Source A

Adapted from a report by an SPD agent after speaking to a half-Jewish teacher in Germany in autumn 1936.

The anti-Bolshevik agitation is making a deep and powerful impact. The reduction in the standard of food is being widely felt, but although rearmament is mainly to blame, there is no bitterness towards the Army. The man does not believe the National Socialist mood has penetrated very deeply. However, Hitler has understood how to appeal to nationalist instincts and emotional needs. Even the workers have become more nationalist. Hitler is still outside the line of fire of criticism. One can say that almost everybody blames the previous system for failing to get the unemployed, and particularly youth, off the streets. The reduction in unemployment, rearmament, and the drive it shows in its foreign policy are the key points in favour of Hitler’s policy.

Source B

Adapted from the reports of SDP agents in Germany in 1937 and July 1938.

The general mood in Germany is characterised by a widespread political indifference. The great mass of the people is completely dulled. Nowadays people grumble everywhere about everything, but nobody intends this grumbling to represent a hostile attitude towards the regime, and they do not want a return to the past. The discontent of some sections of society focuses superficially on matters which they find unpleasant and can sometimes go as far as open sabotage of official measures. It becomes increasingly evident that the majority of people have two faces: the private face which they show to good acquaintances shows the strongest criticism of everything that is going on now; the official face for the authorities, keen Nazis and for strangers, beams with optimism and contentment.

Source C

A modern historian’s assessment of Nazi policies.

Nazi propaganda and indoctrination focused on anti-semitism and eugenics, the strengthening of the ‘will for defence’ and the national comrade’s duty to ‘achieve’. However, in cultural activities the aim became increasingly one of providing relaxation for the population with undemanding entertainment rather than political indoctrination. The regime came to pursue contradictory policies towards its people. For while, on the one hand, it attempted to organise, control, and mobilise them by requiring repeated gestures of conformity, on the other hand, it aimed to depoliticise them by turning them into passive consumers who listened to undemanding radio programmes, watched entertaining films and aspired to purchase the new Volkswagen. The Nazis proved far more successful with their second tactic than with their first. For while relatively few Germans were turned into committed Nazis, the overwhelming majority were reconciled with a regime which satisfied many of their basic needs.

Ed. J. Noakes and G. Pridham: Nazism 1919–1945 vol 2: State, Economy and Society 1933–1939 (University of Exeter, 1984 ISBN 0 85989 290 5) pp. 378–9