The cities are administeredby mayors and councilmen drawn from his movement. The govern-ments of the states and the state parliaments are in the hands ofparty members

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.

The startling events of the spring of 1933, when more andmore Germans realized that they were not supposed to shop inJewish stores and when German companies felt compelled to fireJewish employees and remove Jewish businessmen from corporateboards, moved Germany quite some distance toward the ultimategoal of “Aryanizing” the German economy.

Public humiliations such as these depended on bystanders willing totake part in the spectacle. They accelerated the division of neigh-borhoods into “us” and “them.

As thousands of new converts joined the para-military units of the SA, whose numbers shot up ninefold from500,000 in January 1933 to 4.5 million one year later, the scale ofantisemitic actions expanded dramatically. Becoming a Nazi meanttrying to become an antisemite as well.

The idea of normality had become racialized, so that entitlement tolife and prosperity was limited to healthy Aryans, while newly iden-tified ethnic aliens such as Jews and Gypsies, who before 1933had been ordinary German citizens, and newly identified biologicalaliens such as genetically unfit individuals and so-called “asocials”were pushed outside the people’s community and threatened withisolation, incarceration, and death.

one of the key purposes of popu-lar entertainment in the Third Reich: the creation of a commonlyshared culture to define Germans to one another and mark themoff from others.

s aresult, Victor Klemperer could repeatedly “run into” one of Hitler’sReichstag speeches. “I could not get away from it for an hour. Firstfrom an open shop, then in the bank, then from a shop again.”66Radio as well as film turned Nazism into spectacle.

Tacked onto the doorways of apartments, posters, labels, and badgesattested to the fact that nearly all residents belonged to the People’sWelfare or contributed to Winter Relief.

Millions of people acquired new vocabularies, joined Nazi organi-zations, and struggled to become better National Socialists. Whatthe diaries and letters report on is not simply the large numberof conversions among friends and relatives but the individual en-deavor to become a Nazi.

Young people don’t walk anymore; they march.” “Ev-erywhere friends are professing themselves for Hitler.” To livein Nazi Germany, Ebermayer wrote, was to “become ever morelonely.”

“Hei hatte sagt, wer non ganz un gar nichwolle, vor dän in Deutschland keine Raum”—“he said there is noroom in Germany for people who simply refuse to take part.”

Hermann Aue “(very Left),” thoughtthe Nazis would be gone within a year, so he was inclined to stickwith the Social Democrats. But several Communists who had re-portedly joined a local SA group suspected that the Nazis would bearound for some time.

As early as July 1933,the Ministry of the Interior drew up legislation that authorized thesterilization of allegedly genetically unfit citizens.

The rou-tine intervention of the police in the corners of daily life of Germancitizens explains why the Gestapo assumed the “almost mythicalstatus as an all-seeing, all-knowing” creature that had placed itsagents throughout the land to overhear conversations in order toenforce political conformity

Did shesympathize a little bit with people who were not considered wor-thy? Perhaps so, because Gisela recalled the incident in postwar in-terviews; but other Germans continued to improve themselves bygrooming themselves as Aryans, sitting up straighter, filling out thetable of ancestors, and fitting in at the camps, which gave legiti-macy to the selection process that had created Gisela’s anxiety inthe first place

With the massive expansion of the Hitler Youthto include girls as well as boys, more than 765,000 young peoplehad the opportunity to serve in leadership roles. Many advancedin the ranks and received formal training and ideological instruc-tion in national academies such as the Reich Leadership School inPotsdam.

The Ministry of Education authorized the National So-cialist Teachers’ League to organize retraining camps in order to“equip,” as Rust put it, teachers with lesson plans in “heredity andrace”; an estimated 215,000 of Germany’s 300,000 teachers at-tended two-week retreats at fifty-six regional sites and two nationalcenters that mixed athletics, military exercises, and instruction.

Arbeitsdienstmänner worked together as a unit, marched toget-her, and relaxed together, an unending group existence designed topull together the people’s community.

We have to go with the times, even if thereare many, many things that we do not agree with. To swim againstthe current just makes matters worse.”

More thana third of the 1938 graduating class of the Athenaeum Gymnasiumin the north German city of Stade hoped to pursue a career as an of-ficer in the Wehrmacht or a youth leader in the Hitler Youth

Enrollment for four years in theHitler Youth and then six months in the Reich Labor Service wasmade mandatory for boys in 1936 and for girls three years later

What was necessary, he insisted, was to“recognize yourself” (“Erkenne dich selbst”), which meant identi-fying with the idealized portraits of new Germans and following thetenets of hereditary biology to find a suitable partner for marriage,to marry only for love, and to provide the Volk with healthy chil-dren.

But it also made demands on ordinary Germans, who neededto visualize the Volk as a vital racial subject, to choose appropriatemarriage partners, and to accept “limits to empathy.”

A wide rangeof public health-care professionals from doctors to nurses to social-welfare officers were enlisted in the effort to locate undesirables.

The journalistSebastian Haffner noted that people in his circle in Berlin suddenlyfelt authorized to express an opinion on the “Jewish question,”speaking fluently about quotas on Jews, percentages of Jews, anddegrees of Jewish influence

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

Race defined the new realities of the ThirdReich for both beneficiaries and victims—it influenced how youconsulted a doctor, whom you talked to, and where you shopped.

As parents, educators, volunteers, and soldiers, millions of Ger-mans played new parts in cultivating Aryan identities and segregat-ing out unworthy lives. They did not always do so willingly, andthey certainly did not anticipate the final outcomes of total war andmass murder.

until the very end of the Reich in 1945, they handedout hundreds of thousands of copies of the eight-mark “people’sedition” along with pamphlets providing advice on how to main-tain good racial stock and prepare Ahnenpässe, “Germans, HeedYour Health and Your Children’s Health,” “A Handbook for Ger-man Families,” and “Advice for Mothers.”

Significantly, thestate did not issue racial passports; Germans had to prepare thempersonally. They thus attained for themselves their racial status asAryans.

By 1936 almost all Germans—all who were not Jewish—had begun to prepare for themselves an Ahnenpass, or racial pass-port, which laid the foundation for the racial archives establishedin all German households

the sheerforce of the imagery and the busy schedules of national acclamationmade dissent politically risky; but even more: dissent also appearedto be futile.

On these occasions, friends and neighbors knew they wouldfind one another in front of the radio and could later share im-pressions—in this sense, Gemeinschaftsempfang, collective recep-tion, had been achieved.

With banners, flags, marches, and “Heil Hitler!” the Nazis pro-duced a distinctive public choreography and accompanying soundtrack that seemed to affirm the unanimity of the people’s commu-nity.

Radio helped to create the collective voice of thenation.

Thus, for leading opponents of the Nazis, and for the Jews andother minorities that the regime tormented, there seemed to be littlealternative but to abandon Germany altogether. Since most exilesnever returned, Germany’s political and intellectual life continuedto be structured by the Nazis long after their defeat

Ger-mans wore special badges to show they had donated their marks;the badges functioned so as to make citizens accountable to them-selves. “On Sundays,” Hauser remarked, “when collecting for theWinter-Relief Fund is going on in the streets no one would darewalk abroad without a badge pinned conspicuously to his coat.”

Moreover, the impression thatGermans were assembling behind the Nazis reinforced itself. Moreand more people adjusted to the “new direction” when they sawthat others had done so.

One-potmeals on the first Sunday of every month provided opportunitiesfor party representatives to go from door to door in the evening asthey collected the pfennigs that had been “saved,” and to snoop.

Coordination was a process of disso-lution and affiliation.

National Socialists assaulted the “alternative culture” of work-ing-class socialists in order to coordinate it, but they also attemptedto overcome the very idea of “alternative,” which structured the so-cial divisions typical of Germany’s neighborhoods.

Working-classchoirs had a better chance of survival if they rewrote club statutesto exclude Social Democratic activists from leadership posts.

But thepressure to comply was unmistakable. Dürkefälden’s father-in-lawwas out every night one week in August 1933 because he had toattend meetings or risk losing his garden plot.

ample, “is now a Nazi because of his job, but only for show.”Peine’s barber was in the SA, but Karl thought for “professionalreasons” only.

what he saw was an increas-ingly Nazified community in which neighbors now took notice ofKarl’s behavior and club members adjusted their own. What Karlwas resisting as he stood alongside his wife was the pressure to con-form, if only for the sake of appearances.