Impacto ambiental

The Volksgemeinschaft project served as the social framework of interaction between state and society, and at the same time – in the words of the Head of the Information Offi ce of the Institute for Study of Labour of the German Labour Front (Arbeits-

wissenschaftliches Institut der Deutschen Arbeitsfront) Richard Bargel – gave social

policy a new rationale. The Nazi reinterpretation of social policy and its tasks in society was thus most often formulated in contrast to the original Weimar system: “National Socialist social policy does not seek to provide a medicine for the suffer- ing poor, but seeks to ensure that anyone who fulfi ls his obligations to the national community does not fall into poverty.”33 _{Social policy ought not to be a mere safety}

valve for social tension in society but should help to make sure that such tension did not arise in the fi rst place. The preventive dimension of social policy should not consign it to a secondary position vis-à-vis economic policy; however, on the contrary, social policy should be a distinctive part of economic policy.34 _{This prin-}

ciple makes all the clearer the emphasis placed by Nazis on social policy and its implementation even at a time when the war was at the forefront of attention: “For our state it is self-evident that even though there is a war on, social policy cannot be suspended, and care for the workers must be maintained.”35

“Workers” played a fundamental role in this process and the word “work” itself became the most important term in social policy. It rapidly made an appearance in legislation, and this indirectly confi rmed that the Nazi assumption of power

33 BARGEL, Richard: Neue deutsche Sozialpolitik: Ein Bericht über Grundgedanken, Aufbau und Leistungen. Berlin, Verlag der Deutschen Arbeitsfront 1944, p. 8.

34 See GERHARDT, Johannes: Deutsche Arbeits- und Sozialpolitik. Berlin, Duncker & Humblot 1939, p. 2.

35 MÜNZ, Ludwig: Kriegsverpfl ichtete Sozialpolitik. In: Monatshefte für NS-Sozialpolitik, Vol. 7, No. 21–24 (1940), p. 249.

was regarded as the start of a new epoch of social policy not only in terms of new institutions but also for labour law. One key step was the Law Regulating National Work (Gesetz zur Ordnung der nationalen Arbeit), promulgated in January 1934, which regulated conditions in industrial concerns and introduced the Führer prin- ciple into their internal organisation.36

In the new system, social policy was conceived as a form of compensation for work well done, for service to the “national community.” This kind of social policy was supposed to have society-wide potential and, according to Richard Bargel, represented a major innovation: the policy would not focus simply on the poor but would apply to the whole nation (das gesamte Volk). Its rationale would be to achieve the best possible living standards in a way that would not just provide the population with benefi ts but would essentially challenge every member of the community to take his life into his own hands in a responsible spirit.37 _{The crea-}

tors of the Nazi conception of social policy wanted to use the policy to overcome rather than simply alleviate social ills and planned to build new social conditions, primarily but not exclusively on the principle of racial “fi tness.”

In the Nazi conception, key terms were “work” (Arbeit) and “performance” (Leis-

tung). These were less excluding concepts than “race,” and ostensibly offered all

“workers” a chance to enter into the new social framework and gain a solid standing within it, but of course racial unfi tness and inability to work were criteria for social exclusion and aroused a similar antipathy among Nazis. The so-called performance principle – i.e. proportionate and effective efforts to achieve adequate performance, therefore, became an important element of the new social order, which was itself to be realised through work: “When the German fi nds his place in the national community on the basis of work and performance, this will necessarily also lead to a new ethical valuation of work, which […] is the greater part of the path on which the German is learning to develop the quality of his personal attributes.”38 _Hence

in the characterisation of German society, the term Leistungsgemeinschaft (perfor- mance community) became just as important as Volksgemeinschaft, and implied a certain degree of competition between members of the community. The concept of “competition” not only held out a promise of success to effi cient workers, but was a constitutive element in the vision of a community in which class and inher- ited privilege were no longer supposed to play any part.39 _{While it was the task}

of the state to offer work, the duty (Pfl icht zur Arbeit) and right (Recht auf Arbeit) of the individual was to carry it out with all his or her strength in awareness that he or she was thereby contributing to the success of the whole national collective.

36 Gesetz zur Ordnung der nationalen Arbeit vom 20 Januar 1934. In: Deutsches Reichsgesetz-

blatt, Vol. 1 (1934), p. 122 (see http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=dra&datum=

1934&page=159&size=45, downloaded 15 January 2013). 37 BARGEL, R.: Neue deutsche Sozialpolitik, p. 10.

38 Ibid., p. 12.

39 See GEYER, Martin H.: Soziale Sicherheit und wirtschaftliche Fortschritt: Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Arbeitsideologie und Sozialpolitik im “Dritten Reich.” In: Geschichte

Work performance thus represented an important prerequisite for membership of the “national community.” Anyone who was unwilling or unable to work was not contributing in any form to the growth of national prosperity and so automatically excluded himself/herself from the project of the Volksgemeinschaft.

In practice, this egalitarianism promoted in the propaganda of the period in the context of the “national community” was essentially incompatible with the perfor- mance principle. In fact, the rating of individual performance led to reproduction of wage differentials not only between priority branches of industry (such as metal industry) and consumer industry or agriculture, but inside the individual industrial concerns. Striving for the best possible performance in the name of the “national community” in reality meant improving one’s own socio-economic position. In fact, this eroded collective values, but still served the basic aim of the creators of the concept, i.e. improved performance.

While work and its distribution were more or less at the top of the agenda, Nazi social policy also showed an intense concern with some other social issues. Family policy encroached deeply into the private sphere and involved an interest in the upbringing of children from birth to maturity, as well as appealing to women to fulfi l their role in society as primarily mothers and wives. In this context, securing the future of the German nation was the highest priority and systematic measures were taken to increase German birth rates. The prioritised areas of social policy in Nazi Germany were work, family and (for associated reasons) health policy.40 _Else-

where the regime withdrew into the background, as in the case of housing policy and construction.41 _{Any impression of a lack of clarity about the nature and content}

of social policy under the Nazis is therefore superfi cial. Social policy in the National Socialist interpretation represented “the set of all measures taken and efforts made by the state and movements to ensure that all the vital forces of the nation should be maintained, secured and strengthened.”42 _{This defi nition formulated at the time}

contains all the basic parameters of the social policy implemented in Germany in the years 1933–1945. It indicates that the actor of social policy was not only the state as the main provider of protection (the relevant ministries and lower organs), but also other subjects or organisations affi liated to the Nazi movement were engaged in these tasks (union organisations, national volunteer initiatives and suchlike). In particular, the state which had full powers over the distribution of support and care relied on other subjects in the fi eld of social policy. The second and probably more important element in Heinrich Schulz’s defi nition is the term “nation.” It

40 See e.g. MOUTON, Michelle: From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and

Nazi Family Policy, 1918–1945. New York, Cambridge University Press 2007; ECKART,

Wolfgang Uwe: Medizin in der NS-Diktatur: Ideologie, Praxis, Folgen. Wien – Köln/R. – Wei- mar, Böhlau 2012.

41 See RECKER, Marie-Luise: Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich. In: POHL, Harms (ed.): Staat-

liche, städtische, betriebliche und kirchliche Sozialpolitik vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart.

Stuttgart, Steiner 1991, pp. 245–267.

42 SCHULZ, Heinrich: Sozialpolitik im neuen Deutschland. Berlin, Deutsche Informations-Stel-

was members of the nation who were supposed to have a claim to social security and the benefi ts provided by the state and other organisations. It is precisely here that the key question of the main factor determining the character of the system of social support and welfare arises: who can be defi ned as the object of social policy?

In other words, we need to consider the reference group of recipients of support and welfare provisions, and these were members of the German nation, or more precisely, the “national community”: “As is well-known, like all German political action, German social policy is founded on the national principle. This means that the task of social policy is to create and secure a social order for the nation corre- sponding to its vital laws and its character.”43 _{German social policy in the period of}

National Socialism cannot then be equated with the modern concept of the social state in the sense of general and systematic improvement of social conditions and the prevention or amelioration of the social consequences of ill-health, old age and so on.44 _{It is true that a system of social support and care existed in both Nazi}

Germany and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, but the highly differen- tial policy towards different social and ethnic groups and its consequences means that a modern defi nition is wholly misleading when we are seeking to describe the aims of the Nazi regime.45

The rationale of the social policy practiced by the Nazis cannot be grasped if we ignore its image at the time, the way it was perceived and its interpretation by Nazi social policy experts and theorists. These specialists attributed great importance to social policy as an integral autonomous part of state policy, and as a primary component of policy equal in importance to any other major policy area. They saw their efforts as all directed to two basic goals – the preservation and “purifi cation” of the national spirit and the strengthening of the defensive capacity of the state. These goals, to which Nazi ideas of social policy were bound, were considered to require programmes to improve and maximise not only the health of German chil- dren and young people, but also the fi tness of the nation as a whole, and thorough education in the ethos of “national community.”46 _{It should be reiterated that while}

the primary aim of Nazi measures on original German territory was improving the living conditions exclusively of members of the “national community,” the situation in the occupied and often ethnically heterogeneous territories was more complicated and less transparent. In any case, however, Nazi social policy was deployed to the full as an ingenious tool of preference and persecution (to use Jakub Rákosník’s formulation in the context of a different period47_).

43 BARGEL, R.: Neue deutsche Sozialpolitik, p. 5.

44 See TOMEŠ, Igor: Úvod do teorie a metodologie sociální politiky [Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Social Policy]. Praha, Portál 2010, p. 27.

45 See also BÜHLER, Theodor: Deutsche Sozialwirtschaft: Ein Überblick über die sozialen Auf-

gaben der Volkswirtschaft. Stuttgart, Kohlhammer 1943; IDEM: Von der Utopie zum Sozial- staat. Stuttgart, Kohlhammer 1942.

46 See SCHUHMANN, Walter – BRUCKER, Ludwig: Sozialpolitik im neuen Staat. Berlin, Willy Rink und Bernard Krause (Verlag für Sozialpolitik) 1934, p. 15.

Nazi social policy had a dual character, combining ostensible integrating potential with targeted social discrimination and even exclusion. The positive and negative sides of the social policy were deliberately spliced. The historian Ulrich Herbert gives an example of interest-free loans for young couples about to marry: to qualify for the loans, the couples had to undergo medical examination to check whether they were free of a list of inherited or other diseases. Motivated by the prospect of fi nancial benefi ts in their fi rst married years, some who took the test were success- ful, but for others a failed test could lead to prohibition of the marriage and even an offi cial “recommendation” that they undergo sterilisation.48

The main distinctive characteristic of social policy qualifi ed by the adjective Nazi, then, was the racially defi ned community of persons who were the object of the policy. It thus had two typical and complementary lines. On the one hand, it pro- vided targeted support for racially “valuable” members of the “national community”: the state was concerned to improve their living and working conditions, supported their families and sought to raise their birth-rate to ensure that this part of society grew in numbers. On the other hand, the state took an opposite attitude to the racially “less valuable” part of the population, deliberately neglecting their social claims and even physically eliminating them.49 _{Nonetheless, the minimally racially}

“fi t” could perhaps hope at least to reduce the degree of their social exclusion by certain kinds of work or service. The study of practice introduced on the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, where (as Czech historiography often reminds us) the stage was set for a trial of strength and national loyalty between Czechs and Germans – may suggest how far this possibility was real and how rigid or permeable the border of social segregation was.