Daily life in Nazi Germany in early 1943 centered around the war. Most young men and many older men were employed in the armed forces. Despite the Nazis’ ideological preference for women devoting themselves to home and family, a large number of women entered the workforce to fill the places of the missing men, especially in industry. There were also about half a million women auxiliaries in the armed forces.
The hand of the National Socialist state was a bit lighter in rural areas, where policing was limited and old traditions were harder to uproot. In Berlin, the national capital, the Nazi Party and security presence were at a maximum. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, all independent organizations of civil society were either abolished or taken over by the Party. Consequently, about two-thirds of Germans belonged to some Nazi Party organization such as the Hitler Youth, League of German Girls, sports clubs, or the German Labor Front, though membership in the Party itself was limited. These organizations played an important part in daily life as they provided opportunities for community involvement.
City dwellers were subject to constant surveillance by Nazi Party block wardens, who were responsible for monitoring 40 to 60 households. The Gestapo also cultivated professional informants to supplement their own agents, who were stretched thin. Civil servants were required by law to report anything suspicious, and regular citizens were expected to do so.
Propaganda was another means of control by the regime. Information was tightly controlled by the State, and radio and film were utilized as a means of imposing a uniform view on Germans. Listening to foreign broadcasts was a crime, but millions of Germans did it anyway, and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels complained that German courts were too lenient with those found to have violated the stricture.
Education was also an avenue for National Socialist indoctrination and was centralized and tightly controlled by the State. Training in racial biology was made mandatory, German history and literature were emphasized, and at least five hours a day devoted to physical education. Though it took the National Socialist regime some time to create centralized control over education, eventually a central office was established to censor textbooks. From a very early time teachers were required to become members of the NSDAP; Jewish teachers and those with suspect political loyalty were dismissed. “Book learning” was discounted, and education was aimed to produce subordination to the Reich and Führer.
While Germans were forced to rely on official sources of information, the Nazi propaganda apparatus was always in competition with a very active rumor mill. Germans called this the Mundfunk, which was a play on Rundfunk, a German word for radio, and Mund, meaning mouth.
Air raids were a constant source of fear in western Germany from mid-1942 and in Berlin from early 1943. Though large cities were natural targets, many smaller cities and towns also became targets due to nearby military or industrial facilities. Although some major cities had large air raid bunkers that could shelter thousands, most Germans found shelter in subway tunnels or their own cellars, which were often reinforced with timbers and provisioned for long stays. In the last 18 months of the war, Berliners and other urbanites complained of exhaustion because they were forced into the air raid shelters sometimes for several days in a row, even at night. The British RAF typically bombed at night, while the U.S. Army Air Force took over during the day. There were an estimated 363 air raids targeting Berlin during the course of the war. By May 1945, a million and a half Berliners had fled the city.
The fear of air raids also drove another feature of everyday life in German cities, darkness. In order to limit the visibility of targets at night, streetlights were turned off and homes and businesses required to block the windows with blackout curtains or dark paper. This led to a large number of accidents by both automobiles and pedestrians, and passengers waiting for trains were known to fall off of station platforms onto the tracks below. Night-time crime also increased in general and particularly during air raids, when families were encouraged to leave windows and doors open in their unoccupied homes. Under cover of darkness, a serial killer (the “S-Bahn Murderer”) murdered eight women and tried to kill another six traveling by train from 1939 to mid-1941, when he was finally apprehended and executed.
The economic theory of National Socialism was “autarky,” or national self-sufficiency. This meant, among other things, few imports and a regimented use of labor to supply the gap. Agriculture was collectivized and the State adopted four-year-plans. Young men were required to do military service and young women were required to do one year of agricultural service. Unlike communism, National Socialism allowed private ownership of the means of production, but only under strict state control. Consequently even before the war, Germany suffered from many shortages, as well as official corruption and abuse of economic power. Nevertheless, small shops continued largely undisturbed and bigger businesses remained at least nominally in private hands.
Rationing of food began shortly after the war started, and intensified as the war went on. Rationing of other items such as gasoline, shoes, and clothing was also ubiquitous. Even possession of ration cards was not sufficient to guarantee one could buy what one wanted, as shortages of goods were common. The Nazi Party elite, however, was often able to evade rationing restrictions. Ordinary Germans often overcame the restrictions and shortages through the very active black market. Some scholars estimate that the black market may have accounted for ten percent of the average German household’s consumption, and more in Berlin.
In order to maintain popular support for the war, the regime long attempted to win without total mobilization. Not until the defeat at Stalingrad did Goebbels issue his call for “Total War.” At that point, most restaurants and amusements were shut down, rationing became more stringent, and mobilization was ramped up.
Of course, daily life for Jews in Berlin was extremely unpleasant. The Nuremberg Race Laws had long denied them rights theoretically afforded to other Germans, and in October 1941, deportations had begun to Jewish ghettos in Poland. By early 1943, the city had been emptied of most Jews, and deportations were taking them to Auschwitz rather than ghettos. Those who remained worked in factories or at forced labor, were denied entry to public air raid shelters, and received smaller food rations than others. To evade capture, some had become “Tauchers” or “U-Boats,” Jews in hiding or in disguise. It was a hard life, and only about 1,400 survived the war.
Sources
Roger Moorhouse, Berlin at War.
George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich.
Christopher Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms 1939-45.