this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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What was life like for the "average" person living in Nazi Germany (lemmy.zip)
submitted 3 days ago by ramble81@lemmy.zip to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
50 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

We’re seeing in the US that majority of the people are being apathetic or ignorant to what is going on as it doesn’t directly affect them, and others are pointing out that we’re on the same route as Germany. Once Hitler seized power and then later when the county split, what was life like for those people that didn’t say or do anything? Assuming they weren’t in a targeted class, did they just go on and live their lives normally? I know there was a drop in the quality of living for them, but did they not know any better? Was it a state of constant fear, or was there “no war in Ba Sing Se”

I’m just curious what majority of the population here would potentially experience.

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[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 92 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i know this from my grandma (other grandma didn't even want to talk about it): it started out okayish, but soon things became super strict. lots of propaganda films. nazi stuff crept into everything. school etc.. books got burned. different opinions forbidden. no free speech. misogyny. disabled ppl were killed. ppl were afraid to be suspected of anything. trials weren't fair, if you even got one. the nazis printed money and inflation started to suck. many businesses were nationalised. slave workers were being used, taking peoples jobs.

then the war started. every familiy lost someone. bombs were dropped on cities. ppl had to go into bunkers often. (my grandma barely made it once and shrapnell hurt her hand.) at peak wartime men had to have 8 kids to not be conscripted as cannon fodder. ppl became even more poor than before the war, because many male workers were gone. brutal inflation. kids stepped on mines while playing. at that point the last idiot knew hitler was a loony, but almost nobody dared say anything, because it meant very likely torture and death.

when the US troops arrived, it was a big relief. finally ppl could speak their mind again. women flocked to the US troops, because there had been a general lack of men. many women were young widows, too. my grandma was very young, so nobody actually told her, but she suspected women wearing multiple US wrist watches were paid like that by US troops for sex.

[–] Luouth@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What a testament... let's hope that story isn't flipped Germany<->US in the not so distant future...

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 41 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Early on and up to at least the start of the war, I believe things got better for the "average" German - because the State was operating on stolen wealth and fraudulent loans, while serving the needs of fewer people (read: not "real" Germans).

[–] Disinformation_Bot@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

Analogous to how the US has been plundering the world

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Well, the average people from then, they don't live anymore in this world.

My mom, and my mom in law are still here. Both were very little children then, born in 41 and 43. For them, the only memories are the end of the war, and then the time after.

So, what I heard from other people before:

It was always fear. The Nazi's methods were violent, unfair, inhuman and their power came from creating fear.

Of course the "average" people were not all affected equally. My folks all lived in very rural areas, and there things worked different. Fear was transported indirectly, by some "stronger" Nazis who controlled "medium" Nazis, who were then set to oversee "normal" people in some part of the country.

people that didn’t say or do anything?

Not existent after some point.

Everybody was required to actively support Hitler, for example with the infamous greeting. When you were greeted with "Heil Hitler", then, in the beginning, you had a chance to respond something like "yea, it's ok..." or "you can lick mine, too" (and of course, normal people said things like "Have a nice day"), but later, if you did respond with anything else than the same "Heil Hitler", and loudly and clearly, you could get shot right there on the spot.

Of course there were still some exceptions, but therefore you had to know very good who that other person was, and what was possible to do then.

In these rural areas, what many people did was simply hiding when the "wrong" people were in town.

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

This is absolutely inaccurate and borderline revisionism. Germans were not held at gunpoint to heil Hitler or risk being shot, the average german was perfectly happy and enjoyed the comforts naziism brought them. This inaccurate portrayal does nothing but abstract naziism to be an entity that only exists under specific horrifying conditions and not the reality that for the vast majority of Germans they were happy to be nazis.

Please go read about nazi germany before you make up some fanfic about how it was just like the wolfenstein games. "They Thought They were free" is a book entirely centered around the experiences of the average German during the nazi regime and not one word of your description is in his book.

From Milton Mayer:

These ten men were not men of distinction. They were not men of influence. They were not opinion-makers. Nobody ever gave them a free sample of anything on the ground that what they thought of it would increase the sales of the product. Their importance lay in the fact that God—as Lincoln said of the common people—had made so many of them. In a nation of seventy million, they were the sixty-nine million plus. They were the Nazis, the little men to whom, if ever they voiced their own views outside their own circles, bigger men politely pretended to listen without ever asking them to elaborate.

Only one of my ten Nazi friends saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect. This was Hildebrandt, the teacher. And even he then believed, and still believes, in part of its program and practice, “the democratic part.” The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Please go read about nazi germany before you make up some fanfic

Now there's only one of us telling bull & fiction. I don't know your games and I stay with what my relatives and some neighbors have told me.

Ok, not many were shot in such a way, or in worse ways, but when it happened, then it got told, and people knew who the victim was, and most times people knew who the shooter was. And they remembered long after. Even I was told some of the names, but I didn't know the people, because it was so long before me.

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago

Im saying your family stories are probably not as accurate as historians and authors who spoke to Germans in Germany in the 1950s about being nazis. Im very sure you're not lying about that being what they told you.

I'm calling you fantastical and wrong because painting a picture of nazi germany as a nation captive to a despot without any agency is holocaust revisionism. To say the German people were prisoners to the nazi regime is objectively false and all the documentation and research around the subject shows as much. They were very pleased with the reich and only started to sour once the war came home and started to get in the way of Germany's greatness. Please read the book I recommended. Anecdotal evidence doesn't prove this point wrong.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

That's more or less what I've read.

In the movies it's portrayed as if Nazis made everything clean, orderly, "civilized", but the unfavorable people were removed and killed, slave labor was used and so on, and all of it in the atmosphere of "civilization and normalcy".

It's probably to communicate the shock, but in fact things were like you describe them.

Nazis would rule in a medieval way, so to say, minus divine right to rule. Random murders (again, without normalcy or formality, just so, and quite brutal sometimes), torture locations in buildings with windows always open amid crowded enough places, where sounds of someone being beaten to death were heard day and night, such stuff.

The other guy is right too, most people learned to perceive this as normal and not everyone was killed for being not loyal enough, just a few.

Like in today's Russia not every 16 years old schoolgirl gets into prison for 8 months for blowing up a petard in a public place, the number of whose who does is not big enough to imprint in the public that this even happens, but enough to spread non-verbal fear. Similar with posting a random protest text, or saying something about war, etc. That's called making an example.

OK, Russia's regime has that innovation of doing these things covertly enough for there to not be open intimidation. Cause open intimidation causes public reaction more than they need. They are more careful.

[–] BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing.

I'm guessing it felt a lot like the video games and books describe living in a fascist regime

Soldiers are everywhere, and you do your best to not stand out for any reason.

You are always worried about someone turning you in on false accusations.

You have to hide your joy, and save it for only the deepest parts of your home.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Soldiers are everywhere,

No soldiers everywhere. Only some men from "the party" = the Nazis. These were more or less "normal" people before, but they were given power, and they let power corrupt them.

The soldiers (=the sons of the families, no volunteers!) were all far away, at war, and everybody was hoping that the would come back home alive.

and you do your best to not stand out for any reason.

Yes.

[–] BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Ah, good insight about the Nazi party men with power, not soldiers everywhere. Thanks.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

My grandma had written some memoirs that of course also show her life in Nazi Germany. I haven't read them yet because Long Covid has killed my ability to read long texts. My parents are trying to find a way to make AI read the book for me. No idea whether I will be able to handle an audio book.

Anyways, supposedly there are some nasty revelations in there. And the other relatives don't want to publish it. At least not without changing names. I would rather publish it for free as is. If I happen to get my way I will post a link here. But I doubt that is going to happen.

All I know about that time is that my grandpa was an influential music teacher. And I always figured that at least kept him from having to enlist. But of course what really happened is more nuanced.

I wish I had read that when I still could. At least I have her art I collected at https://brigitte-tantau.de/.

Edit: I looked at the table of contents and it looks like the music teacher was her second husband whom she met after the war.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Actually, thanks to @zelmon64@programming.dev recommending prism glasses I was able to read a little bit of her book.

I started somewhere in 1932 and am now in 1934. She came from a relatively poor family where they were used to make do. Unemployment was high, overall prospects were bad. She met the man who would become her first husband. He sometimes wrote theatre critics for a small struggling newspaper that often was banned for publishing anti-constitutional articles.

When in 1933 the Nazis took power they saw it as a positive thing and had hope for the future. The newspaper was picked up to be the prime paper in the area and so they could pay him more and his personal situation improved massively. He proposed to my grandma and gave her a ring with a swastika as a present.

Their interpersonal relationship crumbled a bit because he would spend so much time with his friends and neglect her. She moved away for a bit to get some distance and evaluate their relationship. This was planned for a year. But after a few weeks he surprised her with a visit and managed to sway her into marrying him for real.

He had left his job at the newspaper and become a Gauwart at the organisation Kraft durch Freude. Basically a regional manager of this Nazi organisation that is supposed to promote Nazism to the people by organising vacations and leisure events for the general public.

In 1934 they married and lived a nice life. The salary of Gauwarts was reduced from 1000 to 600 Marks and he was devastated but she managed to pick him up by reminding him that she was used to living with little money. But all in all their life seemed to be great. Better than before. And finally a baby was on the way, lifting their spirits again.

In all these little stories not much of politics is to see. A cousin emigrated to the US with her Jewish husband. A famous actor she knew also moved to the US and got a new first name that's not "Adolf" to avoid association.

But if I didn't know this was all real I would think I was reading a good novel with some subtle foreshadowing. I'm really on edge to find out how the upcoming war will affect them.

But all in all it doesn't feel like what is happening in the US right now. No idea if that is due to the better media connections we have nowadays or if I'm still too early in Germany's history or if it's because people are more aware in the US because they actually did learn from history.

I'm especially missing the positivity from the US. But that might also be because Lemmy is more of a left leaning echo chamber.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I should have read on. A few sentences later she wrote that they loved the military parades. It gave them back some lost pride after the first world war. They liked Hitler. They wanted a hero to look up to. It reminded her of all the books they read at school, also praising all the great heroes of history.

At the time Hitler invading small countries and fighting communists was seen as "liberation". But a full blown war was looming on the horizon already and they were afraid of that.

But in the end life went on. With all its ups and downs. The husband was singing racist songs but that was more an annoying occurrence than something outrageous. He took part in military training, mostly for sport. He quit his Nazi job after an accident he felt responsible for (but actually wasn't because he was at said training when it happened).

The worst thing the Nazis did to them was to restrict the name of their second child. They couldn't use the name they had chosen because it was of Jewish origin. So the poor husband had to think of a new one at the office on the spot.

And then the war started and he was conscripted. They were afraid of bombs and gas and she prepared their apartment for that. He did come back once when his father had a fatal accident. Everyone at the hospital was nice to him because he was in uniform.

Later when the bombs did fall in 1941 she had to find a new place to live for herself and her two children. It was a normal thing for many Germans. The trains were super full, especially in the lowest class which was the only thing she could afford. Luckily she had rich relatives who took them in.

So life went on. Funnily enough her rich aunt (?) wasn't racist but classist. The children were allowed to play with the Baltic children but not with the children of a waiter. Only where aunty couldn't see them. My grandma wrote letters to her husband and he wrote back to her and sent her dried flowers from Norway where he was relatively safe.

Fleeing from bombs into cellars became part of life. People helped each other survive where they could. Family members started to fall in the war. And eventually her husband as well, a few days before he was supposed to come home from his safe post.

I'm tired. I'll continue reading tomorrow.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Fucking shit, I should not have read on. Now I'm in pain from overexertion. Fuck Long Covid! Fuck ME/CFS!

[–] Allemaniac@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

rest now weary reader, you did good to inform some lemmists on the reality of living in a world war. Very interesting read, many thanks! also for typing it out in such length

also your grandma Brigitte did some very well done paintings!

[–] DanWolfstone@leminal.space 2 points 1 day ago

Thank you for reading and reciting what you have, I would love to read more if you have the time, will, or strength to provide it

[–] TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 18 points 3 days ago

Behind the Bastards made a two parter about this

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The sad reality is that although there were some dissenters, the majority of the people in the country supported the Nazis because they actually believed it, they were taken in by the propaganda, which is insidious and ubiquitous. Humans find it easy to hate an out group, forming an in group. Dehumanising others who are different from us is a natural part of human psychology, and it's an achievement that in the modern world we have achieved a widespread morality which is so accepting - although obviously we still have far to go.

[–] vxx@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

The "majority" brought the NSDAP to 29% in elections, which was enough for them to take control.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

During what time? The answer for 1934 is quite different from that for 1944.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

How did it progress over that time.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Well, entire books have been written about this topic, so it's difficult to answer this in a Lemmy comment. The main division is between the pre-war years and the WW2 years. War is rarely popular, especially not total war. But a dictatorship can be popular if it can convince the public that it's serving the interests of the people, and that was certainly the case in the 1930s in Germany.

Your OP mentions that "there was a drop in the quality of living for them"; I don't think this is true. People (everywhere) overall tend to care more about economics and personal well-being than civil liberties, and for many ordinary German people, Hitler's policies (before the war) were (or at least: were perceived as) beneficial in terms of personal well-being. We find it obvious in hindsight that passing laws such as "the executive branch gets to pass any law it likes including laws that violate the constitution" or "all parties except the NSDAP are hereby banned" are awful examples of authoritarianism, it was not obvious to the people living at the time who hadn't been used to a parliamentary republic for a long time yet.

Here are a few links that may help your understanding:

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Looks up Time Ghost on YouTube. They have tons and tons of information, including videos about the human side of WW2 and living in Nazi Germany.

Anyhoo, both my in laws nearly starved to death. I don't know what happened to their parents. Since it is never mentioned, I'm guessing they weren't exactly in the resistance.

[–] executivechimp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 days ago

Well it didn't go great

[–] BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world -2 points 3 days ago

You make it appear you have knowledge, but you don't want to share on the social network. Hmm.

How should we address you so you feel like we are worthy of learning from you?

[–] 000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago

I would also recommend "Travellers of the Third Reich" by Julia Boyd

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Klemperer's "Lingua Tertii Imperii" is a good read. It's not all, just a bit to add.

[–] Allemaniac@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

"They Thought They Were Free" is also a fantastic literature about the NS-Regime

[–] SolidShake@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Well. Kind of like the average life in the US right now.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I've often thought about it.

Generally probably you just slowly learn what not to say or do to not get in trouble and keep your head down and hope you get through it.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOsQDFuB3bqczBIz-a66NvwaOBSyiCo9z

Colditz is a nice show. The Kommandant isn't a Nazi, but a member of the Reichswehr, and often finds himself in the difficult position of doing the right thing or following orders.

It's a bit more nuanced than when Finn in the new Star Wars shows changes sides from the empire to the rebels and two seconds later is blasting his former mates accompanied by loud "yee-haas".

[–] grasshopper_mouse@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

There's a book called The Black Eagle Inn by Christoph Fischer that kinda delves into this. I read it because I was interested in the same thing in terms of the "average" person living in Nazi Germany, but man it was a slog to get through and it's only 300 pages. I don't know if it's just poorly translated or what, but the writing is awful. I'm sure there are better books out there, but you might want to give the book a try.

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I don’t think the majority of people are ignorant or apathetic. I haven't met a single person who was either of those. Seems like everyone is pretty solidly on one side or the other. I think most simply feel powerless to do anything about it, which is very different than apathetic or ignorant. I suspect that was true in Germany back then as well. Due to a lack of access to open media, many probably felt they were one against 1000 or something.