bargees, who had such "accidents" were taken prisoner.
Increased terror against munition workers
In several metal works near Frankfurt/Main, great numbers of workers have been imprisoned during October and November. The measures were said to have been caused by illegal "communist activities".
The prisoners were taken away and nobody knows anything about their fate. Their relatives are without any news.
Punitive actions against soldiers
At the beginning of November, several covered military lorries, escorted by motorised units, appeared in a barracks of the anti-tank corps in Hamburg-Altersdorf.
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Shortly after the lorries had passed inside the barrack courtyard, the people living in the neighbourhood heard loud cries and shouts. "Down with Hitler!" "You ought to be ashamed, you nazi-swine, to lay hands on frontline soldiers!"
It is believed that this was a punitive action against mutinying soldiers from the eastern front.
The representative of a great and well known Berlin industrial concern reports:
"Public morale in the whole nation is outspokenly bad. This was especially evident after the Hitler-meeting in which Hitler promised the capture of Stalingrad and in which Rommel's victories were celebrated.
Soon, it became evident from the front reports that here two men had promised more than they were able to keep. The workers, who had been formerly organised, and who even today have remained true to their former convictions, were very pleased with the turn things had taken. The great mass of people - and to this belong all the petty bourgeois who have voted for Hitler - feel darkly that the system is doomed to meet with a catastrophe, but they find it difficult to free themselves from the hypnosis of ten years of Nazi propaganda and they have no new aims.
Industrial circles know that the war is lost. The decisive factor for the hesitation attitude of these circles is not the fear of the Gestapo, but the fear of the aftermath of a defeat.
The leading Nazis too know that the war is lost. They do not fight in North Africa and in Russia for the existence of the German Nation, but for their very own existence."
The representative of a Hamburg shipbuilding company said in November during a conversation:
"Of course, we want peace. That a Hitlerpeace would not
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be any good for us businessmen, we all know. But we also do not want such a weak thing as the Weimar Republic has been. [As] long as we do not know anything better of allied war aims, [like] the things which Stafford Cripps said in his speech, who spoke of decentralisation of German industry and of international concessions in the Ruhr, we are between the devil and the deep sea. One ought to show us a way which we are able to take."
Questioned whether the Nazi cruelties in occupied countries are known in Germany, he answered: "The population does not know anything of these happenings. They are far too much wrapped up in their own anxieties and worries to be able to notice the very brief and laconic press-notices about executions - let alone to think about them." He himself too was not in a position to have an accurate picture about the cruelties which are said to have been committed, but he could understand if they led to the cry `Woe to the vanquished!'.
But he hoped that far sighted statesmen would not base the peace on such an unstable fundament - all the more as the greater part of the population of Germany had nothing in common with the deeds of the SS and the Gestapo."
The day of reckoning is anticipated
In a letter to an emigrant who lives in a neutral country, we read:
"At present we have let our upper room to an SS officer. We are content for with the small rations, now and then there is something left over for us.
We count on the war being finished this year. Perhaps we shall see you with us for next Christmas. You needn't worry about a room, because in that case the upper room will be unoccupied."
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Growing confidence in the socialist opposition
The personal correspondence between socialist emigrants in neutral countries and their former friends inside Germany shows the increasing confidence inside Germany that the Hitler dictatorship will soon be finished.
Again and again they speak of a reunion in 1943. Socialists, who have been active in the underground movement, and who in former times have been very sceptical about the possibilities of overthrowing the Hitler dictatorship through the forces of the German opposition, are now counting on an early end of that dictatorship.
From a town in central Germany, there was just one brief note: "The old circle is still in the old mood."
In a letter from East Prussia, the growing confidence in socialist circles expresses itself in the following words: "Uncle is now no longer as nervous as he used to be."
In a conference of functionaries of the movement in northern Germany, a discussion was held on post war problems. Among other things it was stated that the time seems now ripe to help drive things forward by propaganda from without. It is thought of broadcast propaganda and of leaflet propaganda, and it is thought to be essential that declarations of former members and representatives of the German working class movement are broadcast and distributed.
(Reports by the Executive Committee of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany,
published March, 1943)
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[Fortsetzung: Hitler's total war and how the German people react to it]
The situation inside the factories
The Nazis press employers again and again to get still greater results from their factories.
Now so-called "economic shock brigades" have been formed.
These travel from factory to factory where they stay for a few days and try to force the workers through threats and through drastic measures to increase output.
After this commission has left the factory, a Nazi commissioner is left behind, but as a single person, he is comparatively powerless.
Production sinks again to its old level, often even below that.
In plants, which have direct army contracts and in which therefore the employers have been able to keep some sort of independence, there have been cases where the employer passes over the Labour Front official and gets into direct contact with the formerly organised workers.
Inside Cologne the destruction caused by the bombing of the RAF are simply dreadful.
Many people are living in wooden huts, they have no heating, almost no food, neither clothes nor shoes.
The people are desperate and hopeless as never before. The Nazis are powerless against this despair and even the most drastic measures are of no avail. The mood of the population is very ugly indeed.
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A traveller, citizen of a neutral State, has been several times in Germany during the last year. When at the end of last year he returned from his last journey he reported a remarkable change of mood among the Nazis.
One of his acquaintances, a customs official in a little Baltic harbour town, who was the local leader of the Nazi-party and who up till then had been a most enthusiastic admirer of Hitler, had undergone a complete change of mind.
He no longer believes in a German victory and he believes that at some given occasion Hitler will retire from his supreme posts and he will leave the generals to conduct preparations for peace talks.
The general moral in Germany gets rapidly worse and worse.
Now the people are convinced that Germany cannot win the war and they hope that the English and Americans will soon land inside Europe and will create order. As far as the people are not fanatic nazis and are therefore for bad or worse bound to the Nazi system, they have only one desire: that this regime of terror may soon be ended, no matter under what conditions and in what manner.
Cases multiply, in which adherents of the Nazis try to come, by assuring anti-nazis, that they never had anything to do with them.
*
(Reports by the Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Germany,
published March, 1943)
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THE THIRD REICH during the Spring and Summer of 1942
HITLERITE GERMANY during the Autumn of 1942
CONFERENCE of German Social Democrats in England
Contents: |
"The Socialist Movement in the war and after the war" |
10 YEARS OF NAZI DICTATORSHIP Meeting of the Union of German Socialist Organisations in Great Britain on January 29th, 1943, in London
Speeches by
Rt. Hon. David R. Grenfell, M.P.
Walter Schevenels,
Louis de Brouckère,
Hans Vogel
"SOZIALISTISCHE MITTEILUNGEN", News for German Socialists in England. SM has been a regular source of information for German Social Democrats in Great Britain and has also found many readers in oversea countries. The first issues of the SM appeared shortly after the outbreak of war. It has been the only German periodical in Great Britain, the publication of which has never been interrupted during all this time, in spite of countless difficulties and the ever rising prices for paper, stencils, printing ink etc.
[Spendenaufruf]
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