In World War IIas in World War I, soldiers classified friends and foes in terms of rel-ative cleanliness, but in this conflict they were much more apt tomake sweeping judgments about the population and to rank peopleaccording to rigid biological hierarchies. Even the ordinary infan-tryman adopted a racialized point of view, so that “the Russians”the Germans had fought in 1914–1918 were transformed into anundifferentiated peril, “the Russian,” regarded as “dull,” “dumb,”“stupid,” or “depraved” and “barely humanlike.”

certainly indicated outrage at the brutality of theNazis but also astonishing unawareness of the generally depress-ing conditions in which Jews lived in the Third Reich. Gossiperswere basically passive, telling about but not intervening in dramaticevents.

Criticism of the disruption of publicorder was widespread, but should not be taken completely at facevalue. It undoubtedly veiled deeper moral objections that were oth-erwise difficult to articulate in Nazi Germany

But the rapid and uni-form responses by local Nazis indicated a basic readiness and desireto carry out anti-Jewish actions

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.

part of a larger struggle to protect what so many Ger-mans regarded as the wounded, bleeding body of the nation.

the Nazis considered theJewish threat to be “lethal” and active, a perspective that gavetheir assault on the Jews a sense of urgency and necessity that madeGerman citizens more willing to go along

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

However, crime could be reduced by removing the dan-gerous body, either by isolating “asocials” in work camps or bysterilizing genetically “unworthy” individuals. In the Nazi legal sys-tem, genetics replaced milieu as the point of origin of crime

The consciousness of generation, and the assumption thatold needed to be replaced with new, undoubtedly opened youngminds to the tenets of racial hygiene, which were repeatedly parsedin workshops and lectures.

It was the modern, scientificworld of “ethnocrats” and biomedical professionals, not the anti-communist Freikorps veterans of the SA, who devised Ahnenpässeand certificates of genetic health and evaluated the genetic worth ofindividuals.

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.”

thousands of“ethnocrats” and other professionals mobilized to build the newbiomedical structures of the Third Reich. They oriented their ca-reers and ambitions toward the wide spaces that Nazi Germany’sracial vision had opened up.

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.

all the humor about Jewishness in Germany, the fear of stum-bling upon Jewish grandmothers and the relief when only a “Jewishgreat-grandmother,” “who cannot hurt you anymore,” turned up,did not dispel the suspicion that Jews were different.

Whereas an Aryanidentity opened the way for a future in the Third Reich, a Jewishone closed it down.

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.

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 dreamof the Volkswagen seemed to promise “a new, happier age” thatwould make “the German people rich and Germany beautiful,” asHitler put it. Indeed, the Volkswagen functioned as a symbol for thenewly won capacity to dream about the future: in this fundamentalsense, the Nazis appeared as “men of the future.”

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.

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.

The SA, Hitler Youth, and Reich LaborFront worked the same way, striving to identify a new generationof leaders drawn from all social classes;

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.

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.

The ubiquitous fundraising made it possible for poorer peo-ple like the Dürkefäldens to participate more fully in public life:dinner or snacks were served at party events and entry fees lifted atsport competitions.

This is thesignificance of the Day of Potsdam: the images of unity were madeavailable for national consumption. The growth in radio ownershipespecially in 1933 and 1934 indicates how great the desire was topartake in Nazi spectacle, although the fact that radios remainedmuch less common in rural areas

the Nazis recognized only Volkskameraden, people’s com-rades, and Volksfeinde, enemies of the people, whom they sub-jected to deliberate and refined cruelties in a “willful transgressionof norms.

. It was the experience of conversion, which left peoplelike Dürkefälden and Ebermayer isolated, that was new and pro-vided the Third Reich with legitimacy and energy.