Everyday Life in the Third Reich

[MedleyMisty]

I picked this book up at the used bookstore a few days ago. Here's the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Germany-Bernt-Engelmann/dp/0394524497

Here are some quotes.

"Of course if you look at the total picture, the working class gained nothing at all from Nazi rule: the unions were smashed right away..."

"And the real income of workers and white-collar employees steadily declined, while income from capital invested and factory ownership increased sharply. 'Increases not by hourly wage but through higher productivity' was the 'iron law' Hitler proclaimed. In those days, when wages were based largely on units produced, that meant the workers could earn higher wages only by working faster and for longer hours."

"In their public proclamations the Nazi leaders all declared their solidarity with the workers and portrayed themselves as their benefactors. But their actual policies were quite another story."

"According to the 'Fuhrer principle' the entrepreneurs were therefore 'sole masters in their realms of activity,' to whom their employees owed 'absolute fealty'. There was no longer such a thing as a works council, no youth representation, no forum for workers' participation."

"...wages, production quotas, overtime, and deductions from pay were dictated from on high."


Some food for thought.

[midnight]

1. Naomi Klein has been signaling this problem for a while...

It's just to many are having a hard time trying to see the forest for all the trees syndrome....

[villager]

4. Boy, that's for sure

n/t

[soryang]

2. The military rearmament and then the war effort took all...

Eventually, the workers daily caloric intake was rationed. Slave labor was imported from the occupied territorities. In the end, only German workers in heavy industry received a ration of protein and fat. Foreign workers, captured pows, concentration camp workers were worked while they starved to death. The famed TODT organization led by Speer, Himmlers SS, the Penemunde group (recruited by the US), used corporal punishment, starvation diets, concentration camps, and summary executions to keep the war machine moving. Farmers starved while their crops were requisitioned.

This is the direction we are headed. If you think not, please note that we are in the early stages, often compared to the late Weimar period where the "liberal democracy" became fizated on austerity budgets to fix their horrendous balance of payments deficit. Sound familiar? Read Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction, the definitive economic history of the Third Reich.

[Populist_Prole]

3. Stumbled across this site about life in the 3rd reich

Lots of interesting reading. It's a historical site not political, so the info is more factual and prosaic.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewforum.php?f=46&sid=67d3993be037b2c13942ba5ddd7d1cb5

Amazing how we don't notice the incremental ism to fascism despite the history not all that long ago. We're too "comfortable" I think.

[jwirr]

5. Terrifying.