Introduction
Crypto-Public Domains within the Third Reich
[…] heroism […] is to venture wholly to be oneself, as an individual man, this definite individual man, alone before the face of God, alone in this tremendous exertion and this tremendous responsibility […]. — SØren Kierkegaard The Sickness unto Death (1848)
This study concentrates on an analysis of public spheres in National Social- ist Germany in order to identify, locate, and investigate circumstances of possible resistance to Adolf Hitler’s regime. The plural use of the word “sphere” is programmatic, since in every society there exist several realms that can function as places of public discourse. We focus on the space of the crypto-public, defined as a politicized private sphere, as a potential realm for anti-state activism. Based on the activities of four organizations operating in Germany between 1933 and 1944—the Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin ( Jewish Cultural Alliance Berlin), the Kreisauer Kreis (Kreisau Circle), the Scholl- Schmorell-Kreis (Scholl-Schmorell Circle),1 and the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Organisation (Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Organization)—we analyze how this social locus functioned to foster resistance to National Socialism. We examine the artifacts of these groups—leaflets, pamphlets, politico-
1 Traditionally this group has been referred to as Weisse Rose (White Rose); yet, as Sönke Zankel has pertinently argued, that name is misleading, as the Weisse Rose comprised merely the beginning phase of the activities undertaken by the student group sur- rounding Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell (Sönke Zankel, Mit Flugblätter gegen Hitler. Der Widerstandskreis um Hans Scholl und Alexander Schmorell (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2008) 13). Henceforth this study employs the name coined by Zankel: Scholl-Schmorell-Kreis. 2 Introduction economical treatises, and, in the case of the Kulturbund, three theater per- formances that marked the different stages in the alliance’s evolution—in order to establish models of crypto-public spaces and evaluate their pos- sibilities and limitations as sites of resistance. Our use of the verb resist favors the meaning to withstand: we see the merit of these organizations in their efforts at “preserving, on an unofficial basis, a form of society or polity that [was] threatened by an imposed regime.”2 We identified three such spaces: a ghetto public sphere Ghettoöffent( lichkeit) for the Jüdischer Kulturbund, a passive counter-public sphere (Gegenöffentlichkeit) in the case of the Kreisauer Kreis, and an active Gegenöffentlichkeit in the case of the Scholl-Schmorell-Kreis and the Schulze- Boysen/Harnack Organisation. At first glance, there seem to be only a few ele- ments linking the following four organizations: an exclusively Jewish cultural forum existing with the permission of Joseph Goebbels’ Reich Ministry for People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda; a loose network of liberal intel- lectuals planning for the time after Hitler’s fall; a group of students without a distinct political orientation; and a leftist, pro-Soviet group infiltrating the ranks of various ministries. The first offered a mode of survival for Jews who did not or could not leave Germany, the second never moved beyond the planning for “Day X and Zero Hour,”3 the third expressed open protest, and the fourth actively opposed the regime. Yet what we believe they all had in common was the goal of resisting National Socialism. As Hannah Arendt has shown, in order for a state to exercise abso- lute control over its members and become totalitarian, it is not the public sphere that the state needs to dominate and render ineffective, but rather the private sphere. No state is safe from criticism and opposition as long as it allows the existence of an unrestricted private sphere. In this space, where each person can function as a homo faber even if s/he is politically or socially isolated from her/his fellow citizens, lie the beginnings of anti-
2 Peter Pulzer, “The Beginning of the End,” Die Juden im Nationalsozialistischen Deutschland/The Jews in Nazi Germany 1933–1943 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1986) 17–27, here 25. 3 Freya von Moltke, Erinnerungen an Kreisau (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997) 66. Crypto-Public Domains within the Third Reich 3 state activism.4 We claim, along with Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, that the notions of public and private should not be considered “as some ubiqui- tous and constant structural opposition, but as a field of disagreement and conflict in which the very fact of constant use, discussion, and contention produces and reproduces a sense of continuity.”5 Public and private are denominators that always shift their meaning, depending for part of their reference code on the context in which they are used. Hence, the meaning of the dichotomy becomes relative, as the distinction is fractal: any action or form of behavior can be divided into private and public elements, which in themselves can be broken down again along the same lines. The result is that within any public sphere, one can establish a private realm, and any private realm harbors a potential public sphere.6 This latter public domain, which we call crypto-public, brings together people of similar convictions and may mobilize them into a front that stands in disagreement with the state, yet ultimately remains isolated and confined, both in its actions and importance, to the small group of initiators. This space offers the possibil- ity to resist, i.e. withstand, the state, but offers no guarantee that acts of opposition will emerge from it. In order for actions occurring within it to become opposition, they must undermine the entire power structure of the opposed system and strive for the abolition of the regime. From the onset of National Socialist rule in Germany, an official, dictatorial public sphere dominated by the Reich Ministry for People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Gestapo coexisted with crypto- public spaces. We take the concept dictatorial public sphere to designate a political system imposing upon its followers a kind of messianic discourse that declares the system to be the will of a people’s community (Volksgemein- schaft), and on behalf of this community demands complete control over all social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of society. At the same time, this political system displays a highly bureaucratized administrative
4 Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985) 474. 5 Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) 41. 6 Ibid. 4 Introduction structure and censorship mechanism that subordinate everything to the power or will of a leader. Through their control of both the state and the ruling Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), the National Socialists succeeded in depriving the German public sphere of uncensored social and political interactions as they made themselves, the figure of the Führer, and their followers the only officially sanctioned inhabitants of this realm. Eventu- ally, they annulled the pluralistic public sphere of the Weimar Republic, and they suffocated this space with self-celebrations and reenactments of what the Party or Führer considered, or rather, decided, was the truth. They turned a space of expression into one of oppression and “institu- tionalized lies”7 with no room for negotiation or nuance of meanings, only ideological domination. They revoked what Jürgen Habermas later called the public sphere of civil society, an arena of deliberative exchange in which rational-critical arguments, rather than mere inherited ideas or personal status, could determine agreements and actions.8 Acting within the space of National Socialist Germany became a ritual performed in a formalized language, deprived of contact with reality, an induction into a predetermined semiotic system that replaced reality with an ersatz-reality, in which only state-approved models of expression were considered accept- able. Yet a dictatorial power mechanism, while excluding and oppressing, also generates counter-actions that it cannot neutralize, as “power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared … power is exercised from innumerable points,”9 and thus enables individuals to be simultaneously subjects and objects of socio-political systems. These counter-actions set off multiple and sometimes competing counter-publics, each marked by specific terms of exclusion (in this case, race, class, and political affiliation),
7 Jacques Rupnik, “Totalitarianism Revisited,” Civil Society and the State, ed. John Keane (London, New York: Verso, 1988) 263–289, here 269. 8 Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 1962) 42–46. 9 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980) 94. Crypto-Public Domains within the Third Reich 5 yet at the same time understanding itself as a nucleus for an alternative organization of society. As a result of their desire to distance themselves from the new authori- ties, several groups inside Germany came together in order to engage in actions which criticized the National Socialist regime. Since the existence of these groups proved constitutive for a public sphere that was radically different from the official one, one can talk about them as instances of exclusion in a Foucauldian sense,10 and of Gegenöffentlichkeit.11 Because these groups used the private realm of their members as a meeting ground, thus opening up and politicizing a sphere traditionally thought of as apo- litical, they established crypto-public spaces. For the four groups under scrutiny in this study such spaces were the Ghettoöffentlichkeit12 of the Kulturbund, the passive Gegenöffentlichkeit of the Kreisauer Kreis, and the active Gegenöffentlichkeit of the Scholl-Schmorell-Kreis and the Schulze- Boysen/Harnack Organisation. Chapter 1 focuses on the activities of the Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin.13 In Hitler’s Germany Jews saw themselves pushed outside the general public sphere and into a narrow universe defined for them by the new German
10 Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) 78–108, here 96–100. 11 The notion of Gegenöffentlichkeit owes its emergence within academic discourse to Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, who defined it as the negation of existing con- texts (Zusammenhänge) on the part of a critical and oppositional public excluded from the dominant public sphere (Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung: Zur Organisationsanalyse von bürgerlicher und proletarischer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972)). 12 Saskia Schreuder, from whom we borrowed this term, does not define it in her work, but merely employs it as a self-evident concept (Saskia Schreuder, Würde im Widerspruch. Jüdische Erzählliteratur im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1933–1938 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2002) 55 footnote 1). The definition used in this study belongs to us [CLP]. 13 This study focuses on theKulturbund in Berlin. Its existence and importance alone are analyzed as a crypto-public space of inner-Jewish dialogue. While we are aware of the differences between this body and its counterparts in other German cities and especially the rural areas, we will not extend our analysis to include these aspects. 6 Introduction authorities. This space was at the same time public and private. It was public because anyone defined by the establishment as Jewish could participate within its limits in various activities; it was private because non-Jewish par- ticipation was not allowed and Jews could not trespass its borders. Inside this ghetto-like configuration, the Jewish community in Germany had to come to terms with its new social position and redefine its own identity. It proceeded to do so in the same manner in which its members had debated any social, economical, or political change over the course of centuries: it engaged in public discussions, but inside the space that had been assigned to them. The diverse Jewish press that existed until 1938 constitutes proof of this inner Jewish dialogue and favors the consideration of this sphere as a crypto-public space in which a discussion room was opened for Jews. Inside this Ghettoöffentlichkeit, the Kulturbund occupied a special position called forth by the unusual circumstances, which led to this organization’s creation in the social arena of National Socialist Germany. Chapter 2 addresses the activities of the Kreisauer Kreis, which exem- plify the instance of a crypto-public sphere earlier referred to as passive Gegenöffentlichkeit. The members of this group were unaffected by the racial laws passed in Germany in 1933. Many of them were employed in various ministries and from there conducted their struggle against the regime. They did not seek contacts with the wide mass of the German populace because they did not trust its political loyalty; after all, the same people had voted the NSDAP into power. Yet, more important than this distance from the masses was the fact that the Kreis’ members did not want to participate themselves in the process of overthrowing the regime. Their attitude con- firms Andrei Pleşu’s claims about the failure of intellectuals under dictatorial regimes14 and the failure of German inwardness (Innerlichkeit) to prevent National Socialism and its barbarism. An analysis of the Kreis’ writings and of Albrecht Haushofer’s sonnet Gefährten dedicated to members of the Kreis verifies our point of view. Andrei Pleşu identified four attitudes that characterize intellectuals in their relations to authoritarian power systems. In a first phase, before
14 Andrei Pleşu, “Sünden und Unschuld der Intellektuellen,” Freiburger Universitätsblätter 154(2001), 167–174, here 169–172. Crypto-Public Domains within the Third Reich 7 the regime settles in, intellectuals rely on the liberating intervention of the international world. This is followed by a second phase, when the regime is still new, and when intellectuals cling to the illusion that they can cohabitate and influence the regime from within by engaging in a dia- logue with it. After the regime openly displays its detrimental practices, a third phase ensues, in which the disposition of intellectuals is marked by resignation that nothing can be done against the regime from within. Finally, in a fourth stage, after the regime ends without their intervention, intellectuals experience remorse for their previous resignation and spare no effort to justify their actions in the post-dictatorial political context. While many of the Kreisauer Kreis’ members rejected the National Socialist ideology from the beginning, they maintained a reserved attitude vis-à-vis their own role in opposing the regime. The focal point of their activism was not to remove Hitler’s government, although they had identified it as harmful to the German state, but to plan Germany’s future after its defeat by the Allies. Their meetings and discussions undoubtedly constitute a Gegenöffentlichkeit, yet one that generated no concrete actions, as it did not reach beyond its own initiated members to address a larger public. Regardless of the reasons underlying such an attitude, be they moral con- siderations or lack of military support, this withdrawal makes the Kreis a group resisting National Socialism, but not an opposition movement. We draw on Detlev Peukert for our understanding of the latter term. In his work, Peukert addresses the issue of what actually constitutes German opposition by establishing degrees of oppositional behavior based on two coordinates: the scope of criticism of the system (from partial to general), and the sphere within which dissident behavior took place (from private to public/political). Hence, only behavior and actions “which rejected the National Socialist regime as a whole and [which] were attempts, vary- ing within the opportunities available to the individuals concerned, to help bring about the regime’s overthrow,”15 constitute opposition. Other instances in which people negate the supremacy of the state over their lives are acts of nonconformity (e.g. listening to foreign radio stations, mainly
15 Detlev Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde: Anpassung, Ausmerze und Aufbegehren unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Köln: Bund-Verlag, 1982) 97–98. 8 Introduction the BBC), refusal (e.g. not sending one’s children to the Hitler Youth or the League of German Girls despite the request of the authorities), or protest (e.g. public manifestations against the regime, as in the case of churches speaking against euthanasia), but do not reach a degree that would trans- form them into a confrontation with the system. Opposition means con- scious physical action against the regime, in the form of armed attacks, acts of anti-governmental propaganda, sabotage missions, or conspiracy. This action goes against the entire power structure of the opposed regime and its ideology, and its final goal is the abolition of the regime. Both the Scholl-Schmorell-Kreis (Chapter 3) and the Schulze-Boysen/ Harnack Organisation (Chapter 4) chose to articulate their dissidence vis- à-vis the establishment in direct confrontations with the system by writing and distributing leaflets. Their members, whose Aryan heritage protected and allowed them to move freely within German society, chose not only to resist and criticize the regime tacitly, but also to oppose it openly. Their actions transformed the realms in which their members interacted, not only in crypto-public spaces in which uncensored, anti-state discussions occurred, but in actively conspiratorial spaces undermining the official dictatorial public sphere. Their members went so far as to envision the fall of the National Socialist regime and to work toward this goal. While very different in their composition and ideals, both groups realized that without the support of the masses their actions would be ineffective in overthrowing the regime. Therefore, both of them constitute not only examples of how a crypto-public sphere can foster resistance, but also instances of anti-National Socialist opposition. Furthermore, in-depth analyses of these groups’ leaflets and of Harro Schulze-Boysen’s prison poem Gestapo/Zelle 2 demonstrate the role played by German high culture in the development of their self-understanding as Germans and as oppo- nents of the Third Reich. Before proceeding to the elaborate investigation of crypto-public spaces during the years of the Third Reich, it is important to consider one more aspect of Germany’s social reality at the time: the gap between the German populace and the groups rising against the regime. When Hitler and his party came to power, the vast majority of the German people greeted Crypto-Public Domains within the Third Reich 9 them with enthusiasm.16 They cheered the rise of a nationalist government that would redeem Germany. As Theodore S. Hamerow wrote, for many Germans democracy had been a condemnable form of government that had advanced private interests and gains at the expense of public welfare. The majority of Germans saw parliamentarism as the rule of demagogues, who abused the trust their voters had placed in them and maneuvered the electorate to their own advantage. Democracy had unleashed a war between classes, interests, and ideologies, which only a return to tradi- tional conservative values and a renewed faith in hierarchical leadership could contain.17 Many people felt that a new, less hollow age would begin in Germany with Hitler. Hence, before the beginning of the war in 1939, Hitler’s popularity had reached the proportions of a cult, a phenomenon that Ian Kershaw has called the “Führer myth.”18 Anxieties of any kind were calmed by an “emotional attachment to Hitler [that] was rooted in the notion that he represented the ideal of national community and national greatness, that he was leading Germany to greater prosperity, and that, whatever the immediate sacrifices, a bonanza for all was only just over the horizon.”19 The German population’s mindset, according to which Hitler was the personification of everything good and noble, while the mistakes and crimes of the regime were attributed to party officials, remained static
16 See Sebastian Haffner,Anmerkungen zu Hitler (München: Kindler, 1978); Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus, hrsg. Detlev Peukert und Jürgen Reulecke (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1981); Timothy W. Mason, “Arbeiter ohne Gewerkschaften”Journal für Geschichte, November 1983, 28‑36; Ian Kershaw, “‘Widerstand ohne Volk?’ Dissens und Widerstand im Dritten Reich.” Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, hrsg. Jürgen Schmädeke und Peter Steinbach (München, Zürich: Piper Verlag, 1985) 779–798; Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”. Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Theodore S. Hamerow,On the Road to the Wolf’s Lair. German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1997); Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). 17 Hamerow 23–24. 18 Kershaw, Hitler Myth 151. 19 Ibid 152. 10 Introduction until the defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943. The longer the military cam- paign lasted, the more people started to look behind the regime’s façade and the myth began to fade. Stalingrad marked the beginning of the end of the “Führer myth,” not because of the defeat on the Eastern front, but because Hitler had proven incapable of controlling the situation and deliv- ering on his promise of peace. In other words, he had lost his godly aura.20 Unfortunately, the mood taking hold of the disheartened and war-weary general public was “apathetic rather than rebellious,”21 so that a diminish- ing, yet still powerful, minority of devotees encountered no difficulties in keeping the myth alive and, depending on the situation, revitalizing it from time to time.22 The result was a German public that was at first unwilling to chal- lenge National Socialism regardless of its racist and militaristic policies, and later was unable to organize itself in any all-inclusive manner. While the peasants did not like the National Socialist agricultural policy, they feared Communism so much that they preferred to support a regime that left them at least part of their land, rather than rulers who would have collectivized it. Their reactions never turned into rebellion, as they were merely grumbling and carping at the regime’s actions.23 The same attitude was common to the middle class, whose members complained about the system but did not take action against it, as the middle class also lacked the political consciousness that could have triggered a more active behavior. Among the working class, dissent might have been more pronounced,24 but concrete activism was also rare. While the regime proved unable to co-opt the working class completely, projects such as Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy), Vol kswag e n , the radio, and the job-creation scheme (Arbeitsbeschaffungsmassnahmen) still gave it a comfortable level of popu- larity among the workers,25 so much so that in 1943 Helmuth James von
20 Ibid 189. 21 Ibid 197. 22 Ibid 199. 23 Kershaw, “‘Widerstand ohne Volk?’” 786–787. 24 See Mason, “Arbeiter ohne Gewerkschaften.” 25 Kershaw, “‘Widerstand ohne Volk?’” 788. Crypto-Public Domains within the Third Reich 11
Moltke described them as unprincipled opportunists: “those workers who would go communist are already nazis. And those who are nazi are ready to go communist any day.”26 The German public’s reactions to the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 exemplify the dilemma of the population. No support existed for the actions of the conspirators, who came across as elitist aristocrats trying to destabilize Germany at a moment when the war was not progressing favorably. According to the reports of the Sicherheitsdienst der Schutzstaffel (Security Service of the SS),27 the population was outraged at the attempt and relieved at its failure.28 Although this source is not entirely trustworthy, it still underlines the fact that opposition to the regime was not a popular attitude among Germans. Whether the public at large was as heart-broken over the attempt to assassinate the Führer as the reports present them, or simply indifferent, as can also be inferred from one report,29 is of secondary importance. What is relevant is that the public did not feel motivated to build upon the conspirators’ actions in any way, but allowed events to unfold at their own pace. Although many Germans were aware that the war was lost and Germany was on the verge of complete collapse, they chose to wait submissively for the end to come. As the Government President of Upper Bavaria is reported to have said, a notion of “an end with horror, rather than a horror without end” dominated the minds of the not-explicitly pro-
26 Letter from von Moltke to Lionel Curtis, March 25, 1943, printed in Henrik Lindgren, “Adam von Trotts Reisen nach Schweden 1942–1944. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Auslandsverbindungen des deutschen Widerstandes,” Vierteljahresheft für Zeitgeschichte 18 (1970): 283–289, here 288. 27 Henceforward abbreviated as SD of SS. 28 See Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (Hg.), “Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung” Die Opposition gegen Hitler und der Staatsstreich vom 20. Juli 1944 in der SD-Berichterstattung. Geheime Dokumente aus dem ehemaligen Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag, 1984): Reports from Ernst Kaltenbrunner to Martin Bormann, July 21, July 22, and July 24, 1944, as well as the report from the local Obersturmbahnführer from Braunschweig to Otto Telschow, Gauleiter for East-Hannover July 21, 1944. 29 Kaltenbrunner’s report to Bormann from July 21, 1944: “It is surprising to see a cer- tain despondence overshadow the joy about the Führer’s escape. […] A thoughtful mood dominates the spirits” in Jacobsen 1. 12 Introduction
National Socialist population.30 It was the apathetic waiting-to-be-defeated of an already emotionally and psychologically defeated population. Under these circumstances—hysterical adoration by 1933 and lethar- gic indifference by 1945—it comes as no surprise that the public remained aloof from efforts to go against the regime, and that once it became aware of these efforts they found no resonance. The predicament of groups that rebelled was rooted in the fact that speaking against National Socialism meant speaking in favor of Germany’s defeat, which alienated the groups even more from their fellow citizens, enhanced their isolation from the general public, and proved to be their fatal weakness. While those who favored disobedience were able to create subversive crypto-public spaces to resist the regime, the lack of support on the part of the masses made it impossible for them to move beyond this.
30 Government President of Upper Bavaria quoted in Kershaw, Hitler Myth 217.