Setapart from the familiar social contexts of family, work, and school,the closed camp was designed to break down identifications withsocial milieus and to promote Entbürgerlichung (purging bourgeoiselements) and Verkameradshaftung (comradeship) as part of theprocess of Volkwerdung, “the making of the people,” as the pecu-liar idiom of National Socialism put it.

on 30 January 1939, Hitler prophesied “the annihilation ofthe Jewish race in Europe” in the event that “international financeJewry” succeeded in “plunging the nations once more into a worldwar.”

German legal com-mentators reassured the German public by citing U.S. programs asprecedents and quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes’s 1927 opinion,“three generations of imbeciles are enough”

“In the language used by both the Nazis and the sci-entists, this policy was called ‘Aufartung durch Ausmerzung,’”improvement through exclusion.

With the massive expansion of the Hitler Youthto include girls as well as boys, more than 765,000 young peoplehad the opportunity to serve in leadership roles. Many advancedin the ranks and received formal training and ideological instruc-tion in national academies such as the Reich Leadership School inPotsdam.

The consciousness of generation, and the assumption thatold needed to be replaced with new, undoubtedly opened youngminds to the tenets of racial hygiene, which were repeatedly parsedin workshops and lectures.

Nazi pedagogues extolled das Lager, “the camp,”as the privileged place where the “new generation was finding itsform.”

What was necessary, he insisted, was to“recognize yourself” (“Erkenne dich selbst”), which meant identi-fying with the idealized portraits of new Germans and following thetenets of hereditary biology to find a suitable partner for marriage,to marry only for love, and to provide the Volk with healthy chil-dren.

In November in Weimar, he promised that “if to-day there are still people in Germany who say: ‘We are not goingjoin your community, but stay just as we always have been,’ then Isay: ‘You will die off, but after you there will a young generationthat doesn’t know anything else!’”

he Germanpopulation was being resorted according to supposed genetic val-ues, a project that required all Germans to reexamine their rela-tives, friends, and neighbors.

In place of the quarrels of party, the contests of inter-est, and the divisions of class, which they believed compromised theability of the nation to act, the Nazis proposed to build a unified ra-cial community guided by modern science. Such an endeavor wouldprovide Germany with the “unity of action” necessary to surviveand prosper in the dangerous conditions of the twentieth century

In other words, biology appeared to provideGermany with highly useful technologies of renovation. The Na-zis regarded racism as a scientifically grounded, self-consciouslymodern form of political organization.

thousands of“ethnocrats” and other professionals mobilized to build the newbiomedical structures of the Third Reich. They oriented their ca-reers and ambitions toward the wide spaces that Nazi Germany’sracial vision had opened up.

He believed Germans feltthat “it’s just us now” when they lived without Jews. “Just us” alsoexpressed the closed circle in which Germans could see and experi-ence “ourselves” as “we are” and as “we have become.”

In what it touted as the triumph of “socialism ofthe deed” over “private capitalism” and “economic liberalism,” in1933 the Propaganda Ministry pressed a consortium of radio man-ufacturers to design and produce a Volksempfänger, or “people’sradio,” for the mass market.

Germans even went to warwith preprinted diaries that left space for snapshots. All this was anacknowledgment of the desire to be part of and to share the Ger-man history that was being made.

but even then nothing made the “com-munity of fate” more compelling than “the conviction that therewill no longer be future for Germany after a lost war.”

But when the German cheers wouldnot stop, “Hitler sensed a popular mood, a longing for peace andreconciliation.” This was also an indication of the general content-ment with things as they were.

crowds acclaimed the reestablishment of amass conscription army, the Wehrmacht, recalling for observers the“August Days” of 1914. Again socialists conceded: “For the over-whelming majority, 16 March is the definitive end to a shamefulpast, much more so than 30 January 1933; the day marks ‘the dawnof a new age.’” All this patriotic hoopla mattered; Versailles hadleft deep wounds, and, anyway, Germans were apt to be “childishlyproud of their army.”

heexplained in tears that her two sons had fallen in battle and the bal-lot had been their voice. 61The text precisely captures the way many people thought of Ger-many: as the tenacious underdog finally asserting its rights.

“its touristic spectaclesencouraged its participants to see a cause-and-effect relationshipbetween their own well being and the Nazi regime’s attempts to re-make Germans into the master race.”

“People looked to Nazism as a great and radical sur-gery or cleansing” and therefore saw “the movement as a sourceof rejuvenation” in public life.

hile“Strength through Joy” vacations were budget affairs, third-classrailway journeys to Thüringen rather than Bavaria, and parsimo-nious meals at second-rate hotels, they offered millions of Ger-mans the opportunity to travel, to see the seaside, or visit theReichshauptstadt—Berlin was one of the favorite “Strengththrough Joy” destinations.

The dreamof the Volkswagen seemed to promise “a new, happier age” thatwould make “the German people rich and Germany beautiful,” asHitler put it. Indeed, the Volkswagen functioned as a symbol for thenewly won capacity to dream about the future: in this fundamentalsense, the Nazis appeared as “men of the future.”

Mem-ories of the Third Reich corresponded in large part to the Nazis’own prewar media representation of “good times” both now and tocome.

the reports indicate that “workers not only wereunfree . . . but that most of them felt they were unfree, exploited,discriminated against and the victims of an unfair, class-ridden soci-ety.” Even during the boom years of 1937–39, “signs indicated thatNazism was further losing ground among workers.”

On the eve of the war, in 1939, most Germans ex-perienced the Third Reich as a cherished period of economic andpolitical stability. These were achievements that the population wasdetermined to hold on to.

The Day of Potsdam and May Day indi-cated that there was considerable desire among Germans to partici-pate in rituals of national renewal

these auxiliary organiza-tions gave Germans semiofficial responsibilities as they collecteddonations, distributed coal, or trained as air-raid wardens.

Themedicalization of politics pulled thousands of new professionalsinto state service as nurses, teachers, health-care administrators.Newly opened public-health offices dotted the cities and country-side, building on the social-welfare accomplishments of the repub-lic.

a“Machbarkeitswahn,” modernity’s heady sense of the possible thatepitomized National Socialism as it charged into the future.

Evenbefore Hitler spoke (8:00 p.m.), the choreography of May Day hadfastened the links between workers and the nation, between ma-chinists and machine-age dreams, between technical mastery andnational prowess

“Something had to be done”—these were the simple, conclusive words voiced by a friend of KarlDürkefälden’s, jobless and a new convert to Nazism. His wordswere echoed by thousands of workers in the winter and springof 1933; though a socialist, Karl himself understood—“it’s truetoo,” he added parenthetically in his diary entry.

Socialists around the worldhad celebrated May Day as a festival of labor since the 1880s; butin Germany they had failed to get the official recognition the Nazisnow offered. So strong were the hopes for national unity that theGerman Free Trade Unions welcomed the Nazi gesture and encour-aged members to participate in the celebrations.

National Socialism offered acomprehensive vision of renewal, which many Germans found ap-pealing, but they combined it with the alarming specter of nationaldisintegration.

He repeatedly described Ger-many as a nation that had come home to itself. While Erich hatedthe Nazis, he loved the Third Reich.

the desire to be part ofnational unity was so strong that it pulled even an anti-Nazi such asErich into the new political community