Indeed, only a few weeks after the atrocities began, a law was passed that forbade anyone, under pain of severe penalties, to claim, even in the privacy of their own home, that atrocities were taking place.
Of course, it was not the intention to keep the atrocities secret. In that case they would not have served their purpose, which was to induce general fear, alarm and submission. On the the contrary, the purpose was to intensify the terror by cloaking it in secrecy and making even talking about it dangerous. An open declaration of what was happening in SA cellars and concentration camps in a public speech or in the press - might still have led to desperate resistance, even in Germany. The secret whispered rumours, 'Be careful, my friend! Do you know what happened to X?' were much more effective in breaking people's backbones. [...]
People began to join in - at first mostly from fear. After they had participated, they no longer wanted to do so just from fear. That would have been mean and contemptible. So the necessary ideology was supplied. That was the spiritual basis of the victory of the National Socialist revolution.
True, something further was necessary to achieve all this. That was the cowardly treachery of all party and organisational leaders, to whom the 56 per cent of the population who had voted against the Nazis on the 5th of March had entrusted themselves. This terrible and decisive event was not much noticed by the outside world. Naturally, the Nazis had no interest in drawing attention to it, since it would considerably devalue their 'victory', and as for the traitors themselves: well, of course, they did not want attention drawn to it. Nevertheless, it is finally only this betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight.
The betrayal was complete, extending from Left to Right.[...]
The great middle-class, Catholic party, Zentrum, which in the last few years had attracted the backing of more and more middle-class Protestants, had already fallen in March. It was this party that supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that 'legalised' Hitler's dictatorship. In this it followed its leader, the ex-Reichschancellor Bruning. [...]
Finally, the German nationalists, the right-wing conservatives, who venerated 'honour' and 'heroism' as the central characteristics of their programme. Oh God, what an infinitely dishonourable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterwards! One might at least have expected that, once their claim in January proved illusory - that they had 'tamed' the Nazis and 'rendered them harmless' - they would act as a 'brake' and 'prevent the worst'. Not a bit of it. They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of the Jews, the persecution of Christians. They were not even bothered when their own party was prohibited and their own members arrested. [...]
There was not one single example of energetic defence, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. [...]
This terrible moral bankruptcy of the opposition leadership is a fundamental characteristic of the March 'revolution' of 1933. It made the Nazi victory exceedingly easy. On the other hand, it also sheds doubt on the strength and durability of that victory. The swastika has not been stamped on the Germans as though they were a firm, resistant but malleable mass, but as though they were a formless, yielding pulp that can equally easily take a different form. Admittedly, March 1933 has left open the question as to whether it is worth the effort to try and reshape it. The moral inadequacy of the German character shown in that month is too monstrous to suppose that history will not one day call them to account for it. [...]
It was out of this treachery of its opponents, and the feeling of helplessness, weakness and disgust that it aroused, that the Third Reich was born. In the elections of the 5th of March the Nazis had remained a minority. If there had been elections three weeks later, the German people would almost certainly have given them a true majority. This was not just a result of the terror, or intoxication... The decisive cause was anger and disgust with the cowardly treachery of their own leadership. That had become for a moment stronger than the rage and hate against the real enemy. [...]
Hundreds of thousands, who had up till then been opponents, joined the Nazi Party in March 1933. The Nazis called them the 'casualties of March' and treated them with suspicion and contempt. The workers also left their Social Democratic and Communist unions in equally large numbers and joined Nazi Betriebszellen (factory cells) or the SA. They did it for many reasons, often for a whole tangled web of them; but however hard one looks, one will not find a single solid, positive, durable reason among them - not one that can pass muster.
In each individual case the process of becoming a Nazi showed the unmistakable symptoms of nervous collapse.
The simplest and, if you looked deeper, nearly always the most basic reason was fear. Join the thugs to avoid being beaten up.
Less clear was a kind of exhilaration, the intoxication of unity, the magnetism of the masses. Many also felt a need for revenge against those who had abandoned them. Then there was a peculiarly German line of thought: 'All the predictions of the opponents of the Nazis have not come true. They said the Nazis could not win. Now they have won. Therefore the opponents were wrong. So the Nazis must be right.'
There was also (particularly among intellectuals) the belief that they could change the face of the Nazi Party by becoming a member, even now shift its direction. Then of course many just jumped on the bandwagon, wanted to be part of a perceived success.
Finally, among the more primitive, inarticulate, simpler souls there was a process that might have taken place in mythical times when a beaten tribe abandoned its faithless god and accepted the god of the victorious tribe as its patron. Saint Marx, in whom one had always believed, had not helped. Saint Hitler was obviously more powerful. So let's destroy the images of Saint Marx on the altars and replace them with images of Saint Hitler. Let us learn to pray: 'It is the Jews' fault' rather than 'It is the capitalists' fault'. Perhaps that will redeem us.
The sequence of events is, as you see, not so unnatural. It is wholly within the normal range of psychology, and it helps to explain the almost inexplicable.
The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called 'breeding'. This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial. It is missing in the Germans. As a nation they are soft, unreliable and without backbone. That was shown in March 1933. At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown.
The result of this million-fold nervous breakdown is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world. (Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, excerpts)
