294 History Workshop Journal is istorian and novelist whose latest book was An Instance Christine Stevenson is a lecturer in the history of art at Reading University. Her book, Medicine and Virtue in British Hospital and Asylum Architecture (Yale University Press), will be out in October 2000, Jason Todd is Secondary School Head and Head of Humaniti School, Croydon, His article draws both on classroom expel his research for a recently-completed History in Education MA at the Insti- tute of Education, STORY WORKSHOP JOURNAL Michelle Elizabeth Tusan is a Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford Us versity. The dissertation for whi pean History from the Universi the Women’s P¢ in in -rwar Germany. engaged ~ the Tong fare Nazism in the period of his childhood before he came to see British sense | Ben Worpole works for Waterstone’s Bookshops and teaches part-time in the Writing and Publishing course at Middlesex University.Fe OUT Gree HISTORY WORKSHOP JOURNAL tnd rest of world $26 (please include proof Europe £55, USA and rest of world U ological Abstracts; Studies on Women rough. Printed by Cambrian Printers Ltd, Aberystwyth Cover design by Bernard Canavan. HISTORY WORKSHOP JOURNAL ISSUE 50 AUTUMN 2000 EDITORIAL, itt ARTICLES AND ESSAYS rangois Bernier and the Invention of Racial Classification Siep Staurman 1 ‘Common Sense in Shanghai the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce Mothers’ Toil and Daughters’ Germany Christina Benningl People Working: Everyday Life and German Fascism AUf Lildike ‘The 1944 Somaliland Camel Corps Mutiny and Popular Politics Working-class Girls and Time in 19205 ranslated by Deborah Laurie Cohen) SB Re -B ‘Praise Songs’ of the Family: Lincage and Kinship in the Caribbean Diaspora Mary Chamberlain : FEATURE: HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY iting Early Medieval Biography Janet L. Nelson Ea) happy Voltaire, or {Shall Never Get Over it as Long as Live? David Wootton 37 Louise Bryant Grows Old Christine Stansell 187 e-remembering the Soldier Hero: the Psychic and Social Construction of ‘Memory in Personal Narratives of the Great War Michael Roper 381 ARCHIVES AND SOURCES The Boyd Ore Servey the Nut of Clive in Beale, 157-9 205 HISTORY ON THE LINE Bapsi Sidhwa and Urvashi Butalia Discuss the Partition of India, Introduced by Andrew Whitehead 230HISTORY WORKSHOP HISTORY ‘The Only Problem was Time Anna Davin ‘The Massachusetts History Workshop: ‘Bringing the Boundaries of History to People’s Lives’ James Green ‘Semi-Foetual Accounts, 1795-1910 Sapphic Refractions Margaret Reynolds White Folks James A. Miller “Matthew Frye Jacobson Whtienes of « Different Color: European Ivmigranis and the Alchemy of Color Dana D. Nekon National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men Visions and Voices Stephen Yeo onathan Ree I See a Voice A Philosophical History of Language, Deafness and the Senses Spilling the Spanish Beans Robert Colls ‘eter Davison George Orwell. A Literary Life wget Orwell's Polltes ear Witnes: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-41 ‘Vietor Klemperer To the Biter End: The Diaries of Vietor Klemperer 1942-45 ‘Vietor Klemperer The Language of the Third Reich: LTI Lingua Tertil Imperit A Philologist’s Notebook REPORT BACK Representing Early Medieval Pasts Janet L, Nelson Presenting Peasants Clare Rose Gendering War Bianca Schonberger ‘OBITUARIES C. Van Woodward James Green Colin Matthew John Robertson NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS EDITORIAL tory has an apt complement ‘The last decade or so from WJ. Issue 30 was part memorial writings for Tim Mason; issue 43, to commemoration of Raphael Samuel, Many ex-editors retain a li est in the Journal, and Many contributors’ names recur ot ut also on the preoccupations of the 195s: language, memory, medieval history find th net of both subjects and cor 's relatively easy for historians to acs, pinpoint the origins of new ways of 8 88 2People Working: Everyday Life and German Fascism by Alf Liidtke NO PREFACE - BUT A NOTE INTHE MARGIN in general, historians of German fascism are concerned with scruti fundamental’ drives of either society as a whole or of individuals. Ye ig’ structures and forces neglects, even destro cal and the emotional dimensions of historical processes remain beyond reach of this approach. ast, juxtaposed. Yet the problem of interconnection, for it ic form the non- linearity that historical actors produce and encounter in their respective everyday lives. Strange as it may sound, such an approach rere of he ang Archie Peon nd Masato er DD Rim Baar te Fodor Arca he Parker an Mss Organ Cover of the Arbeiter-Iiustrierte Zeitung (Workers Itustrated News), ‘31Jan, 1928. This asa commercilly-successful paper with communist and Tt’sahot day May 1981.5 Several socialist editors who sympathized with the Communist Party but published iundred women and men are hard at work, Two women are busy packing ‘outside the party organization. Theo Gaudig, a turner at the Krupp steel an clothes and washing into large cardboard boxes. They help each other tpt cu tures veins weatleg Sean ees cre fk eens uel arty the boxes that are particularly heavy. A few months later, one of the ac a ack ans tne Hosted News who relay vied ‘women, having barely escaped deportation to one of the ghettos and death Tocal Workers’ Photography Clubs, saw the picture and employed it for the s in the East, decided to type up her recollections." She was urged to ‘grand course’, as Gaudig recalled in an interview in 1986. io so by her daughters, who themselves had been forced to emigrate from16 “History Workshop Journal Germany in 1937, Elisabeth Freund chose the heading ‘forced labour’ to entitle her account of six months of ‘conscripted service’ from April to October 1941. 'A scene from her description of work at the laundry: ‘Suddenly the manager is standing there right beside us. We hadn’t even heard the man come over because of his rubber-soled shoes. Naturally we're very frightened. He asks: ‘What kind of work are you doing? Reply: ‘We're filling up the boxes. Single pieces.’ The boss wants to know whether they're giving each other any help. The answer: ‘We give ‘each other a hand when the boxes are especially heavy’. Muttering a cur ‘ub-huh’, the manager walks off. Time for a break. Then the boss comes back again, this time accompanied by the head. He begins to shout: ‘Look, P've just inquired. You're not allowed to help one another. So make sure that doesn’t happen again! This Jewish shift here has & bloody cheek. If the Aryan women can carry boxes by themselves, we're not going to make any special exception for the Jews, see? You got that?” eir own coinage. Right discursive strategies had and more seriously by the Nazis - not their ranks, but innumerable government workers and well, and also journalists and even one’s next-door. begun to fixit firmly in their minds, impress it upon others. The demarc: and private had been laced into an administ vidual decrees and other legislation, such as the ‘Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 which defined ‘Aryan’ citizenship and placed restrictions on marriage with non-Aryans.’ At the same time, the regime was apparently able to use these legislative forms quite skilfully to generate a semblance of legality. Thus many of those who were persecuted (not just these two laundry workers) employed the discourse of their oppressors. Their words had been ubiquitous for years, omnipresent shop-windows, on commercial signboards, on signs in parks or emblazoned ‘on park benches. Beginning in 1939, a programme of ‘conscription for service’ was inn ‘mented in several stages for all persons classified as Jews. In Apt author of this laundry text was ‘conscripted’, and was soon to be ‘put into service’. Elisabeth Freund was 43: born in 1898 in Breslau, the daughter of, she had been trained as an economist. Frau Freund had authored several books of practical advice for housewives, and was herself amother and housewife in an upper-middle class family in Berlin. After her Everyday Life and German Fascism n ‘much older husband had been forced to abandon his profession as a lawyer, she went in search of gainful employment. First she taught herself photo- graphy, and was then ‘conscripted for servi Back to the laundry in May of that year. Freund recalled: ‘We know that the Aryan women working here always lend each other a ing the boxes, This box here, the one he caught us with, , each of us works alone, jidated she doesn’t even want to use a pushcart ... When the heavy boxes are really full and haven't been tied up yet with string, the thin wartime cardboard gives way. Then bling out... . No, really, we can’t go on working like this But if they give each other a hand, the factory manager can have them sent rate, he gives stand out or to attract attention. Because (as he tells her): “There are some complaints about you. They say you sit down a lot ‘That’s not the real reason, though. You've simply come to people’s atten- tion, you get noticed. The way you work, it looks like you think it’s easy You don’t cringe and cower, see, and that rubs a few people here up the wrong way!” And he goes on: ‘You walk about here standing so tall and straight, you don’t let yourself be fazed by anything’ 6 lisabeth Freund comments: 1 always walk that way, tall and straight, how can I change that? Maybe it looks provocative secing how tall am. OK, so they don't want you to want us to be slaves, poor cowering never learn how either! ‘Along with the Reich-German (or so-called ‘Aryan’) female workers and a ‘number of foremen, the laundry also employed a considerable number of women who belonged to the various groups of what were termed foreign’ or ‘Eastern’ workers (a label used not just by ardent Nazis), cat- ions and gradi ions between worker sub- |. Most of her paltry wages led beginners) were trans- of asking to be hired by was exclusively reserved for ‘Aryans’. Nor was ferred to a closed aceot another firm; that ‘p8 History Workshop Journal she granted a day off to do housework in her own home (Hausarbeitsiag) once every four weeks; exclusion and discrimination were comprehensive, all the way to being banned from using the ‘Aryan toilet’. She records bi ly all the ‘many little jabs’ that are part of her everyday existence as a worker; yet at the same time, she expresses her pride in their not being able to break her spirit. A few days after being told off, Elisabeth Freund was transferred to another job, and sent to work at the steam press as a form of punishment. ‘The first thing her new fellow-workers informed her about was that she when speaking to him or her. As if they were delivering thei right into the thin air’? ‘Only three or four days, spsed. She managed to have herself checked by a Health Service physician (the Jewish doctor hhad explained to her that a document from het would be worthless now). ‘The factory doctor then issued her a pass for sick-leave, allowing her a few weeks of rest and recuperation. ENCOUNTERS AND VOICES II Inhis diary Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum Letzten (I want to bear witness to the very end), Victor Klemperer carefully observed those classified by the Nuremberg Laws as ‘Reich-Germans’ and ‘Aryans’ (and who often proudly referred to themselves by these same terms)" Klemperer, who had volunteered as a soldier in the First World War, was a university professor and taught Romance Literature at the Technical University of Dresden. Writing down, day after day, minute notes on his everyday experiences was his way of dealing with his ‘shame for Germany’, his own dire situation, and his fears for survival. Klemperer noted those he dubbed ‘the steadfast’: they were apparently few in number, and proved ‘steadfast’ in the face of the various expec- tations, demands and temptations of the new Nazi officials (who were often the same old authorities and bosses in new boots). It was a rare pleasure to ‘meet one of the ‘steadfast’. For the most part, Klemperer and ‘the Je the Sinti and Roma, or gypsies - in short, all those who were excluded and as ‘enemies’ or ‘persons alien to the folk community’ — bad basic, another category of individuals, whom Klemperer labelled ‘the lukewarm ones’. He recorded innumerable nuances of ‘lukewarm behav. ur’. There were those who refused to be talked out of their noble hopes in Hitler by being reminded of the possibly deceptive, maybe even criminal ‘methods being used by the Nazis, their coarseness and brutality. And then there were the ‘unbridled opportunists’ - those who coutd only exist if they Everyday Life and German Fascism ” ‘were ‘a part of the thing’. Perhaps one of those was the physicist from the Kaiser-Wilheim-Research-Institute at Gottingen. In an entry dated 15 May, 1941, Klemperer noted: Non-Aryan stepmother. His own Aryan ID is questionable. His wife is from East Frisia, so she’s unobjectionable. A church marriage. And he with his anti-clerical, Bolshevik ideas! Yet it's courageous on his part, touching, that he came to visit us? OF course, there were also the persecutors. Or the devoted, committed Nazis, the stalwarts. One spot where the ‘zealots’ were ensconced was the entrance desk at the Technical University in Dresden. ‘If you didn't give the Nazi salute’, they could ‘lit your arm by force’, as was reported in 1935 by one of the ‘steadfast’, a certain Fraulein Mey. Klemperer repeatedly insists that vicious slogans never ori one’s neighbours; they were always launched by provocateurs, and came from the outside or ‘from above’. But that seems doubtful in the light of Elisabeth Freund's observations. Other memoirs, too, reinforce picion that in many c: as the neighbours themselves who were quite assiduous, even enthusiastic, in helping to make ‘Jews’ out of the people, ‘now ‘non-Aryans’, who lived next door. And the motivation didn’t necess- arily have to be material, to grab Jewish property or exclude unwanted busi- to express exclusion: a refusal to greet former acquaintance was sufficient. Of course, there were scores of such instances of one or another form of ‘Aryanization’ almost everywhere."° ‘You just had to cross the road and walk on, ot avoid a person in the sta ing. A silent gesture was unmistakable, and in itself in the context of the forced labour regime during the Second id War, Klemperer’s urge to provide a meticulous account of his and his fe's daily terror defied his previous effort to categorize his German con- i icularly poignant are notes from the time he spent as a ‘when he was assigned to a small factory manufacturing paper bags.!" According to Klemperer the firm was not ‘par- ticularly Nazi’. The director was a member of the SS but, again in Klem- perer’s words, ‘he supported the Jews in the factory wherever it was possible, he politely talked to them and occasionally he gave them some- ing from the canteen’, which the letter of the Jaw prohibited. The workers were by no means ‘Nazi’, at least they weren't so any longer a year after Stalingrad. Klemperer also portrays individual Reich-German workmates. ‘Among them was Frieda. She occasionally asked about his wife and now ‘and then passed him an apple, against all the regulations. At other times she jored strict orders not to talk to ‘the Jews’. She once came over and said to herself but also to him: ‘Albert says your wife’s a German. Is she really a German?’ Klemperer noted:80 History Workshop Journal Everyday Life and German Fascism 8 and a focus of the havoc wreaked in the so-called Crystal Night (Reichs- Ivistallnacht). For a brief moment she felt that something terrible had ‘occurred, something frighteningly brutal. But then stability returned to her modes of perception, and she changed gears, so to speak, now accepting what had happened as a fait accompli. After all, the Jews were ‘enemies of the new Germany’; that fateful night they had ‘been made to feel ... this being-the-Enemy’ But what is the meaning of this self-interrogation, this ‘taking stock’? In idual testimony. It was not itsomehow it was ‘the or ‘the Nazi-women’ (die Nazissen), who came out of the historical nowhere to help Hitler to power and then kept him there. man nine years older than Maschmann, and like her not a university graduate, provides a similar report in his book of ‘memoirs.!§ After various jobs, Menzel became an employee of the church and worked in a nursing home in the 1930s. Sometime after 1940 he learned about the opportunities in German civilian administration ‘in the East’. In 1942 he was sent to the occupied Ukr injstry for the East labour recruitment programme. There it was his job to recruit (or, as he put it, to ‘win over’) young men and women for deployment in German ‘war industry as ‘Eastern workers’ for the supposed great cause: the struggle against Bolshevism, And he remembers this job as an unusually fascinat- ing task. a leet ass seta etcetera deal of latitude, and wanted to make use of the chance this afforded him by performing well in terms of ‘professionalism, [and] good work’. Yet it was precisely at this point that a rupture occurred. In the polycracy of the Nazi sre was a head-on clash between an approach predicated on care- lly calculated exploitation and one aimed at the ruthless draining of work energy to the last ounce. In the East, that latter approach was represented among others by the East Prussian Gauleiter Erich Koch. A memo by ‘Menzel criticizing such ruthless practices led to his dismissal (although no further punitive action was taken). This was not an incident of resistance, ‘of course; indeed, it was one of the those many instances in which Germans ‘went along with things but co-operated actively and intensively, anticipated matters and provided impetus and input for their further development. In this context it is worth recalling that teachers and judges, adminis- trators and doctors, architects and engineers — in fact, all those who were patt of the ‘functional elites” — did not just carry out their instructions like automata." Their effectiveness was only guaranteed if they were energeti and active in performance of their duties, applying their professional in their own way and in a manner appropriate for the situation. This was equally true when it came to a large-scale task like planning an aircraft Immediately [lost any pleasure in the apple. Even in this friendly person, ‘who was not a Nazi at all and had human feelings, the Nazi poison had made its way, she had identified Germanness with the magical notion of being Aryan, She could not grasp that my wife might be a German. ‘This story poignantly shows how insufficient all KKlemperer's own efforts to categorize people were. In other words: ‘act according to con- victions or beliefs? And: how and why (or when) do they meander from and between seemingly contradictory stances? Is meandering the way indi- als commonly (dis-)connect demands they perceive to be in conflict with each other? Frieda was a ‘nice person’. She not only made a good work- mate but took a considerable risk in supporting people who obviously the same time she was totally convinced that there was a ifference between ‘Jews’ and others and did not hesitate to say 60; and moreover she considered Jews cither ‘not good’ or anyway fetior to ‘the others’, that is, o the ‘Aryans’ or ‘Germans’. ACCOUNTS - FROM HINDSIGHT gulls between mi ‘complex social tensions within and underneath the vaunted ‘folk com- munity’ that the Nazi propagandists had tried to shape (aided and abetted by so many non-Party members as well)? Melita Maschmann was born in 1916, came from a middle-class family, attended an academic high school (Gymnasium) ia Berlin and then spent an obligatory year in the League of German Girls, later going on to take a regular job with that same organization. She was part of things from 1938; in 41944, she was appointed head of a forced-labour camp in annexed Poland, in the Warthegau. Long after the war, in the late 1950s, she decided to ‘publish her memoirs. Her book “Taking Stock’ was generally well received, and was viewed as a first attempt to raise certain painful questions. How had she, a woman who regarded herself as an idealist for the Reich, become an ardent and zealous activist on behalf of the Nazi regime ~ and indeed, one of its leaders?!” ‘Dedication’ (Hingabe) is the word Maschmann uses again ‘and again, though at the same time she is confused by it, at a loss to explain its real import. In her recollection, the decisive factor was the intensity with which she worked. It began for her during the harvest of 1937 in Pomerat when she worked too hard in the fields and suffered blissful total exhaustion. It continued in the relish she took in organizing, in commanding, in having an impact on others under her authority. ‘Melita Maschmann also recalls her thoughts on 10 November 1938 ‘during the events in the Scheunenvierte! in Berlin, a centre of Jewish life82 History Workshop Journal factory, or a far smaller job like ‘allocating? forced labourers in the Mi istry of Labour ~ or organizing a transport to an extermination camp, or finally running the factory-like process that mass murder itself gradually became, : In each instance, the active participation of section heads, admini trators and even of cleric the job of ‘their agency’ or ‘their company’ was more than mere passive obedience. Active pai pation and involvement was also a part of the picture where organizational routines and bureaucratic forms created or reinforced a semblance of order and regularity. PARTICIPANT AND DISTANT OBSERVERS, Both the Gestapo and activists on the left, especially those from the SPD and KPD, believed that the greatest threat to the regime was posed by the industrial proletariat. Klemperer, for examy fully collected all he could pick up by way of rumours and other jons of extreme tension ‘among the workers, reports of large-scale decline into poverty that would probably lead later to massive resistance. But what did things look like beyond the orga 8? What was the orientation and behaviour of the ‘masses’ - on the job, in the working-class neighbourhoods, in working-class. families?!” Were there similarities between the industrial regions in western, south-western and central Germany? What was the situation in large metropolitan areas such as Berlin ‘or Hamburg, large cities like Nuremberg or Chemnitz? In particular, what ‘was the mood in the smaller firms, and in rural trades? What was the import ance of peasant-workers especially where they constituted a large, even pre dominant proportion of the industrial workforce, as they did in northern Warttemberg, the Lausitz, southern Lower Saxony and even parts of the hr? nie reports of the illegal correspondents of the SPD in exile (the so- called SOPADE-Deuischlandberichte (reports from Germany) repeatedh mentioned ‘general dissatisfaction among the workers’. Yet such remarks were always followed by commentary to the opposite effect: ‘all reports concur in noting that the workers remain passive’. A report from the Rhineland in 1936, for example, and again in 1938, stressed: ‘The great mass [of workers] are passive, they accept everything com antly and deal only with personal matters. Often out of curiosity, the} take part in factory meetings, and give when money is collected. ‘QUALITY WORK’ AND ITS IMAGERY OF EXCLUSION Let's take a step back in time. From the late imperial period onward German labour and industry were increasingly thought of as characterized Everyday Life and German Fascism 8 by ‘quality work’ (deutsche Qualitatsarbeit). Not was it only functionaries ‘or journalists who saw the role of German labour in this light: many ‘workers, women as well as men, viewed their everyday practice, the toil of their handiwork and machine production, in terms of ‘German quality ‘work’, Around 1930, this pervasive myth of everyday life (Roland Barthes) ‘encompassed simple handicrafts as well as technical isticated machine operati images of quality work with notions of Germanness, It was a specific and ‘emotionally-charged view of oneself and of ot of class, gender, and generation, Its symbol the product was deemed satisfactory, then workers were granted room for manoeuvre in their specific work rhythm. In turn, workers time and again devoted their attention and energy to their job; they took pride in accom- plishing goals notwithstanding hardships and other obstacles such as break- downs of equipment or inadequacies in the way that work was organized. Employing their experience they demonstrated to themselves and to their superiors that they were no fools. American workers, by contrast, were siven ‘fool-proof” tools, as a union functionary proudly reported to his, German colleagues in 1928! Work was more than just a means to an end. Instrumental aspects were mixed up with meanings in which work showed itself to be an exhausting but fascinating ‘metabolism with nature’, as Karl Marx had put it. To endure daily hardships and to overcome the numerous risks of accidents at work imbued many workers with a sense of assertiveness. It was this experience which fuelled people's Eigensinn (stubborn self-reliance), by which they ‘meant the effort to carve out niches of space, time and resources for oneself. The preferred way of displaying Eigensinn was not resistance against ‘above’ but distance from everyone, including your own work-mates. Its in the matrix of the everyday that people appropriate the conditions of their life and survival, making those conditions their own. Yet this does not occur of one’s own free will, as Karl Marx suggested in The Eighteenth Brumaire.” Appropriation works through symbols, and simultaneously has «2 formative impact in shaping those symbols. ‘To put it more concretely: revolutionary political utopias were put forward by representatives of German Social Democracy around 1900 in and through images where the symbols of the police and military state predominated; at the same time, that state and its semiotic representation were sul attack. The ‘masses’ step’ of Social Democrat demonstrators was expressly counterposed to the army's ‘marching step’2? Yet in actual practice, the appearance of a column of militant demonstrators frequently bore a strik- ing resemblance to a regiment in foy History Workshop Journal [At the same time, organized labour presented itself more and more as national labour. People celebrated the patriotic or national purpose inher- ent in wage labour in field or factory, and recognized the ot achieve an industrial or agricultural ‘performance’. This interpretation was given enormous impetus among the entire population by the 1914 general mobilization for the war effort. And after the military defeat in 1918 most people, right across the boundaries of class, gender and generation, would have agreed that ‘revenge for Versailles’ required ever more ‘German ‘quality work’. Labour organizations across the board subscribed to the call ‘to promote ‘German quality work’, Representatives of the socialist move~ ment, and even of the communists, saw increased production as the onl means to improve the living con working men and women. Significantly, efforts to develop a republican counter-perspective and counter-symbolism during the agitated years of 1918-23, racked by and reaction, proved unsuccessful. On the contrary, trade unior of defence in the strugele against th production, a means to ensure & minimum “Two icons represented ‘German quality work’. Around 1900 the muscu- lar smith featured most prominently, brandishing his hammer with sover- eign prowess, In the 1920s, however, the image of the experienced and ‘co« ‘machinist who tended his lathe or some ther sophisticated machine-tool superseded an imagery that had invoked artisanal handicraft. Thus, the self- disciplined and experienced mind and hand supplanted the muscular arm and fist. Consider, for example, the photograph of a turner which was printed as the cover picture for the communist-orientated but also com- mercially successful Arbeiter-Tllustrierte Zeinng (Workers’ Ilustrated Newspaper)! This manly worker radiates a controlled calm; the perspec- tive and the way the picture is framed emphasize his concentration on the tools, on the materials and on the task in hand; both orderliness and deft- ness were signalled. The picture of the confident, experienced machine tender evoked and exemplified the ideal skilled worker, and this rep- resented the basis on which colleagues could become ‘comrades’. Yet both images singled out the male as the mode! of proletarian posture and of work practice as well. Thus, the accepted imagery presupposed, even demanded, ‘female subordination. Notions and symbols of ‘German quality work’ excluded all ‘non: Germans’, totally and uncompromisingly. When German workers emi grated in their thousands to the Soviet Union around 1930, cither they were desperately looking for jobs, or they wanted to further the good cause ol ‘a new society. After several months or even years, some of them the Soviet trade unions what they saw a ng their Soviet or indeed Russian comrades. is framed their standards of proper work on the image of ‘German quality work’? Everyday Life and German Fascism 85 It is important to keep in mind that both visual representations and ‘images in people’s heads’ were not just a product of indoctrinati manipulation ‘from above’. Rather, those images resonated practices and experiences of and wi ‘was the simultaneous interaction of playfulness and calculation of people's interests ~ their mutual tension and complementarity ~ that goncrated a sphere of action in which individuals could also feel comfortable en masse. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, images of ‘German quality ‘work’ gained momentum through being used at public festivals like those ‘on May Day. It should be remembered that May Day only became an official state holiday after the Nazis came to power! Accor: Benjamin, these forms of ‘the aesthetization of politi that Benjamin failed is realm of the sym 8 connectedness of the unspectacular everyday pr es. People used either or both to blend ‘old times’ and ‘Nazism focused on and was played out in the realm of the symbol affected the material the economy. For instance, an unemployed woodworker from the Saarland ‘saw good reason to move to Kassel: the Henschel Company needed workers in locomotive manufacture, and was also hiring men to build trucks, tanks and artillery, and the new employees were trained in the use of machine- tools. Young women spotted opportunities for themselves in industry and left their jobs in domestic service to seek work in factories. Wage levels rose alittle, though they were still below those of the late 1920s. But there was once again a possibility of finding work, and a chance to make some money! Not only young miners in the Ruhr but male and female workers in many places and jobs now saw their opportunity at ast to get married, settle down, and start a family. fe ‘GERMAN QUALITY WORK’: HOW TO CONNECT. PRODUCTION AND DESTRUCTION ‘Through their role in arms production, ‘Aryan’ German workers, male and female, were directly involved in the genocidal murder that characterized fascist rule in Germany. Beyond the factories, it was also former workers86 History Workshop Journal Everyday Life and German Fascism 87 who, from 1935 onwards, constituted the majority of men in uniform. An attitude of passive acceptance and readiness to participate were the dominant tone during these pre-war years and after the outbreak of war in September 1939. Independently of their intense support for the ds of the conscripts turned again and again to the home cin the old factory, back home on the shop floor?” For fhe soldier Karl Schreiber, who had been a production wor an agricultural-machine factory in Leipzig before the war, wrote in July 1942: and stench were really awful. And then there was the sight of a lot of people who were crying while they searched for their relatives among the bodies and the bits of clothing. Four days earlier at the airfield of his unit, he had written that the ‘land- Seape was quite nice’. But unfortunately, the peace and quiet is shattered too often by Ivar’ artil- lery. Otherwise you could imagine you were in some kind of a spa or something. heard from a mate that you people are working very hard now. And that’s the main thing, But it’s a shame there are so few German workers in the factory. Those Russians will never get much done. You can see here what kind of people the Russkis are. The best method is to set up a machine-gun and keep it pointed at them. We Germans still have too much sympathy with the likes of them. They wouldn't treat us that way, and they don't. You've all got plenty of that sort back in the factory [as {forced labourers and prisoners-of-war], so you'll see for yourselves what they're made of. Basically, the Russian’s a liar, we've seen that for our- selves often enough. Eight weeks earlier, the same man had flown to the north, towards the Warsaw area, and the plane had also flown over Warsaw. In a letter to his old firm, he wrote: Circling over the city a few times, we felt very pleased to see that the huge Jewish section had been totally destroyed. They did a really good job of that. Not a single house left standing, everything destroyed right down to the foundations of the walls. ‘Two days later, they departed in the morning for Odessa. Before take-off, each man was given special rations: ‘50 biscuits, @ half litre of milk, two packages of fruit slices, some sweets and dark chocolate’. For a lot of them, a soldier’s life was a quite new experience, yet not always straightforwardly so. There were various similarities with everyday in the factory, especially the physical exertion. And the subordination feature ~ even if you had to ‘listen to’ more commands than ‘were acceptable in civilian life’. The risks t Another worker-soldier made his criteria clear in a letter of December 1941: Although the best-skilled workers are not around because of the war, don't think the foreign temporary workers are lowering the quality of the ‘machines. Though I can well imagine that you hardly hear much German in the factory these days ‘That same month, another man who'd been employed earlier at the farm- machinery factory in Leipzig commented that ‘The German worker simply ‘can't be compared to any other worker anywhere in the world’ ‘These statements scem to take it for granted that war means killing other people, yet hardly anyone addressed that particular point directly. When the subject was broached, then people used indirect turns of phrase — for such refer to the crimes of the ‘others’, and to allude to, or work throug! misgivings. Thus, Herbert , a Wehrmacht sergeat 1943 that the army had found and opened up some mass graves: They were in a park had grasped the Germans’ air-war strategy against against German industries and residential hoods. Nonetheless, in theory at least soldiers were also shooting back, ‘What soldiers were aiready used to or had jobs was also necessary in the a ‘Ton metres from a big swing, Well of course I didn't want to miss seeing the graves. You could certainl thorough job —one that was to ‘You could find men’s corpses, s the ‘victorious’ onslaught zi ‘enemy attack? Moreover, whoever had completed a 'job well-done” had also ‘cleaned up’ afterwards.88 History Workshop Journal Everyday Life and German Fascism 89 directly involved, moreover, were those tens of thousands of Germans who, for instance, drove the engines of the deportation trains, or who did the paperwork required to process the contisca belonging to those defined as ‘subhumans’ and condemn ‘The ‘masses’ have also been the object of scrutiny in studies undertaken at roughly the same period focus tructural dynamics rather than the strategies and practices of domi Ralf Dahrendorf and David Schoenbaum argued that the ultimate impact (although not the guiding motive) of much fascist policy had been to provide the impetus for a com- prehensive social ‘modernization’, in many respects only really visible after ‘5. Accelerated urbanization and industrialization, the increased pattici- pation of women in the work force, and the spread of a commercial ‘mass ceria employed to assess this process. Even if particu- lar findings here were sometimes terpreted, they still suggested ‘After those ‘clearing-up operations’, could there ever be any unwanted waste? LEVELS OF ANALYSIS Let me backtrack a bit in my argument. I've tried to illustrate my initial thesis by examples, but haven't stated it in precise terms. It is my con- tention that despite differing emphases and assumptions, the various analyses of German fascist society and rule have, almost without excep- tion, been framed in terms of a dominant model: that of perpetrator and victims.26 : Tn the decades after 1945, there were two main competing perspectives ‘on German fascism (or National Socialism), Despite their differences, b ‘were variations on the image of t had introduced in his widely-respected book, originally p deutsche Katastrophe: Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections). For some analysts, tis ‘catas- trope’ had been triggered by a modern species of great men: namely the ‘great scoundrels behind their microphones and massive desks ~ ‘Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels, By contrast, analyses from a Marxi ‘critical theory’ perspective emphasized that German fascism was unavoidable resul fal accumulation, Betwee these perspectives there was a point: both regarded the ‘masses’ as victims. ized or seduced. It was clear, though, that they had not themselves been actors. They had suffered a passive f Since the late 1960s, these perspectives have encountered increasingly stringent criticism. Research centring on actors at the nodes and foci of power aimed at revealing a more diversified picture. The image of ‘inst- ‘tutional polycratism’ superseded that of a simple top-down dictat ‘Thus, there can be no doubt that the military, and segments of those indus tries that were dependent on, or exploited, the military's orders, supported rearmament and the war of pillage and conquest. In part they also activel promoted that war— though it remains doubtful to what extent the p\ of racial ‘cleansing’ of the ‘German folk organism’, and of genocide, cided with the interests of most of these power elites. The ‘masses’ of ‘0 nary Germans’, however, appeared again as rather passive objects of whatever actions were taken by people on ‘the commanding heights’ of state institutions and the economy. Diverging from this ino, Raul Hilberg, from the early 1960s onwards, ha pointed to the importance of bystanders in and for the ‘Destruction of the European Jews’ In his view, those who looked on in silence or even applauded (or turned the other way) when fellow-Germans maltreated those demarcated as “Jews” actually made the mass murder possible. Quit /e experienced that era solely ift in perspective has the myth of repudiated, Although research on studies were greeted for decades rly life-history is no longer anything new, s ‘with massive scepticism, trated just how lections reported by industrial workers — positive ‘memories of the economic ‘upswing’ after 1936-37 and the ‘peaceful years’ down to 1939 and the first three years of the war.?? Secondly, detailed empirical work on the Gestapo has revealed the exist- pread practice of denunciation as a popular point of co- ordination between individual Germans and the agencies of the regime. This research sheds light on a huge readiness and enthusiasm amor ‘masses to go along with and participate of domination” It was this active pai power of the regime to carry through its p the (relative) st s, and thus helped lity of German fascism, A decade ago, Reinhard Mann Showed in his pioneering study of the Gestapo headquarters in Diisseldor? that a full fifty-five per cent of Gestapo activity there was not initiated by the apparatus itself, nor was it prompted by inputs from party and state institutions. Instead, more than half of Gestapo investigations and arrests ‘ere the result of information stemming directly from the population. ‘Robert Gellately has recently stressed that there was a basic agreement terms of content with the objectives of the Nazi regime. In particular, he detected an unmistakable mass anti-Semitism. Klaus Mallmann and Gerhard Paul point to a broader spectrum of interests in securing personal val and enhancing status, intermingled with hopes for a ‘better’ future fe. The institutions of the Nazi state were able to link up with and tap these popular aspirations.90 History Workshop Journal Everyday Life and German Fascism a1 ‘THE PATCHWORK OF PRACTICES ty important to highlight ideological motivations and socio-econ- ‘omic interests. Yet that approach can, I think, only partly explain the motives underiying the willingness to accept the regime and actively par- ipate in its policies and programmes. There is a tendency to overempha- size the conscious areas of agreement. Many researchers presuppose that both individuals and groups orientate their behaviour primarily in terms of maximizing calculated personal benefit. Yet such a perspective ignores the fact that experiences come as composites and multiples, in other disregards the hodgepodge character of personal experience, ‘underplays the power of symbols to confirm and facili multiple logics of behaviour can only be grasped if attention is paid sirmul- taneously to both calculated and ‘experienced’ motives. More concrets ‘workers’ interest in new shower rooms at the factory, or in @ premium f the German Labour Front, found a reinforcing echo in the old and f worker’, now strengthened by propagandi ‘more likely that workers might rin Dis Aufeichmangen jean pice mesures 02! en on ford ia image’ of the ‘qu Jn such a context of rewards, it was al participate in the ‘great deeds’ of the igwigs and Wehrmacht gener- dls — or at least adopt a curious, wait-and-see attitude. Perspectives that stress the system of rule, ideology and calculated interests, tend to ignore the patchwork of practices and orientations which people co-produce and in which they themselves live and ope is the dynamic simultancity o dependence and independent or sclf-willed action that people act out as ‘compliant acceptance and active complicity. ‘Reconstruction of everyday practice reveals a meandering pattern which strongly resonates with and is informed by this simultaneity. People par ticipate in relationships of domination and follow their (occasional?) desire ‘be a part of things; but this very participation is undercut, time and again, by silent or self-willed distance, occasionally even by acts of resistance. Fo: individuals, that constituted a mixture of responses, including asse passive aoceptance, going along with and participating in events ~ as wel ‘lying low’, distancing oneself, or, here and there, resisting, These stances were not contradictory, they mingled. Seen from the ‘inside’, being a pa of things had many external faces. Of course, in the teeth of the possible consequences and the victims it was able to claim, variety contracted. Complicity could spring both fr hesitant compliant acceptance or ‘enthusi it was on blend that German fascism's system of domi right down to its final moment. 15. Harald Menzel, Zerisiene Helmkel. Eine vw Helmele. Ei 16, See om this more generally Alf Lidtke, ‘Funktionse den Bedingungen de deutsch sms" in: Herrscha NOTES AND REFERENCES oe nan pi Jed Tiggen Waraehen "Dic file Gowal: des Volksen 2 Berd i ale des Volaviles”. Mister (eumgeeas eee: essensrsdenen ial peaisken Reet eee ean2 History Workshop Journal Massenmed Stra. Zur Kulturgeschichte der Demonstrationen, FranksurtiNew York/Pat 1981, pp. 97-119. the unions watten between 1931 and 1933 and subsequen from such complaints in the Moscow daily newspaper Deutsche Zen Acces tthe Rasen Federation (GARD) Fons SS 29,0 jer echnschen Repraceia alton a tan of people's course experiences the pionat ire web mri, no marae hee knsten sll, Deri “Mnarer mer ty dh kg wo dope chefgesange i, jm and Alexandr von lato (ed), "Wir Kreger Jet andere iowing quotations, see Alf Liidtke, ‘Arbeit, Arbeitserfahrungen und eee Forschung’, in: Ladtke, Figer- (oar of hes Hoare ray, Ono Members of the Somali Camel Corps. Rehr. (eds), Terron Herrschaft und Alltag inn Sock des deve acta, Mise, 95,9 726, in Broseat, Der Staat Hilers: Grundiegung und Enowicklung seiner inner The 1944 Somaliland Camel Corps Mutiny and Popular Politics by Jama Mohamed INTRODUCTION Imperial partition of the Somali country at the end of the nineteenth century created a patchwork of ‘Somalilands’, so to speak. Great Britain conquered the northern Somali country (British Somaliland or Somaliland Protectorate), France claimed the northwest region (Djibouti or French ind), Ttaly occupied the southern region (Italian Somalia), and grabbed the southwestern forests and plains (Haud and Ogaden). mmaliland between 1899 and 1920 the pacification campaigns of the administration and the resistance of the Sayyid Muhammad Abdulla Hassan? led to epidemics, deterioration of the ecology, dectine in the rural economy, the complete collapse of trade, and pervasive insecurity. In 1912, the administration formed the Somaliland Camel Sores to address the creased, The first recruits of the corps were migrants from the rural areas the towns, Migrants to Kenya also entered the King’s African Rifles, and er security forces in East Africa. The migrants inside and outside the