Lecture offers views on
Hitler
By Anna Herkamp
Staff
Writer
In his talk in the Krannert Auditorium Wednesday
night, Robert Gellately challenged many modern views of Nazi Germany,
especially the subject of how Hitler rose to power.
Gellately’s views have introduced an idea
that few historians have researched or investigated in detail —
how public opinion played a role in the way Hitler rose to power.
Gellately is the head of the Holocaust studies
at Clark University. He is the author of five books, including his latest,
"Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany," which
will be released in May.
The subject of the book is how the public regarded
concentration camps during the rise of the Nazi party.
Gellately’s thesis is that Hitler was immensely
concerned with what the public thought of his rise to power. He explored
the major question that many historians have examined — how the
people of Germany during Nazi occupation allowed the dictatorship to
come to power, despite the crimes against humanity committed in the
concentration camps.
"The growing lack of moral concern led to
profound brutalization," Gellately said.
However, Gellately’s research suggests not
that the Nazis necessarily hid information from the press, but that
they gave the press specific information. He said most historians will
agree that the newspapers were indeed guided and perhaps censored, but
what he is interested in is what was actually put into the media.
Part of the desensitizing, he said, was the representation
of the camps in the media.
It is no secret, he said, that the German people
knew about the rise of the camps, but what is important is what they
were actually told and what they thought of the "social outsiders,"
such as Jews.
Gellately’s research has centered on the German
newspapers of the day and what the public must have been made aware
of during the Nazis’ rise to power and World War II.
Gellately concluded that the citizens of Germany
prided the new system of government under Hitler’s rule. The concentration
camps were not hidden from public knowledge. In fact, people had to
know about the camps’ existence, he said.
"Every major industry from BMW to Mercedes
Benz used concentration camp labor," Gellately said.
It was impossible for the people not to know what
was going on in their country, he said.
Another point Gellately made was that terror was
not as prevalent in the streets of Nazi Germany as the history books
say. A relatively small percentage of the population had actual confrontations
with the Gestapo. Toward the end of the war, however, the numbers of
people accused of being unsympathetic to the Third Reich were growing
steadily.
The number of people who were being killed in concentration
camps grew exponentially until the end of the war. However, people still
knew and, despite the death that was all around them, they continued
to take pride in the Third Reich.
George Horwich, a retired professor of economics,
said the presentation was excellent because it was a good description
of how genocide can be sold to the most advanced and important people
of a society.
"It was never told so well," he said.
Joseph Haberer, a retired professor of political
science, said he was impressed with the lecture; however, he didn’t
agree with everything Gellately said because the issue of how much the
German people really knew about what went on is a large and complex
topic.
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