Insights into the lives of ordinary Germans in the Third Reich

On Richard Evans's great and very readable three volume history: the Coming of the Third Reich, the Third Reich in Power, and the Third Reich at War, Penguin, 2003 to 2008.

I'm now at the start of the Third Reich at War.

Sprinkled throughout these three books are depictions of the lives of ordinary Germans, often as excerpts from their journals and diaries. They're wonderfully revealing, and offer some relief from the detailed, ominous, and terrible public events. I particularly appreciate when Evans follows the same person over a span of years.

Here is an excerpt from the first volume, The Coming of the Third Reich, from Victor Klemperer's journal. Klemperer is a professor of French literature, and a veteran of the first World War. He was Jewish, but his wife was not (a situation that placed him in a somewhat less abused category with Nazi bureaucrats). He writes here about the financial chaos of Germany in 1920:

Germany is collapsing in an eerie, step-by-step manner...the dollar stands at over 800 million, it stands every day at 300 million more than the previous day. All that's not just what you read in the paper, but has an immediate impact on one's own life. How long will we still have something to eat? Where will we next have to tighten our belts?

We hear more from Klemperer and others throughout. In the second volume, The Third Reich in Power, the Klemperers feel the strain of Nazi rule and its steady invasion of their lives.Evans summarizes:

Living outside town, the Klemperers escape the violence of 9-10 November 1938 [Kristallnacht], but on 11 November two policemen subjected their house to a through search (allegedly for hidden weapons): Klemperer's wartime saber was discovered in the attic and he was taken into custody. Although he was treated courteously and released after a few hours without being charged, it was nevertheless a considerable shock.

Not all these excerpts are from the victims of the Nazis. We also read from the letters of Germans who supported and loved Hitler, or at least held ambiguous feelings about him and did not oppose him. Here are some lines from The Third Reich in Power, discussing a Hamburg schoolteacher, Louise Solmitz catching her first sight of Hitler.

"I shall never forget the moment when he drove past us in his brown uniform, performing the Hitler salute in his own personal way...the enthusiasm of the crowd blazed up to the heavens..." She went home, trying to digest the 'great moments I had just lived through".

And later in the same volume.

Yet even she found the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops carried out on 1 April 1933 a cause for concern, "a bitter April Fool's joke". "Our entire soul," she complained, "was oriented towards the rise of Germany, not towards this." Nevertheless, she reflected, at least the Eastern European Jews were no longer in evidence ("the underworld creatures from East Galicia really do seem to have disappeared for the moment").

The quotes and excerpts express turmoil and anxiety, a constant sense of insecurity.

I've enjoyed reading these books. One thing I might wish for is more of a journalistic perspective from the outside world. Because Evans's focus is the workings of Hitler and the Nazis as seen within Germany, we don't see a wider perspective very often. There are only occasional hints at what foreign newspapers and leaders are saying about the events in Germany. I would have liked more of that. After all, the entire world was consumed with the war started by Hitler. But it's a small criticism.

Hysteria, at the Nora Theater -- high comedy, darkness, and the Three Stooges

Hysteria, a play by Terry Johnson, performed by the Nora Theater Company, January 30, 2011. Directed by Daniel Gidron. An excellent, restrained performance by Richard Snee, as Sigmund Freud. And there's an intense, hot performance by Stacy Fisher, as Jessica.
 
This is a comic takeoff on what might have happened when Sigmund Freud met Salvador Dali, in 1938, at Freud's London home (he had just escaped Austria, following the Nazi takeover). There are many funny moments, as when Freud talks about Jung as "that lunatic", and tries to get the intrusive Jessica out of his study. There's good chemistry between the two, like an elderly grandfather sparring with his agile, brilliant granddaughter.

Jessica has darker motives for being there than we understand, at first. She wants a kind of revenge, she wants Freud to recant. She doesn't exactly blame him for the sad death of her mother (one of his patients years ago), but she wants him to confess he was wrong about his theories, that what Jessica's mother suffered from was real, not just a result of her hysterical imagination, that she was, in fact, raped by her father. This would be pretty hard to bear without the comedy, but the comedy veers uneasily into slapstick. The character of Salvador Dali was a bit too bufoonish for me, reminding me of Manuel in John Cleese's old Fawlty Towers series. In fact, there seemed to be a lot of John Cleese in this comedy, which isn't a bad thing.

Despite the embarrassing moments (we had to endure a completely naked young actress on the stage, for reasons none of us could make out except that, well, it was Freud up there on stage), we came away having enjoyed the play. I'm going to have to finally read Civilization and its Discontents.