‘Nazism, Modern War and Rural Society in Württemberg, 1939 – 1945’, by Professor Jill Stephenson
Modern war has been seen as an urban concern. That the rural farm hands are conscripted and food production decreases has been seen only in the context that it produces shortages in the cities.The NSDAP felt they had few security worries from the rural population, instead they focussed on urban, Marxist inspired uprisings. The only recent peasant protests had been inspired by the NSDAP themselves to unsettle the old regime...
posted by Benjamin Nakizo at 7:13 PM
1 Comments:
Despite ideologically in tune with the rural labourer in practice the regime was more supportive of the urban proletariat it knew was required to staff the war economy. This disillusioned the rural population with the Nazi program and caused various problems to centralised Nazi rule.
Under corrupt dictatorships (which all are) people lose their ability to make moral political judgements since they feel little obligation to behave given the improper actions of their superiors.
In the countryside this resulted in peasants rallying around their traditional social norms in opposition to the new order being imposed.
Yet despite this the war was a ‘modernising’ experience rural Germany. The conscription of men gifted women a chance to perform outside their domestic sphere while the flood of refugees from the east in the latter stages of the war fundamentally changed the rural societies.
“The political parties and trade unions, as well as the middle-class associations, were no match for the NSDAP in the political cockpit of depression-wracked Germany. Disarmed and demoralised workers and disillusioned or opportunistic bourgeois were an easy prey, less able to withstand nazification and to resist nazi demands than were ‘backward’ rural sections of society, who might be insecure in time of agricultural depression, but whose traditional community relationships were much more difficult to infiltrate or subvert”
Rural Germany resisted the nazi wartime moves to turn the traditional communities into a ‘volksgemeinschaft’ or ‘peoples community’ yet, “it would be mistaken to regard this as ‘resistance’ to nazism in any conventional political sense, rather it was, on the one hand a defensive strategy, retreat into a familiar refugee, and on the other hand, it was a gesture of contempt towards a system which was widely seem as hypocritical and corrupt”.
Württemberg was unique because of its rural economy, it had been less affected by the rural depression and therefore its community had escaped from the worst of the pathologies and seismic fractures within modernity itself. Hence it still had the traditional cohesion of rural communities on which to full back.
Most farms in Württemberg were also comparatively small, Württemberg was a region of small land owners, no mass of untied proletariat farmhands, but rather a multitude of landowners.
The nazi led industrial revival and implementation of their social plans during the 1930’s frustrated the rural districts even before the war. The new industrial jobs drew men away from the farms while the nazi social programs tried to impose unwelcome regulations and restrictions on a traditional community.
“For these people, co-operation in nazi policies would necessarily mean relinquishing many of the remaining habits and traditional practices of rural communities – the real traditions of everyday life, not the invented traditions with the nazi state devised as a cosmetic while trying to force alien modern practices upon them.”
The nazis sought to centralise their control over agricultural output, pushing for authority. They feared being hard pressed for foodstuffs in the event of total war. The memory of the Great War still stung them. Yet… “Centralised control resulted in increased government demands rather than much-needed aid for the hard pressed producer”.
National Socialism promised to deliver a bright future for the farmers, yet in reality its focus was always on industry.
Horses requisitioned from the farmers which made many less favourable to the regime since horses (even the piles of dung outside their houses) equalled status.
[The nazis brought about] “the regulation of agriculture practice to the status of handmaid to the industrial, modern state”.
The churches in the rural provinces actually came to play more of a role in society. They would often warmly welcome and support Catholic workers forced into the region from Poland. Secondly they often received larger attendances during wartime because of the proximity and relevance of mortality amongst the conscripted communities.
In the later states the rural population was certainly better off than their urban counterparts. Not only were they close to the source of food but they were also spared the destructive bombing carried out by the Allies on German cities.
As defeat neared the farms suffered a little as vital industrial goods like fertilisers and tractors dried up, as did access to labour (both voluntary and forced).
Post a Comment
<< Home