Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (72 page)

272

F R A N K O M L A N D

For instance, he is now calling his people to the ballot box. Again the
Volk
should speak and voice their real opinion, without being influenced by state and Party.32

The case of Schleswig-Holstein, as well as findings from other regions and

the
Reich
, makes very clear that this pretension had nothing to do with the spirit, standards, and procedures of free elections held in a liberal democracy. The aim of those in power remained: “Germany totally National So-

cialist”. Only the first elections after the Nazi’s seizure of power were rela-

tively free and still left—despite a non-choice single party list—some op-

portunities to express opposition to the dictatorship through voting “no”,

through submitting invalid ballot papers, or through abstaining. As the

statistics show, the courageous opponents came, apart from a few isolated

cases, from KPD and SPD backgrounds, while everybody else, including

supporters of the catholic
Zentrum
Party, were no longer prepared to ex-

press their dissent in the pseudo-elections. After 1934, state, Party, and

Gestapo
had gained complete control of the voting procedure by disfran-

chising Jews and political prisoners, by harassing potential non-voters, by

painstakingly monitoring the polling stations, and rigging the results if

necessary.

If we finally ask for the rationale and results of this strategy at least

three aspects should be mentioned: firstly, we have to acknowledge that

very high turnouts and a great majority of affirmative votes do indeed

indicate the popularity of Hitler and his regime. Election results can be

used to gauge not only the extent to which the Nazi regime was rejected by

a minority of voters, but also the extent to which people were integrated

into the
Volksgemeinschaft
. We can see the “yes” votes as indicating a “dictatorship that is always capable of winning a majority” (Aly 2003, 76; 2005,

36; Bajohr 2005, 69), and they also reflect the widespread national consen-

sus during the “successful” period of Nazi Germany between 1933 and

1941.33 This consensus comprised all parts of society, and even the major-

ity of the working class, which had been a stronghold of the left-wing par-

ties before 1933, tended more and more towards “National Socialism”. For

the majority of the
Volksgenossen
, the Nazi
Volksgemeinschaft
was a
success
Gemeinschaft
, which was also reflected in the approval that the Party received in ballots.

——————

32
Nordische Rundschau
, August 11/12, 1934, “Hitler—Democrat or Dictator?”

33 This is shown indirectly by the results of the Saar ballot in 1935, of the
Landtag
election in the area of Memel in 1935, and of the election in Danzig in 1935, which were held in

“German” territories outside the
Reich
.

“ G E R M A N Y T O T A L L Y N A T I O N A L S O C I A L I S T ”

273

Secondly, it seems quite plausible that not only repression and manipu-

lation but also the overwhelming approval rate itself became a factor of

stabilization for the Nazi regime. In his chapter about “Plebiscites in Fas-

cist Italy: National Unity and the Importance of the Appearance of Unity”

Paul Corner argues that the impact of elections under dictatorships did not

so much depend upon what voters “really” believed: “what was important

was that people had to, like all the others, behave
as if
they believed.”

(Corner in this volume). This is also true for Germany after 1933. Under

the impact of a ubiquitous propaganda machine, widespread distrust and

fear of denunciation, it was difficult to talk about one’s own dissent either

publicly or in private. The initial protection afforded by one’s own social

milieu—especially in the banned workers’ movement—eroded during the

course of Nazi rule. Finally, isolation and atomization dominated. In

marked contrast, the monumental performances of elections and

plebiscites celebrated the imagined community of the nation as a unified

political body. This central function of pseudo-elections is what Werner

Patzelt calls “impression management”, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy,

which more and more marginalized and isolated those who stood apart.

But—finally—also in this case the functionaries and propaganda ex-

perts, who doctored and engineered the hundred per cent outcome, ran the

risk of destroying the very impression they tried to make. After the “per-

fectly” controlled ballot of 1936 the underground newsletter of the Social

Democratic Party in exile reported from Hamburg: “There were many

smiling faces in Hamburg: out of bafflement or irony [...] The electoral

fraud is so clumsy, so real, so obvious” (Deutschland-Berichte 1936, 319).

For as long as the pseudo-elections were less obviously manipulated, the

regime could use them to isolate and marginalize its opponents. But as

soon as the results became obviously and almost publicly falsified, the

regime ran the risk of losing its credibility and thereby strengthening its

critics. But even if Goebbels and his propaganda machine could not com-

pletely avoid this dilemma of “performative self-contradiction” (Jessen and

Richter in this volume) this did not lead to a significant crisis of legitimacy

during the “Third
Reich
”. The politics of permanent radicalization and finally the rush to war made it obvious that elections and plebiscites were

only one of several instruments to stage the vision of a purified and unified

Volksgemeinschaft
.

274

F R A N K O M L A N D

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