Antiqua–Fraktur dispute

Setapart from the familiar social contexts of family, work, and school,the closed camp was designed to break down identifications withsocial milieus and to promote Entbürgerlichung (purging bourgeoiselements) and Verkameradshaftung (comradeship) as part of theprocess of Volkwerdung, “the making of the people,” as the pecu-liar idiom of National Socialism put it.

Nazi pedagogues extolled das Lager, “the camp,”as the privileged place where the “new generation was finding itsform.”

In place of the quarrels of party, the contests of inter-est, and the divisions of class, which they believed compromised theability of the nation to act, the Nazis proposed to build a unified ra-cial community guided by modern science. Such an endeavor wouldprovide Germany with the “unity of action” necessary to surviveand prosper in the dangerous conditions of the twentieth century

In other words, biology appeared to provideGermany with highly useful technologies of renovation. The Na-zis regarded racism as a scientifically grounded, self-consciouslymodern form of political organization.

He believed Germans feltthat “it’s just us now” when they lived without Jews. “Just us” alsoexpressed the closed circle in which Germans could see and experi-ence “ourselves” as “we are” and as “we have become.”

In what it touted as the triumph of “socialism ofthe deed” over “private capitalism” and “economic liberalism,” in1933 the Propaganda Ministry pressed a consortium of radio man-ufacturers to design and produce a Volksempfänger, or “people’sradio,” for the mass market.

Germans even went to warwith preprinted diaries that left space for snapshots. All this was anacknowledgment of the desire to be part of and to share the Ger-man history that was being made.

“People looked to Nazism as a great and radical sur-gery or cleansing” and therefore saw “the movement as a sourceof rejuvenation” in public life.

The Day of Potsdam and May Day indi-cated that there was considerable desire among Germans to partici-pate in rituals of national renewal

these auxiliary organiza-tions gave Germans semiofficial responsibilities as they collecteddonations, distributed coal, or trained as air-raid wardens.

Themedicalization of politics pulled thousands of new professionalsinto state service as nurses, teachers, health-care administrators.Newly opened public-health offices dotted the cities and country-side, building on the social-welfare accomplishments of the repub-lic.

a“Machbarkeitswahn,” modernity’s heady sense of the possible thatepitomized National Socialism as it charged into the future.

Socialists around the worldhad celebrated May Day as a festival of labor since the 1880s; butin Germany they had failed to get the official recognition the Nazisnow offered. So strong were the hopes for national unity that theGerman Free Trade Unions welcomed the Nazi gesture and encour-aged members to participate in the celebrations.

National Socialism offered acomprehensive vision of renewal, which many Germans found ap-pealing, but they combined it with the alarming specter of nationaldisintegration.

He repeatedly described Ger-many as a nation that had come home to itself. While Erich hatedthe Nazis, he loved the Third Reich.

the desire to be part ofnational unity was so strong that it pulled even an anti-Nazi such asErich into the new political community