Volksgemeinschaft

Volksgemeinschaft (German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlksɡəˌmaɪnʃaft] ⓘ) is a German expression meaning "people's community",[1][2] "folk community",[3] "national community",[4] or "racial community",[5] depending on the translation of its component term Volk (cognate with the English word "folk"). This expression originally became popular during World War I as Germans rallied in support of the war, and many experienced "relief that at one fell swoop all social and political divisions could be solved in the great national equation".[3] The idea of a Volksgemeinschaft was rooted in the notion of uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose,[6] and the hope that national unity would "obliterate all conflicts - between employers and employees, town and countryside, producers and consumers, industry and craft".[3]

After Germany's defeat in World War I, the concept of Volksgemeinschaft remained popular especially on the right wing of German politics, in opposition to the class struggle advocated by Marxist parties like the Social Democrats and the Communists.[7] The German Conservative Party became the German National People's Party and the National Liberal Party reorganized itself into the German People's Party, with the new names intended partly as references to Volksgemeinschaft.[7]

The concept was notoriously embraced by the newly founded Nazi Party in the 1920s, and eventually became strongly associated with Nazism after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. In the Nazi vision of Volksgemeinschaft, society would continue to be organized into classes (based upon talent, property, or profession), but there would be no class conflict, because a common national consciousness would inspire the different economic and social classes to live together harmoniously and work for the nation.[8] There was also an important racial aspect to the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft: only "people of Aryan blood" could be members.[9]

  1. ^ Fritzsche, Peter (2008). Life and Death in the Third Reich. Harvard University Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-674-02793-0.
  2. ^ Norbert Götz. Ungleiche Geschwister: Die Konstruktion von nationalsozialistischer Volksgemeinschaft und schwedischem Volksheim. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2001.
  3. ^ a b c Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 44.
  4. ^ Timothy W. Mason. Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and the National Community. Berg Publishers, 1993. Editor's Note, p. xvii.
  5. ^ Joseph W. Bendersky. A Concise History of Nazi Germany. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014. p. 32.
  6. ^ Fritzsche, p. 39.
  7. ^ a b Conan Fischer. The Rise of the Nazis. Manchester University Press, 1995. p. 36.
  8. ^ Joseph W. Bendersky. A Concise History of Nazi Germany. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014. p. 35.
  9. ^ Diemut Majer, Peter Thomas Hill, Edward Vance Humphrey. "Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939-1945. Texas Tech University Press, 2003. p. 49-50