4
Whirlwind
As the turbulent events on the eastern front and at Führer Headquarters unfolded, domestically the summer of 1941 proved difficult as well. Always sensitive to the popular mood, and with memories of 1918 constantly at the forefront, Nazi officials anxiously studied the weekly SD reports on the state of public opinion. Although the outbreak of war in September 1939 had been accepted unenthusiastically, the brilliant military triumphs in Poland and France had led to unprecedented popularity for Hitler. These victories, however, had not resulted in an end to the war. Instead, the German people faced first the uncertainty of a long war and then the shock of the attack on the Soviet Union. Although the assault on Jewish-Bolshevism was popular with party loyalists, news of Barbarossa had been received by the populace with muted skepticism. As in France a year earlier, initial successes had led Germans to expect another quick and relatively painless victory, but, as the campaign dragged on into the summer with no end in sight, the mood grew resigned and weary.
Initial announcements of spectacular triumphs that had done so much to raise hopes, in fact, now backfired, as Goebbels recognized. As the summer wore on and it became obvious that the Soviets continued to resist ferociously with seemingly endless manpower reserves, hopes of an early peace gave way to rising concerns. Whatever the scale of victories, propaganda announcements of “Bolshevik atrocities,” bestialities committed by “Jewish criminals,” and the “inhumane way of fighting” of the Bolsheviks did little to reassure the friends and relatives of those at the front. Moreover, the Soviet success in destroying significant grain stocks before they could be seized by the onrushing Wehrmacht forced German authorities to reduce the food ration in late July. Since the weekly meat ration for normal consumers had already been cut in early June, this second reduction was a disturbing blow for a population with long memories of the lean times of 1914–1918 and a leadership sensitive to the link between hunger and revolution.1
For most Germans, the summer of 1941 meant the end of the good times of the 1930s, when the Nazis had provided jobs and economic security, promoted social programs, and restored a sense of national pride. Daily concerns over food shortages, rising prices, and the fate of loved ones now dominated the popular mood. Already in late June Goebbels worried, “Food situation in Berlin is very bad. No potatoes, few vegetables.” Although the situation improved temporarily, by mid-July he noted that the “extraordinarily precarious” food situation was producing “worries and also some nervousness,” while at the end of the month he fretted that of “a whole series of explosive items in popular opinion” the most troubling was “now the question of food.” By mid-August, fears of a repetition of the “Jewish subversion” of the Great War crept in, SD reports noting that, with an increase in black market activity, “once again an old problem” had become acute. “Unstable prices,” Goebbels noted with concern, “had made people surly and nervous.” In southwest Germany, the SD reported people grumbling that “in this war the little people are the losers once more…. Can one still speak of a Volksgemeinschaft?” For a movement intent on creating a society strong enough to withstand the rigors of war, such statements raised alarms. When anxiety over food persisted, the popular mood having grown “somewhat critical in August,” Goering ordered that food rations be maintained at all costs since the enemy’s “only hope is to wear down the morale of the home front.”2
Goebbels ultimately concluded that, despite the grumbling, morale in Germany remained stable, but he did take note of two potentially explosive problems: signs of panic and nervous strain among the urban population of some of the western German cities exposed to repeated British bombing raids and a growing unease among German Catholics over Nazi actions against religion and the handicapped. Nor were the two concerns unrelated. Although virtually all top Nazis believed that Christianity and National Socialism were incompatible, Hitler, for pragmatic reasons, desired that the “church question” be left until after the war. Nonetheless, by mid-1941, party activists at the local and regional levels had inflamed passions by seeking to break the irksome power of the churches. In part, military success fueled this antireligion campaign as the imminent end of the war made a final reckoning with Christianity possible; in part, the campaign reflected party anger that wartime anxieties had strengthened church ties with the populace. Party actions in the first half of 1941 aimed specifically at reining in the power of the Catholic Church, first by banning Catholic publications, and then by having charity work taken over by the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization (NSV). The closure of some monasteries raised fears of a renewed state assault on Catholicism, while the action of Adolf Wagner, the Gauleiter of Bavaria, in ordering all crucifixes removed from schoolrooms touched off a storm of protest. Some complained that, while their sons were fighting Bolshevism in the east, Nazi officials were attacking religion at home, while women wrote their husbands in Russia that they had better “come home to fight Bolshevism here.”3
This disquiet with attacks on the church also merged with anxieties caused by bombing raids in the cities of the heavily Catholic Ruhr industrial area and growing unease over the Nazi policy of euthanasia to create a serious internal crisis. “The heavy night attack on Münster had some regrettable psychological consequences,” Goebbels conceded on 10 July. “These continuing bombardments on a city that in its clerical attitude is also delicate has had an unpleasant effect.” The bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, was responsible for much of the Nazi discomfort. A deeply conservative and anti-Communist individual, he had initially welcomed the assault on the Soviet Union. Nazi actions against the Catholic Church and the persistent British bombing raids, however, caused him to deliver a series of sermons in July denouncing the Gestapo’s suppression of religion. He also protested the closing of monasteries as an affront at a time when “the unity of the Volk needed to be preserved” and people needed special spiritual care. In late July, he wrote a letter to the Reich Chancellery that was a scarcely veiled attack on Hitler himself. His most confrontational action came on 3 August, however, when in a sermon he again condemned the attack on religion, then raised the explosive issue of euthanasia. “There is a general suspicion verging on certainty,” Galen asserted, “that these numerous deaths of mentally ill people do not occur of themselves but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine is being followed according to which one may destroy so-called ‘worthless life,’ that is to kill innocent people if one considers their lives of no further value for the nation and state.” He then pointed to the obvious implications: people who became invalids, soldiers with severe wounds, anyone who in the opinion of Nazi officials had become unproductive, could be put on the list to be murdered. Who, then, he asked, would protect us? Who could average Germans trust? Who would give the murderer the punishment he deserved?4