Hermann Aue “(very Left),” thoughtthe Nazis would be gone within a year, so he was inclined to stickwith the Social Democrats. But several Communists who had re-portedly joined a local SA group suspected that the Nazis would bearound for some time.

The eventfulness of the Day of Potsdam was the reason “all three,father, mother, and Emma” Dürkefälden, had gone to Kaune’s tav-ern, but it was also what they themselves produced by going there

But thepressure to comply was unmistakable. Dürkefälden’s father-in-lawwas out every night one week in August 1933 because he had toattend meetings or risk losing his garden plot.

The ubiquitous fundraising made it possible for poorer peo-ple like the Dürkefäldens to participate more fully in public life:dinner or snacks were served at party events and entry fees lifted atsport competitions.

“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.

Dürkefälden wasalso able to describe something Elisabeth Gebensleben could not,namely, the story of how working-class conversions helped to cre-ate National Socialism.

When Karl pro-tested that local Nazis had arrested young workers in the neigh-borhood and seized a trade union building, his father retorted indialect, “Ordnung mot sein,” “You have to have order.”

“he doesn’t want to take part in any waragain,” Karl reported; “he has had enough.”

ample, “is now a Nazi because of his job, but only for show.”Peine’s barber was in the SA, but Karl thought for “professionalreasons” only.

what he saw was an increas-ingly Nazified community in which neighbors now took notice ofKarl’s behavior and club members adjusted their own. What Karlwas resisting as he stood alongside his wife was the pressure to con-form, if only for the sake of appearances.