Sunday, October 11, 2009
Who needs the Gov't?
I thought the first chapter that Fritzsche wrote laid out a very interesting subject. What I got most from the chapter was that the author was trying to mostly show that the people began to rely less on the government and began to rely on each other. Fritzsche does a good job in demonstrating this crucial point. He really pushes the importance of the Burgfrieden to first show that Germans began to see each other as citzizens instead of partisans. This is key because the division of class has been so relevant for such a long period in Germany. It had long determined the way in which people lived and got along in Germany. The author does a good job of of showing how the state is absent from the rise of national unity, which seems to be a key theme of his thesis showing how Germans became Nazis. It had to be a nationalism from the bottom, rather than from the top down. People stopped looking to the government to help them out and look to each other. This cohesiveness became further strengthened during the Turnip Winter. The famine was terrible during the war and the government was doing nothing to help out the people. The people were starving and in the past were able to look to the government for help. However, at this time they were only concerned with the outcome of the war. The people began to openly criticize the governmetn, which was a huge change from the past. The hardships people endured further created a sense of national unity because it was not just the lower classes who were suffering and speaking out. People began to realize they could accomplish things themselves by creating charities and etc. The government missed out on a huge opportunity to channel the rise of nationalism and would eventually lead to a people who no longer relied on the government to get things accomplished.
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To play the devil's advocate, what would you have done if you were an official in the german gov't during this time? If people around our country today began coming together and raising money for health-care related problems, such that the gov't no longer needed to provide welfare for widows and lower class individuals, wouldn't u say that would be a good thing? The german society as a whole was changing, and the gov't really had only 2 options: repress this new way of doing things or allow it to happen. We can debate whether they should have been more involved but they had to deal with the war and other pressing issues, in addition to the problems on the homefront...
ReplyDeletei don't agree with the above comment by Milton that there were only two options - to repress or allow happen. Some involvement, any involvment is not out of the question. Recognition of a change in society does not mean that the state could do nothing to help foster or jump on the band wagon of such a change. Sure, the state was put in some awkward lose-lose situations - but by catering to the desires of the people, creating a sense of unity with the people themselves, we're all in this together, we can do it, mentality, surely the bitterness toward the government would not have increased as prominently as Fritzsche points out. Even if the state could not do much to provide support, food, shelter, etc. to their people, at least their recognition and cooperation with local groups that could do these things, rather than igoring the problem on the whole, would have created a more amicable relationship between the state and the people. I think the people were not desiring to blame the state, they understood that things had gone wrong, they were in a tough situation. But the more that the state ignored and left control to the people, however, the more the people themselves realized that they could create change themselves.
ReplyDeleteYour post gets to the heart of Fritzsche's thesis about how Germans turned into Nazis and how Hitler could tap into this rising popular nationalism that originated in 1914. The failure of the state to care for the citizens or to have an organized, coherent plan led the people to realize that they could achieve much on their own and gave them courage to strike out in new directions to solve their political problems.
ReplyDeleteYou make a very good point about the coming together of the Germany people as a whole rather than in fragmented interest groups. Amazing what group starvation and hardship will do huh? Anyway, I have to agree with the above post. If the government had at least shown a little initiative and at least been seen supporting the people's groups, the people would have gone on with the idea that they needed the government. As it was, they saw that the government had nothing to do with the change that was happening. This brought on an epiphany to the people. Its not the government who made my life better. It was me and my neighbors who came together to solve problems. When people discover that they don't need the government, the government loses all power.
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