A Social Hisotry of the Third Reich

282 Pages·1971·15.41 MB·English

by  Richard Grundberger

The Nazis, to enforce their grip on every CointiftUfiJ from front flap)
citizen’s allegiance, developed a social subjects as Beauty in the Third Reich (no
system unprecedented in history. It was COMinetics, no slimming) as well as charting
rigidly hierarchical, with the seemingly how yem progressed to the elite Nazi cadres -
administrators, propagandists orcoeroers. It
beneficent and ascetic figure of Hitler at the
st ows childhood with the Hitler Youth and
top - focus for the homage and aspirations of
its slogan ‘We are born to die for Germany’,
every man, woman and child. How did the
and describes the intense medieval ritual
‘ordinary citizen’ live under such a system?
injected into e\'ery phase of life from school
This book is filled with the facts, the data aid university to farm labour, It shows life
and the details. in the office (promotion coming with the
‘Strength through Joy’ sports certificate) in
If you had lived in Hitler’s Germany, you
industry, in the professions - doctors,
would have gone to the pictures (costume
lawyers, artists - and in the Nazi Rarty itsdf.
drama), told jokes, used special language -
Finally, it documents what happened at the
‘Hitler butter’ for margarine or ‘Hitler cut’
iwo extremes of German sodety - to the
for the unkindest cut of all - sterilization.
aristocrats and to the Jews.
Child-bearing was your goal if you were a
Richard Grunberger’s book is drawn from
woman. Four at least to receive the Honour original sources, contemporary newspapers,
Cross on Hitler’s mother’s birthday. You chronicles, letters, books and many
could have your baby free if pregnant by an previously unpublished accounts. It is one of
SS man. Racially mixed coitus, however, the most devastating portraits ever drawn of
a human society.
was against the law.
The book describes family Life in this
Etichard Grunberger was burn in Vienna in
society where you could inform on mother,
1924 and now lives in London. He is
father, son or daughter. It considers the married with three childieu, and is the
fantasy life of German citizens - children’s author of rprf-rp^yand
daydreams of becoming Gauleiters in the HitUr^s SS.
Congo, women’s conviction that no wall in
their home could be hit by a bomb if Hitler’s
picture were hung there. For men he was a
more ambivalent figure - at once almighty
ruler and one-time corporal.
The author’s vast material encompasses such
continued on back flap)
With i6 pages of half-tone illustrations
Jacket design by David Eldred
£5-00 net lOOs net
In UK only In UK only
A SOCIAL HISTORY
OF THE THIRD REICH
Also by Richard Grunberger A SOCIAL
Germany 1918-1945
Hitler’s SS
HISTORY
OF THE
THIRD REICH
RICHARD GRUNBERGER
Weidenfeld and Nicolson
5 Winsley Street London W i
CONTENTS
To the memory of
Bernard Weber (1923-1955)
I Weimar I
2 The Third Reich 18
3 Folk Community 44
4 The Party 55
5 Ritual and Fiihrcr Worship 72
6 Corruption 90
7 Denunciation 108
8 Justice 116
9 The Civil Service 127
10 The Army 135
11 The Land 151
12 Business 167
13 The Workers 185
14 Consumption 203
15 Health 220
16 The Family 233
17 Women 251
Copyright © 1971 by Richard Grunberger 18 Youth 267
19 Education 285
All rights reserved. No part of this pubhcation may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans­ 20 The Universities 304
mitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, 21 Nazi Speech 324
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
22 Humour 331
without the prior permission of the Copyright
owner. 23 Literature 341
24 The Theatre 362
25 The Cinema 376
SBN 297 00294 5
26 Press and Radio 390
Printed in Great Britain by 27 Music 406
Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Fakenham and Reading
CONTENTS
28 Art 421
29 Religion 435
ILLUSTRATIONS
30 The Jews 454
Glossary 471
Suggested Further Reading 473
References 475
Acknowledgements 513
Index 515 Between pages 40 and 41
Poster encouraging the anti-Jewish boycott [Suddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
A race-education lesson [Suddeutscher Verlag)
Goering’s wedding
Between pages y2 and yj
Procession at the opening of the ‘House of German Art’ (Institute of
Contemporary History and Wiener Library, London)
A ‘one-pot Sunday’ (Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library)
A Winter Relief ‘sacrificial column’ (Institute of Contemporary History and
Wiener Library)
Judges of the Berlin Criminal Court
Between pages 136 and i^y
The Reich Labour Service at the 1934 Nuremburg Party Rally (Ullstein
Bilderdienst, Berlin)
Mealtime in the Reich Labour Service (Institute of Contemporary History and
Wiener Library)
Navy gymnasts at the 1938 Breslau Sports Festival (Institute of Contemporary
History and Wiener Library)
An anti-Jewish notice (Ullstein Bilderdienst)
A Jew carrying a sandwich board through streets (Archiv Gerstenberg,
Frankfurt am Main)
Jews arriving at Auschwitz (Suddeutscher Verlag)
Between pages 168 and i6g
The dining hall of Hitler’s S S bodyguard (Suddeutscher Verlag)
Goering with the villagers of Mauterndorf (Institute of Contemporary
History and Wiener Library)
A farmer’s ‘honour diploma’ (Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener
Library)
vi Vll
ILLUSTRATIONS
Between pages 264 and 265
Volkwagen cars in 1938 {Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener
Library)
WEIMAR
Girls cheering Hitler {Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library)
Hitler Youth camp {Ullstein Bilderdienst)
An exercise at an Adolph Hitler School {Siiddeutscher Verlag)
Between pages 296 and 29 j
Hitler Youth marching through Breslau A quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War the ‘Ger­
Open-air theatre and memorial at Annaberg {Institute of Contemporary man question’ which caused that war still dominates world affairs - though
History and Wiener Library) in a vastly different form.
A still from Jud Siiss Today the German question is a function of East-West relations and its
solution depends more on the world than on the Germans themselves -
Between pages 392 and 595
but when it first arose it had little to do with the state of the world and a
Broadcasting the sound of the goose-step {Institute of Contemporary History
great deal with that of German society.
and Wiener Library)
The root causes of the German question were - very broadly speaking-
Works concert at a Hamburg train depot {Institute of Contemporary History retarded unification (and therefore nationhood), capitalism maturing in a
and Wiener Library)
late-feudal setting, and a national preference for konfliktlose synthesis
Housing estate at Stettin {Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener (synthesis without conflict).
Library) Germany’s belated emergence as a great power, which led her to a pre­
Model of the Konigsplatz at Munich {Institute of Contemporary History and occupation with foreign policy and a neglect of home policy and reforms,
Wiener Library) marked and distorted all her subsequent development. This distortion
was compounded by another. In 1871 industry had brought German
Between pages 424 and 42^
military triumph, statehood and great-power status, but the agents of that
Motorway in the Ruhr {Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener
victory - the middle classes - failed to gain their own political victory, or
Library)
even a commensurate share of power. (An outward symbol of their failure
Professor Thorak working on model for Autobahn monument {Institute of
was the situation of the universities where middle-class students formed
Contemporary History and Wiener Library)
associations aping the mores - e.g. duelling - of the military-agrarian
Hitler Youth’s Hans Mallon memorial {Institute of Contemporary History and
6lite when that elite was in economic decline.)
Wiener Library
This cumulative imbalance of power had dire consequences: the middle
Design for a Castle of the Dead {Institute of Contemporary History and class grew used to trading their political rights for economic advantages;
Wiener Library)
a constitution was evolved that married authoritarian substance to the
Landsberg concentration camp in 1945 {Ullstein Bilderdienst) shadow of universal manhood suffrage. Political opposition to the govern­
ment became confused with opposition to the country - treason. Bismarck
described the Social Democrats as ‘vagabonds without a Fatherland’.
Scarifying propagandist devices for preventing the alternation of
government and opposition, fostered by Bismarck’s constitutional gerry­
mandering, helped to develop the German penchant for Konjliktlosigkeit -
for sweeping conflict-inducing issues under the carpet - and 1918
vm
A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE THIRD REICH WEIMAR
produced a great trauma precisely because defeat brought in its train a Preuss were Jewish served as a pretext for dubbing the whole Weimar
reversal of all these tendencies. state a ‘Jew-Republic’.
Foreign policy ceased to be Germany’s main concern when she became A climate envenomed by character assassination bred physical assassins.
an object rather than a subject in world affairs. The collapse of the Empire Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by officers ‘collaborating’ with the Ebert
put an end to pseudo-constitutionalism and to the exclusion of commoners government, and Fehme gunmen killed the Catholic Centre leader Erz-
from political power. The chimera of Konfliktlosigkeit faded further as the berger who had signed the Versailles Treaty, and the ‘Judeo-Democrat’
Weimar Republic articulated - and tried to institutionalize - the interplay Foreign Minister Rathenau who strove to implement it. The courts
of contending social and political forces. treated right-wing terrorism with a leniency best exemplified by Hitler’s
One of the most poignant aspects of 1918-19 was that it was the first, one-year jail term after the bloodily abortive Munich putsch of November
1923. The whole tenor of political court decisions highlighted a crucial
and therefore the seminal, instance in Germany of alternating political
flaw of the new state: though its law-making was democratic the applica­
parties in office - the essence of the democratic process. The Social Demo­
tion of the law had remained in the hands of anti-democrats.
crats, Left Liberals and Catholic Centre, which under the Empire had been
The death of the Republic which this division foreshadowed - and ulti­
permanently relegated to the opposition benches, now became the
mately precipitated - occurred in two stages. While the majority of the
government - but their assumption of office owed less, in the last analysis,
people actively deserted democracy only during the Depression, the
to the ballot-box (and to the barricades put up in November 1918) than to
majority of the elite (the civil service, the judiciary, the officer corps,
Allied arms.
the academics and even the clergy) had rejected it virtually at birth.
In 1918-19 most Germans became democrats. Even the ‘national classes’
It was precisely in order to propitiate these forces that the Republic’s
took up democracy - as a means of obtaining easier peace terms from the
leadership retained the name Deutsches Reich (German Empire), with its
West and of fending off Bolshevism in the East. Versailles and the failure
Imperial and authoritarian undertones, and that Ebert - though himself a
of revolution to take root outside Russia soon ended their aberration;
target of ‘stab-in-the-back’ accusations - contributed to the nation’s self-
democracy once again became an alien device, a creed whose victory had
delusion by describing the returning German army as ‘undefeated on the
resulted from German defeat, and bitterness at losing the war threw into
field of battle’.
lurid relief the gain of power by an inexperienced minority.
The Republican idea had been so drained of vitality by 1925 that a man
Weimar’s office-holders were indeed a new, and - thanks to the Imperial
like ex-Field Marshal Hindenburg was elected President of the Reich.
constitution - a somewhat parvenu dite. The Social Democrat, Ebert, who
Both terms are actually misnomers: Hindenburg was seen less as a man
replaced the Kaiser as head of state was a master-saddler. Similarly suspect
than as a national monument; the word election, wliich implies election­
(in Conservative eyes) were figures whom the November 1918 upheaval
eering (i.e. exertions to win the voters’ approval), cannot convey how the
had catapulted into the centre of the political stage: journalists such as
ex-GOC, once the immediate post-war swing to the Left had abated,
Theodor Wolff, editor of the Berliner Tageblatt and co-founder of the
simply re-emerged as the father-figure remembered from the war.
Demokratische Partei, as well as Leftist writers such as Ernst Toller, a parti­
Looking upon Germany as a fief entrusted to him during the Emperor’s
cipant in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919. Politically
absence he had actually sought the ex-Kaiser’s leave before accepting the
Toller was at the opposite end of the left-wing spectrum to Ebert, who -
Presidency from the people. The new President’s appeal to Conservatives
‘hating social revolution like sin’ - approved of the suppression of the
was axiomatic - whereas Republicans felt sharply divided about him.
Munich Soviet, though the Right persisted in lumping together Social
While the radical academic Theodor Lessing, with uncanny prescience,
Democrats and revolutionary socialists as Marxist scum.
called Hindenburg ‘a Zero paving the way for Nero’, moderates looked to
Dour pedlars of the conspiracy-theory of history alleged that Germany
the rather incongruous new head of state to wean the ‘national classes’
had not been beaten in battle but ‘stabbed in the back’ by traitorous poli­
from their hostility to the Republic. Developments during the first half of
ticians (such as Ebert); the fact that Wolff, Toller, the outstanding woman
Hindenburg’s presidential term seemed to confirm these hopes, although in
Socialist Rosa Luxemburg and the architect of the Weimar Constitution
A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE THIRD REICH WEIMAR
narrowly political terms the 1928 elections merely brought the Republican intervening world-wide upsurge of economic activity, German industry
bloc a derisory gain of four seats in the Reichstag. None the less, 1925-9, could claim some notable achievements. The number of patents taken out
the middle years of the Weimar Republic, were also its best. After the annually doubled compared with before the war; in the sphere of transport
end of the French occupation of the Ruhr and the period of runaway and communication Germany progressed faster than the powers that had
inflation, Germany experienced internal stability and an economic revival defeated her; the production of electricity, for instance, rose by over 50
for the first time in over a decade. With the currency restored and the per cent^ between 1925 and 1930.
Dawes plan facilitating foreign investment, industry embarked on The annual number of bankruptcies, which, in 1925-6, still exceeded the
schemes for rationalization and expansion that result in the 1927 produc­ pre-war number, dropped to half the 1913 level within a year or two.®
tion index exceeding the highest pre-war total.^ By 1929, a smaller Ger­ The relatively prosperous years at the end of the twenties also accelerated
many was producing 10 per cent more coal, 100 per cent more lignite, the change in occupational distribution that had been taking place ever
and 30 per cent more steel, than in the pre-war period, and in 1930 since full-scale industrialization in the eighteen-seventies. This restructur­
Germany ranked second after the United States among the world’s export­ ing of the total work-force involved a steady reduction of the agricultural
ing countries and indeed first as an exporter of finished products.^ sector of the population (which declined from 42 per cent in 1882, to
Yet for most of this time German industry was in fact operating at only 29 per cent in 1933). Figures concerning the redistribution of ownership
50 to 80 per cent of her full productive capacity.^ The effect of rationaliza­ and economic status are equally significant: the number of independents
tion had been double-edged: during 1929, when the absolute number of fell from 38 to 20 per cent, while that of employed dependents increased
gainfully employed reached the all-time high of 2of million,'* industry from 4 to II per cent. The proportion of workers went up only very
threw li million men on the scrap-heap because it was unable to utilize its slightly (50 to 52 per cent); that of white-collar workers and civil servants
own full potential owing to insufficient home demand or export scope.® increased markedly, from 8 to 18 per cent.**
Germany’s export difficulties stemmed from foreign discrimination (In other words total number of workers remained constant, but riural
against her, but the low home demand was an internal matter and the emigrants were joining the working class at the same rate at which white-
remedy lay well within her own power. The crux of this problem was the collar workers were leaving it.)^°
divergence between wage and price levels: prices of industrial goods were The white-collar group, over two-thirds of whom were skilled,^
kept high through the operation of cartel agreements, while aggregate increased especially fast during the period of rationalization, and the
purchasing power was depressed by the wage policy of industry, and by proportion of women within it grew at an even faster rate. The qualifica­
unnecessarily dear food. The latter was a direct result of the government’s tions required for desk jobs also changed more rapidly than those for
solicitude for the grain-producing aristocrats within German agriculture. industrial work. In addition, white-collar workers were at an advantage
The excessive concentration of ownership in industry - in 1925 less than because they enjoyed greater job security, had a separate status in wage
2 per cent of all enterprises employed 55 per cent of all wage earners^ - contracts, and had their own insurance funds. Another difference between
was not unrelated to the relative scarcity of capital. The war and its after- the two groups was in their conception of the social structure. To industrial
math had destroyed large capital reserves and bequeathed a heavy tax workers, society appeared to be a straightforward dichotomy, divided into
burden to the post-war economy. This tended to push up the interest rate ‘bosses’ at the top and themselves at the bottom, whereas the Angestellten,
on loans - with the result that large economic units obtained access to or desk-workers, saw it as a graded hierarchy, with employers above them,
capital more easily than small ones. themselves in the middle, and the proletariat below them.
The extensive rationalization of industry in the mid-twenties, financed This feeling of occupying a precariously elevated middle position was, of
by high-interest loans, was based on the assumption of infinitely expand­ course, not peculiar to white-collar workers, but pervaded all inter­
ing markets - an assumption that was called in question at the outset by mediate social groups during the Weimar period with an intensity border­
foreign limitations on German exports and the low level of home demand ing on neurosis. It strongly affected the great mass of retail traders, whose
nd was finally negated by the Great Depression. Even so, during the number had gone up by a quarter since before the war,^^ though there
A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE THIRD REICH WEIMAR
was no sound economic justification for this increase. Many shopkeepers, collective-bargaining process, because it considered that the government
independent artisans, small farmers and others aspired to a middle-class was unduly biased in favour of the workers. This situation changed rather
identity which was contradicted by their economic circumstances. During drastically in 1931-2, when the Briining Cabinet showed itself prepared
the mid-twenties boom, when, if judged purely on job and social criteria, to enforce wage cuts as part of its general deflationary programme.
twenty-five million Germans belonged to the proletariat, as many as By this time, Weimar had entered its third and final stage, and although
forty-five million Germans (almost three-quarters of the entire popula­ the government was still ostensibly republican, it had ceased to be demo­
tion) were actually living on proletarian incomes.^^ cratic in the sense of enjoying majority support in the Reichstag. In fact,
the demise of the Weimar Republic was presided over by governments
With the placing of workers’ unemployment insurance on the statute that were authoritarian in terms of both constitutional procedure and poli­
book in 1927, organized labour achieved the implementation of its basic tical complexion. This drastic shift of the political power constellations
programme. Insurance against accidents, sickness and old age had been in was a concomitant of economic disaster. The Wall Street crash of October
force since the days of Bismarck, and to these pioneering social measures 1929 had spread to the rest of the world within a very short time, and hit
the Weimar Republic had added wage contracts underwritten by the Germany harder than most other countries. Unemployment figures started
state, paid holidays, and the right of association for collective bargaining. climbing to astronomic heights'^ from their already disturbing pre-Depres­
(Twelve to fourteen million employees were working under collective sion level; even so they followed a gentler gradient than Hitler’s electoral
agreements.) appeal: in the traumatic election of September 1930 Nazi representation in
Capital took a jaundiced view of these gains by labour. Entrepreneurial the Reichstag shot up overnight from twelve deputies to loylj" Before
complaints about the heavy burden of social contributions placed on this cumulative landslide had hamstrung the government, industrial and
industry abounded. These were - in a limited sense - justified, since agrarian interests had displayed completely divergent attitudes to the
Weimar’s social security schemes afforded less protection to small employ­ state. Industry had managed to prise the economy from the tripartite
ers than to their employees. However, even though labour might appear Weimar pattern so that it might confront labour head-on without the
as the Republic’s particular beneficiary, its sphere of effective action was government holding the ring or propping up the weaker contestant.
somewhat circumscribed. Thus, the ‘closed shop’ idea was entirely absent Agriculture, on the other hand, continued to hold an attitude that dated
from the industrial thinking of the period; explicitly precluded by the back to Bismarck’s abandonment of free trade in 1879, and leaned heavily
Weimar constitution, it hardly crossed the minds of labour leaders. Trade- on the government for support and subsidies. Before the slump these
union moderation can be statistically demonstrated: during the years differing attitudes of industry and agriculture towards the state had not
1927-30, a period of relative prosperity and increasing employment, the taken on an overt political form - though, as an approximation, one could
number of working days lost through industrial disputes annually was - say that the (absurdly named) German People’s Party represented indus­
at 3*7 million - only half the comparable pre-war total.^® The subsidence trial interests, while Hugenberg’s National Party constituted the agrarian
of industrial warfare resulted partly from Weimar’s labour legislation, lobby of the Reichstag.
which drew the government into all wage agreements as a participant and Repeating parrot-like arguments of authoritarian conservatism which
stipulated an elaborate conciliation procedure before strikes could legally increasingly lacked relevance to events, the National Party had remained
obdurately opposed to the Republic. The People’s Party displayed greater
be called. Not one offensive strike, i.e. a strike to advance workers’ claims
agility: following the behaviour pattern of capitalist interest groups in the
as against warding off employers’ encroachments, occurred from 1930
onwards, yet already two years earlier the Ruhr steel industrialists had im­ * Between September 1929 and September 1932 the number of registered jobless rose
posed a lockout on 250,000 workers.^® Although unable to defeat the unions from 1-3 million to 5-1 million, cf. Richard Grvmberger, Germany 1918-1945, London, 1964,
p. 81.
at the time, the employers’ associations succeeded in blunting the govern­
t Between the 1928 and July 1932 elections the Nazi vote increased from 800,000 to
ment’s power to make collective agreements mandatory on all firms 13.750,000, i.e. from 2'i6 per cent to 37’3 per cent of the national poll. cf. Karl D. Bracher,
within an industry. Industry was opposed to state participation in the Die Auflosung der Weimarer Republik, Stuttgart, 1954, pp. 86-106.
A SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE THIRD REICH
WEIMAR
period of rising Fascism, it initially supported the Republic, but deserted it
continued, and the German consumer was obliged to pay both higher
by 1931 to advocate the transfer of power from Parliament to a quasi-
food prices and heavier taxes for the benefit of‘13,000 big landowners’.^^
dictatorial presidentd^ Up to the slump the industrialists themselves had
The tariff and subsidy system militated against the rationalization of the
distributed money freely among all respectable anti-Marxist forces, but
dairy and vegetable industries in the other agricultural regions; by
from 1931 onwards they directed their largesse increasingly towards the stimulating fodder production the government could have given con­
mushrooming Nazi movement.^®
siderable assistance to the dairy farmers, but ‘instead it retained grain
Industry, which thus showed itself intent on burying the Republic, had tariffs and thus protected the most costly and the most capitalistic sector of
in fact not been hit as hard by the Depression as other branches of the agricultural production’
economy, such as agriculture. The fortunes of German agriculture after Despite state support of rural credit institutions, estate-owners obtained
1918 had been mixed. It had benefited from an indiscriminate post-war loans on more favourable terms than middle-sized or small farmers.
demand for foodstuffs, and later from the inflation which wiped out all Overall, interest rates in the twenties were double those before the war,^'^
agrarian debts - but unusually bad harvests had followed and by the end of and in the process of increasing output, German agriculture trebled its
1925 farmers were selling their crops at any price to raise cash. Prices fell pre-war labour costs. Notwithstanding a fair amount of government-
below world-market levels and long-term credit became unobtainable. subsidized land improvement, agriculture as a whole did not carry out a
The economic revival that followed the restoration of the currency rationahzation programme that would have both increased output and
interposed a price-lag between manufactured and agricultural goods, and reduced expenditure, largely because the cost of machinery and chemicals
in the late twenties the gap widened between high industrial prices was fixed by industry.^^
dictated by cartels and dropping agricultural prices, (a phenomenon known At the height of the Depression, food prices in Germany were about
as the ‘price-scissors’). An estimated 60 per cent of German farmers were twice as high as those obtaining abroad^^ - while, paradoxically, German
already living on proletarian incomes^’ when the Depression exacerbated farmers were pricing themselves out of the market through productivity
an already critical situation; unlike the cartel-protected industrialists, the increases that yielded ever-diminishing returns. By this time, the specific
farmers responded to the decline in public purchasing power by increas­ East Elbian crisis had grown so acute that the Briining administration
ing their output, which lowered prices even further and started a continuous initiated the ‘Eastern Aid’ {Osthilfe) programme,* a vast publicly financed
downward spiral. As early as 1926 the forced sale of farmers’ holdings had blood transfusion to the moribund Junker economy.
exceeded the pre-war average,^® and between 1927 and 1932 nearly 25,000 In his attempts at tackling the broader aspects of the Depression, Briin-
farms came under the hammer.^^ ing embarked on a course of severe deflation. Civil service salaries, which
Within the country’s agriculture as a whole, the Junker-owned lands had been appreciably increased as recently as 1927, were reduced by up to
east of the Elbe had long loomed disproportionately large, and this state 15 per cent during the winter of 1930-1.^^ In 1931, too, the government
of affairs continued during the Republic. The economic viability of the decreed a 10 per cent reduction in rents, as well as prices,^® and wages,
estates east of the Elbe had been a problem even before the war, and the which had continued to rise beyond the onset of the slump in 1929, were
Polish Corridor created by the Treaty of Versailles had cut a swathe depressed to their 1927 level by emergency decree.^®
through the Junkers’ compact grainlands and severed East Prussia from The authorities also tried - at this late date - to tackle the problem of
the Reich. This aggravated an already difficult situation (which was further cartelization, but to no avail. J The opportunity for effective action in this
compounded by the post-war slump in the world price of rye). sphere, i.e. for forcing German prices down to world-market level, had
The Republic adopted a policy of protecting agriculture - primarily the
* The Eastern Aid Act of 31 March 1931, ostensibly brought in by Briining to relieve the
estates east of the Elbe, which were threatened economically as well as
suffering of the population of the eastern provinces, actiaally became a device to preserve the
strategically - out of the tax contributions from the remaining three- socio-economic status of the Junkers. Franz Neumann, Behemoth, New York, 1942, p. 392.
quarters of the German population. The high Imperial tariffs designed to fThe presidential emergency decree empowering the Cabinet to nullify the existing
cartel agreements led only to the dissolution of the lignite cartel. Franz Neumann, op. cit.,
safeguard German grain producers against cheap foreign competition were
p. 261.