Office for Travel, Hiking and Vacation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Office for Travel, Hiking and Vacation ( RWU ) was a department of the National Socialist authority Kraft durch Freude (KdF). Their task was to organize vacation trips ("KdF-Reisen") for the members on land and at sea.

activities

The office was of particular importance for National Socialist propaganda because it offered trips and destinations that were unaffordable for most of the population. It had the following departments, among others: land travel, sea travel, hiking (divided into holiday hiking and journeyman's hiking).

On February 17, 1934, the first KdF special train rolled from Berlin to Upper Bavaria. The journey to the holiday destinations was usually made by the Reichsbahn , later also by buses .

From February 1934 to August 1939, when the KdF trips were stopped shortly before the start of the war, RWU was the largest travel company in the world. A total of around seven million tourists were transported in these five years; in 1937 alone there were almost 1.6 million; in addition there were 8.4 million short trips.

A small part of the trips offered were cruises on KdF's own ships. A separate fleet (6) and a further 6 chartered ships were available for ocean voyages. There were sea voyages to Norway, Italy, Greece and Madeira. Between 1934 and 1939, 673 voyages with over 700,000 passengers were made (other sources report 690,000 ocean voyages). A well-known ship is the Wilhelm Gustloff , which was torpedoed and sunk by a Russian submarine on January 30, 1945, in the Baltic Sea with around 10,000 refugees on board.

Other trips were short and weekend trips, or longer trips within Germany. A huge KdF holiday center was to be built in Prora on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen . Despite good structural progress, it was never used as a holiday center because of the outbreak of World War II .

economy

With 80 percent of the turnover, the Office for Travel, Hiking and Vacation was the largest and most important department of KdF. In contrast to the other departments, which were heavily subsidized, RWU was almost self-financing.

In principle, all strata of the population should be able to participate in KdF trips. Therefore the prices were kept extremely low. On the one hand, this was made possible by tight calculations and low prices negotiated with transport companies and hotels.

The aim was to convey to the poorly paid workers that they would now receive privileges that had previously only been granted to the upper class. In fact, the cheap KdF trips often resulted in the lowest price range; few workers took part in the more expensive sea voyages. Many hoteliers and transport companies were reluctant to take in KdF travelers because there was no profit to be made with them.

From 1934 the "KdF travel saving" was introduced. With a monthly contribution of RM 2.00 it was possible to take part in a trip after 80 weeks.

On the other hand, the trips were subsidized by the German Labor Front (DAF). The DAF supported the community Strength through Joy and was financed from membership fees of up to 22 million members. The DAF also benefited from the assets of the unions , which were smashed in 1933 .

A trip cost the vacationer an average of RM 4.50 per day. About 2.50 RM of this went to the hotel owner, about half as much as usual.

literature

  • Wolfhard Buchholz: The National Socialist community “strength through joy”. Leisure time and workers in the Third Reich. Diss. Munich 1976.
  • Bruno Frommann: Travel in the service of political goals. Workers' trips and “Strength through Joy” trips. Diss. Stuttgart 1992.
  • Ronald Smelser : Robert Ley. Hitler's husband on the “labor front”. A biography. Schöningh, Paderborn 1989, ISBN 3-506-77481-6 .
  • Hasso Spode : Workers' Vacation in the Third Reich. In: Carola Sachse among others: fear, reward, discipline and order. Mechanisms of rule under National Socialism. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1982, ISBN 3-531-11595-2 , pp. 275–382 ( publications of the Central Institute for Social Science Research of the Free University of Berlin 41).
  • Hasso Spode: The Nazi community “Strength through Joy” - a people on the move? In: Hasso Spode (Ed.): To the sun, to freedom! Contributions to the history of tourism. Verlag für Universitäre Kommunikation, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-928077-10-4 , pp. 79-94 ( Institute for Tourism, Berlin. Reports and materials 11).
  • Hasso Spode: Some Quantitative Aspects of “Strength Through Joy” Tourism, 1934–1939. In: Margarita Dritsas (Ed.): European Tourism and Culture. History and National Perspectives. = Ευρωπαϊκός τουρισμός και πολιτισμός. Livanis, Athens 2007, ISBN 978-960-14-1643-4 , pp. 123-134.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lit .: Spode 1991, 85; also in 2007, Tab 1
  2. ^ Heinz Schön: Hitler's dream ships , Kiel: Arndt Verlag, 158 pp. ISBN 3887410319 ( online ).
  3. ^ "Strength through Joy", Planet Wissen , Sabine Kaufmann, May 17, 2011 ( History of Travel ). Accessed December 13, 2011.
  4. ↑ Lit .: Spode 1991, p. 83.