The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (26 page)

The many false charges from across the country that were evident in the first months of the new regime reached altogether unacceptable proportions by April 1934, when the Reich Minister of the Interior demanded that local authorities take steps to curb the rapid expansion of all denunciations, too many of which were based merely on conflicts with neighbours. He wanted the authorities to prosecute those who made 'thoughtless, invalid complaints' to the police.
38 But at almost the same time (i 8 April) Rudolf Hess announced in a statement that 'every Party and folk comrade impelled by honest concern for the movement and the nation shall have access to the Fiihrer or to me without the risk of being taken to task', a statement openly encouraging even anonymous informers to come forward.39
During the peacetime years the flood of reports continued without apparent respite, against the hopes of anxious contemporary observers.4
)

At the beginning of 1939 Minister of the Interior Frick passed on to local officials the concerns of Hermann Goring about denunciation and the 'Jewish question'. Goring, who was, among other things, in charge of the 'four-year
plan', expressed satisfaction at the orderly implementation of the 'planned measures for the effective removal of the Jews from the German economy and the use of Jewish wealth for the aims of the four-year plan'. However, he was far from happy with the recent phenomenon of 'German fellow citizens' being informed upon 'because they once bought something in a Jewish store, lived in the same house as Jews, or otherwise had had business relations with the Jews'. The importance of explaining to the people why the Jews had to be removed from the German economy should not lead to the 'spying out and denunciation of such long past events'. As far as possible, all (unspecified) 'necessary measures' should be used to stop such denunciations in the future, since the economic plans were to a considerable degree dependent upon the 'requisite rhythmical and smooth exertion on the part of all German people'."

The coming of war in 1939 brought with it many radical measures for the control of the population, its opinions, attitudes, and welfare. In fact, according to the 'special war law' of 17 August 1938, even a statement that might injure or destroy 'the will of the German people or an allied people to assert themselves stalwartly against their enemies' was declared criminal.42
There were literally hundreds of regulations of various kinds that could only be enforced if the 'loyal citizen' would inform. Great attention was to be paid to the home front in this war because of the widespread paranoia among leading Nazis, and especially Hitler, as to the causes of Germany's defeat in 1918. In some instances, the population went beyond exposing those acts or attitudes formally or even informally forbidden: there were many cases, as will be seen below, where the people were well in advance of what the regime actually expected.

In a memorandum to the Gestapo just after the outbreak of war in 1939, Heydrich insisted that the police should pay particular attention to maintaining popular morale by ruthlessly dealing with all kinds of potentially defeatist statements made in public; the full co-operation of the citizenry, and of influential opinion-formers and monitors such as pub-owners and employees in public transport, should be sought. On the home front, for the duration of the conflict 'personally motivated baseless or exaggerated denunciations' should be handled on the spot with a harsh warning, and in the most serious cases the false accuser should be sent to a concentration camp.43

In the meantime, however, the Propaganda Ministry brought out a decree that opened the way for a new wave of denunciations. Joseph Goebbels's 'exceptional radio measures', issued on i September 1939, forbade listening to all foreign radio broadcasts: appeals were then made to the public to report
anyone who defied the ban.44
The measures taken by Heydrich and Goebbels on the very same day, almost pulling in opposite directions, is a good example of what Martin Broszat calls `polycracy', the many-centred nature of power in Nazi Germany."
Goebbels justified his action on the basis that the home front had to be protected from the `lies' and 'weapon of poison' represented by foreign radio. Paranoia about repeating the mistakes allegedly made in the First World War affected not only Hitler but many others in the government hierarchy.4"
Drastic deterrents were proposed; in the most serious cases the punishment was to be death. The minister made the point that Germany, in the heart of Europe, could hardly be shielded in any other way than by introducing such draconian measures.41

Within hours Minister of Justice Gi rtner registered severe reservations concerning these measures. His experts who reviewed the decree immediately pointed out that the outside world might assume a lack of trust and confidence between government and people, but an even more important objection pertained to the effect it would have at home. `I fear in addition', Giirtner wrote to Goebbels at noon on i September, 'that the decree of such an ordinance would open the floodgates of denunciation and all national comrades would stand more or less helpless vis-d-vis such denunciations."'
The plan went into effect with minor modifications.

The ban on listening to `enemy broadcasts', once legally binding, was energetically enforced by the Gestapo and associated police networks. Even government officials at the ministerial level had to apply for permission to listen in-strictly in the line of duty.49
Citizens defying the ban did so with the greatest care. With luck, they already had a set of earphones they could use, and dared not forget to change the station before switching off, lest they leave a tell-tale clue.50

The atmosphere of suspicion and despair thus created is illustrated by examples drawn from the diary of William L. Shirer, a newspaper man and broadcaster who experienced Nazi Germany at first hand from 1934 to late 1940. On the train from Munich to Lausanne on 4 February 1940, Shirer, an inveterate diarist, committed several stories to paper.

i. In Germany it is a serious penal offence to listen to a foreign radio station. The other day the mother of a German airman received word from the Luftwaffe that her son was missing and must be presumed dead. A couple of days later the BBC in London, which broadcasts weekly a list of German prisoners, announced that her son had been captured. Next day she received eight letters from friends and acquaintances telling her they had heard her son was safe as a prisoner in England. Then the story takes a nasty turn. The mother denounced all eight to the police for listening to an English broadcast, and they were arrested.

(When I tried to recount this story on the radio, the Nazi censor cut it out on the ground that American listeners would not understand the heroism of the woman in denouncing her eight friends!)

2. The parents of a U-boat officer were officially informed of their son's death. The boat was overdue and had been given up by the German Admiralty as lost. The parents arranged a church funeral. On the morning of the service the butcher called and wanted a few words with the head of the house in private. Next came the grocer. Finally friends started swarming in. They had all heard the BBC announce that the son was among those taken prisoner from a U-boat. But how to call off the funeral without letting the authorities know that someone in the confidence of the family listened to a foreign station? If the parents wouldn't tell, perhaps they themselves would be arrested. A family council was held. It was decided to go through with the funeral. After it was over, the mourners gathered in the parents' home, were told the truth if they didn't already know it, and everyone celebrated with champagne."

Shirer does not speculate on the motives of the woman who turned in her eight friends, and it may well be that she was moved out of fear that, if she did not do so, someone would have charged her with having 'criminal' knowledge. More than one person offered information after reflecting on such a possibility.52

If the official attitude towards denunciations was in general ambivalent, and changed according to the exigencies of the moment, dealing with false charges or those laid with a reckless regard for truth was even more perplexing. Simple mistakes in judgement were not solely to blame, since frequently blatant personal motives, such as resentment, revenge, or jealousy, were at work. The problem of false charges plagued the regime in the years of peace, but created more havoc once war broke out and social life came increasingly under police jurisdiction. As a letter of i August 1943 from the Minister of Justice to judges across Germany put it, `the denouncer is-according to an old saying-the biggest scoundrel in the whole country. That is true in the first instance of those who, in spite of knowing better, falsely report a fellow citizen to the authorities in order to cause him some unpleasantness."'
The minister noted, however, that caution was required when dealing with those
who informed recklessly. While the regime did 'not want to turn the people into denouncers and snoopers' so that everyone was continuously spying on everyone else, no regime could overlook the utility of the informer. Therefore, in sentencing even the thoughtless and the careless accusers, too strict a standard ought not to be applied, lest 'the often useful sources in the discovery of criminal activities might also dry up'.54

The files of the Wiirzburg Gestapo and those in Dusseldorf indicate that these guidelines and others offered at different times did not stop the flow of false accusations. In the months following the outbreak of war, in an effort to put a stop to the blatant falsities, local Gestapo officials began advising some of the falsely accused to institute proceedings against those who had turned them in.55
If a false accusation had particularly serious results, such as death through suicide, the Gestapo itself laid charges, as it had done in Dusseldorf in late 1935, when a man anxious to get rid of his wife accused her of having illegal sexual relations with a Jew.56
Reinhard Mann's figures demonstrate that denunciations from ordinary citizens grew with the coming of war, reached their highest point in 1941, and then declined slowly at first, nearly to disappear altogether after 1943•''

Some of the problems stemmed from confusion about the nature and mission of the organizations charged with 'security' in the Third Reich. Local Gestapo officials occasionally published reminders in the press that the Gestapo was not the 'complaint bureau for personal spitefulness or even of base denunciations'.'
Heydrich felt it necessary to issue a public statement in mid-February 1941 to clarify some of the issues. Gestapo and SD, he was well aware, were 'wrapped in the rumoured and whispered secretiveness of the political criminal novel', regarded with 'a mixture of fear and foreboding', and people wanted 'relatively little' to do with either. Nevertheless, he pointed out that some people believed that there was nothing, 'down to the tiniest egotistical wish', that the Gestapo could not make happen. The Gestapo had become something between a 'maid for all occasions and rubbish-bin of the Reich'.59
Another memorandum sent to all local Gestapo headquarters from Berlin on 24 February 1941, concerning denunciations among relatives, particularly husbands and wives, suggests that the mechanism of denunciation was being used for private ends completely unanticipated by the regime."'

3. DENOUNCERS AND THEIR MOTIVES

A brief word needs to be said about the denouncers themselves and their motives. Richard Grunberger suggests that in Nazi Germany denunciation offered the 'humbly stationed in life' an 'equality of opportunity for laying information' against their 'social superiors', and that 'this harnessed a vast reservoir of personal resentment and spite to the purposes of the state'.`
1 Grunberger has a point, but it is surprising that he emphasizes the resentment directed against 'social superiors'. It would appear, even from the examples he gives, that people usually informed on others in their own social class.

Peter Huttenberger's conclusion from his study of cases of malicious gossip before the Munich Special Court, that the 'denouncers belonged to the same milieu as the denounced', fits the cases handled by the Gestapo in Wurzburg and Dusseldorf and is confirmed by evidence from elsewhere-as, for example, in the massive collection of the post-1945 trials of those whose tip-offs led to Gestapo proceedings eventually resulting in death.`'
Hiittenberger discovered a massive number of denunciations in his work on the Special Court trials, and his analysis led him to maintain that denunciations 'arose as a rule from personal arguments, enmities and aversions of all kinds, and naturally also out of dislike between National Socialists and non-National Socialists'.`
3 Hiittenberger's analysis of the 5,422 persons accused of malicious gossip reveals that, by his definition, the 'upper class' and the 'educated bourgeoisie' were 'nearly totally absent'.`
4 He concludes that this was not because they made no such comments, but that they uttered them 'in a closed, private milieu which was not so susceptible to denunciation' as they would have been had they been uttered in public places such as a pub or store, or at the work-place.`
5

It is also true that people in positions of social authority were, on some occasions at least, accorded a degree of licence in their language. Incautious or even 'criminal' statements could sometimes be overlooked if made by a village doctor or the boss. Peter Bielenberg, senior person in a factory, drove
his office clerk's wife to hospital when she was ill. Upon picking her up at home, he observed a framed slogan on the living-room wall which said 'Der Fuhrer hat immer Recht' ('The Fuhrer is always right'). Bielenberg was astonished at the behaviour of his clerk, who was not even a member of the Party, and asked: 'However could you frame and hang up such rubbish," The clerk said nothing until much later, when his boss was arrested and incriminated in the plot of July 1944 to assassinate Hitler; only after this arrest did the clerk inform the Gestapo of the incautious remark."
Such an incident appears to confirm the view that informants told on those in their own class, and that there was a certain reluctance to report on one's 'betters'.