s aresult, Victor Klemperer could repeatedly “run into” one of Hitler’sReichstag speeches. “I could not get away from it for an hour. Firstfrom an open shop, then in the bank, then from a shop again.”66Radio as well as film turned Nazism into spectacle.

Young people don’t walk anymore; they march.” “Ev-erywhere friends are professing themselves for Hitler.” To livein Nazi Germany, Ebermayer wrote, was to “become ever morelonely.”

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.

In this case it was the Nuremberg Laws, which distinguished Ger-man citizens from Jewish noncitizens: “hunting down innocentpeople is expanded a thousand times,” he raged; “hate is sown amillionfold.”

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.”

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.”

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 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

“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.