When we think about the perpetrators of the Holocaust, there’s a tendency to consider the uniformedNazis as separate from the German people as a whole. However, one of the reasons they were able to perpetrate such widespread evil is that, in reality, the Nazi party’s platform of hatred became the very foundation of German society.
Remember the three pillars of radicalization:
Need: The individuals’ desire for personal significance
Narrative: The stories or philosophies that guide those individuals in their quest for significance
Network: A group that validates its members and rewards them for embracing the narrative
We’ve written before about the narratives the Nazis had constructed (though, again, their messaging was nothing new) about the Jewish people. But without a network to uphold that narrative, their agenda could never have taken off to the extent that it did.
So, the Nazis formalized their hatred into a vast network: a political party built on the ideas of ethnic cleansing and anti-Judaism. The party infiltrated every area of German life —from sports to hunting clubs to children’s school and extracurricular activities— and opened its doors wide to citizens through organizations like the HitlerYouth, the Band of German Maidens, and the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) leisure organization, a subset of the German Labour Front, or the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF).
Participation in these groups —and the espousal of their doctrines — offered members the power, importance, and purpose they’d been lacking in the present German economy and climate.
Indoctrinating the Children
It wasn’t just the adults who were integrated into a fully Nazi-ified society. Children, too, were indoctrinated into the anti-Jewish way of life, and the younger the better. Along with the Hitler Youth and the Band of German Maidens, there were no end to the toys, children’s books, and coloring books, and even school curricula designed to teach children that Jewish people were less than human, a people to be ridiculed and feared.
The images below are pages from a coloring book for children, published by Der Stürmer, a weekly German tabloid run by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II. The captions of these images read, “The Decent Jew” and “The Rabbi.” The rest of the pictures are just as revolting.
This primer for children, titled, “Happy Beginnings,” was published in 1943 and designed to teach Nazi ways to children. As early as elementary school, this rhetoric — and reverence for Hitler, highlighted on both the cover and the frontispiece — was baked into basic curriculum.
Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) was one of several children’s books, also published by DerStürmer, aiming to teach German children about the threat Jewish people posed to Germany. (Another, not pictured here, was titled, Trust No Fox in the Meadow.)The Poisonous Mushroom was published in 1938; alarmingly, it is still being printed today, and in English.
Another disgusting reminder that Nazi sentiments are far from gone: this “limited edition” box set of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) action figures (5,000 produced) was released in the 1990s.
Kraft durch Freude
Kraft durch Freude (KdF,“Strength Through Joy”) was a leisure organization run by the German Labor Front that offered entertainment from after-work activities to lavish cruises —all replete, of course, with anti-Jewish propaganda. Through KdF, the Nazis were able to control German citizens’ leisure time, provide a steady stream of Party rhetoric, and ensure nobody had the time (or privacy) to engage in“anti-government” activities.
To say the Germanswere thorough in taking over every aspect of public life is an understatement.This notice (left) with the DAF insignia on the top is from the KdF’s “WorkingGroup for Hand Puppetry” (Die Arbeitsgemeeinschaft für das Handpuppenspiel). Noticethe puppet’s hand sign: Heil Hitler. And in the postcard (right), the head ofthe Reich Institute for Puppetry signs off with his own “Heil Hitler!”
My Kraft durch Freude collection is expansive, with hundreds of photos and propaganda items not pictured here. Like my Der Ewige Jude materials, I’ve collected these very intentionally and with no small amount of time and money. I’m intensely interested in these KdF artifacts because they highlight another element of this story that isn’t taught in schools: Just how fully in control of German citizens’ everyday life the Nazi party became. From sponsored extracurriculars for children to cruises and other leisure activities for adults and families, the KdF infiltrated every area of German life and took any and every opportunity to feed Nazi propaganda to its citizens.
The result? A German citizenry that was grateful to the Nazi party for all the incredible opportunities they’d been given — and that supported Hitler and his efforts with every fiber of their being. Brainwashing at its finest.