Strength through Joy

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Emblem of the community strength through joy

The National Socialist Community Kraft durch Freude ( KdF ) was founded on November 27, 1933 as a sub-organization of the German Labor Front (DAF) with the aim of fulfilling the totality claim of the Nazi regime with the "formation of a real people and performance community of all Germans".

The organization, based in Berlin, existed from 1933 to 1945, with most of the activities being switched to providing support for the front and cultural diversification of the German troops at the beginning of the Second World War . With the Office for traveling, hiking and leisure KDF was the largest tour operators in the era of National Socialism .

founding

KdF badge in Pfronten , 1935

On October 24, 1934, Adolf Hitler signed a regulation submitted by Robert Ley , the head of the DAF:

“The aim of the German Labor Front is the formation of a real people and performance community of all Germans. It has to ensure that each individual can take his place in the economic life of the nation in the mental and physical condition that enables him to achieve the highest possible performance and thus guarantees the greatest benefit for the national community. "

- Hitler, Ordinance on the nature and aim of the DAF, 1934, § 2

As a “service provider for the national community”, the DAF should “integrate the broad lower middle class” into “the order structure of Nazi society and at least achieve passive loyalty”, in addition to “disciplining” with “carrot”. Two factors contributed to the development of strength through joy: On the one hand, the average number of vacation days for blue-collar and white-collar workers had already risen to eight to twelve days during the Weimar Republic ; almost all workers were entitled to paid annual leave. However, mostly only older employees got so much vacation that they could actually have started a longer trip. The National Socialists extended the vacation to two to three weeks per year and were thus able to win over large parts of the formerly unionized workforce.

On the other hand, fascist Italy under Mussolini had already had a leisure organization since 1925, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (National Leisure Work). Robert Ley had met them on a trip to Italy in 1929 and therefore suggested a comparable organization after the seizure of power . The National Socialists initially planned an “after work after work” linguistically based on the Italian version; the name finally chosen, "strength through joy", however, turned out to be a far more effective catchphrase. Robert Ley, who, as head of the DAF, was also to lead the leisure center, played a key role in the planning.

On November 14, 1933, Hitler approved the plans for this leisure facility. The official establishment of the KdF took place two weeks later on November 27, 1933 at a special meeting of the DAF.

Ideological foundations and goals

The aim of the KdF was to give the German people the power to perform. Healthy enjoyment, especially in sport, should give the “Aryan”, non-Jewish worker strength, on the one hand to strengthen the national economy , but on the other hand also to turn the Germans into a war-capable people. "The aim of the organization is the creation of the National Socialist national community and the perfecting and ennobling of the German people". This goal and a "strong-nerved people" should be promoted by offering the working population precisely measured and well-structured leisure time. Work performance and productivity should be increased through improved public health . In order to quickly increase the number of members, the company's own company sport ( yellow sport ) was integrated into the KdF, which means that sport courses offered by KdF outside the company, especially for family members, quickly gained popularity, according to the motto: “Nobody is too old and too fat "And" We must eliminate the superfluous fat in our people ".

While only workers were organized in the Italian Dopolavoro plant , the German KdF was supposed to bring workers and employers together under one roof and thus prevent a pure workers' organization from developing, which could potentially be politically dangerous. Not the individual classes and professional groups should form units, but the idea of ​​the classless " national community " was emphasized. The "preservation of industrial peace through pacification of the workers" was the officially stated goal. Strength through joy should primarily ensure inner peace by promising the workers what only the upper class could afford until then: travel and sufficient, full leisure time. The National Socialists wanted to subsequently outdo the unions they had banned in the meantime, which promised the workers a fulfilling leisure time, but had never fulfilled this promise. In fact, by the 1920s, various unions and other workers' organizations had organized discounted package tours for their members, albeit to a lesser extent.

"Strength through Joy-City" (top right Heerstraße station ): During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, brief arrival station for the athletes.

For the Nazi ideologues, leisure was not an end in itself , but had to be in the service of the state and the people. The official goal of the KdF was “the creation of a new German person and a new German social order. The political and economic reorganization of the German national community follows ”. The National Socialists also considered a healthy and motivated people to be particularly capable of fighting. The increased production that was hoped for benefited the armaments factories. These goals were only officially announced shortly before the start of the war.

The basic idea of ​​KdF was based on sociological findings from everyday life in the increasingly efficient industrial world of work ( Taylorism , Fordism ), which wore down the workers physically and psychologically. Robert Ley's intention was to give the workers the opportunity to relax through more free time, which, however, should not be spent outside the Nazi sphere with boredom and amusement, but should strengthen and maintain the workforce of the population in a targeted and organized manner. The KdF activities such as visits to the theater, vacations and tours at low prices were part of the efforts of the Nazi regime to make the German state a "feel-good dictatorship" ( Götz Aly ). Hitler himself is quoted by Ley as saying:

“I want the worker to be given sufficient leave and that everything is done to make this leave and the rest of his free time a real recreation for him. I wish this because I want a people with strong nerves, because only with a people who keep their nerve can you really make great politics. "

The cultural goals included strengthening a sense of home , national pride and a sense of community . The German people should be welded together in the leisure time spent together to form a strong community superior to other peoples. It was hoped that KdF would also be successful abroad: the German people should express their self-confidence and at the same time be able to compare their apparently superior, own fatherland with other countries on trips abroad. The world should get the impression of a healthy and peace-loving Germany.

activities

The Prora barracks ruins , once planned as the "Bath of 20,000"

KDF organized Colorful evenings , gymnastics , swimming courses , sewing classes , chess tournaments and concerts , adult education was encouraged. The KdF also initiated competitions for the beautification of the village, which should “shape the village for its own sake and as a National Socialist community and thus as a source of strength for the whole nation”. The events remained largely free from ideological indoctrination and were therefore perceived in the memories of the participants as a “good time”. The largest business area of ​​KdF was the organization of excursions and trips. The responsible office for travel, hiking and vacation generated around four fifths of sales.

Tennis gymnastics as part of KdF
KdF-Wagen, exhibition healthy life, happy work , Berlin 1938

Well-known offers and projects, which mostly remained promises for the workers, were:

The workers , employers and state officials organized in the German Labor Front were also members of the KdF. They paid a monthly membership fee of at least 0.50 Reichsmarks . In 1937, KdF had 4400 full-time 106,000 volunteers . That lowered the personnel costs. The expectations that KdF would finance itself through the income from the trips were not fulfilled; the prices for participation in sports and travel were unaffordable for the majority of the working population. With 8 million RM in 1934, 14.3 million in the following year and in 1938 already 32.5 million RM, the KdF therefore had to be subsidized by the DAF.

organization

The Kraft durch Freude community consisted of several offices, which over the years have changed their names or have been restructured:

  • Office for Vacation, Travel and Hiking
  • Office for Beauty and Dignity of Work
  • Office for Physical Education and Sport
  • Office for intellectual education and training
  • Office for Culture
  • Office for Ethnicity and Customs (or Home)
  • Youth welfare office

From 1937 the organization was divided into the following Reich offices:

The KdF was represented in 15,051 local NSDAP groups.

theatre

Advertisement for a colorful evening by the Nazi community "Strength through Joy" in the Kurhessen Gau (1941)

Theaters that belonged to the KdF or were controlled by the KdF were:

See also

literature

  • Walter Laufenberg : In the forest and on the heath I lost "strength through joy" in: World beyond the horizon - traveling in four millennia. Econ-Verlag Düsseldorf 1969, pp. 43-56.
  • Wolfhard Buchholz: The National Socialist Community “Strength through Joy”: Leisure time and workers in the Third Reich . Diss. Munich 1976.
  • Victoria De Grazia: The culture of consent. Mass organizing of leisure in Fascist Italy . Cambridge et al. a. 1981.
  • Hasso Spode : Workers' Vacation in the Third Reich . In: Timothy Mason et al. a .: Fear, reward, discipline and order. Mechanisms of rule under National Socialism . Opladen 1982.
  • Hasso Spode / Albrecht Steinecke: The Nazi community “Strength through Joy” - a people on the move? In: ders. (Ed.): To the sun, to freedom! Contributions to the history of tourism . Berlin 1991. ISBN 3-928077-10-4 .
  • Arnd Krüger : Strength through joy. The culture of consent under fascism, Nazism and Francoism, in: James Riordan & Arnd Krüger (Eds.): The International Politics of Sport in the 20th Century . London: Spon 1999, 67-89.
  • Hasso Spode: Fordism, Mass Tourism and the Third Reich. In: Journal of Social History, Vol. 38, 2004.
  • Hasso Spode: Some quantitative aspects of Kraft-durch-Freude-tourism . In: Margarita Dritsas (ed.): European Tourism and Culture, Athens 2007.
  • Bruno Frommann: Travel in the service of political goals. Workers' trips and “Strength through Joy” trips . Stuttgart 1992.
  • Shelley Baranowski: Strength through joy: consumerism and mass tourism in the Third Reich . Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0-521-83352-3 .
  • Götz Aly : Hitler's People's State : Robbery, Race War and National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-10-000420-5 .
  • The village beautification campaign of the NS community "Strength through Joy - Annual Report 1936" . Manuscript, Berlin 1937.
  • Florian Harms: Nazi Propaganda: Wellness under the swastika . In: Spiegel online July 19, 2007.
  • Heinz Schön : Hitler's dream ships. The "Kraft durch Freude" fleet 1934–1939 . Arndt Verlag, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-031-9 .

Web links

Commons : Strength through Joy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rüdiger Hachtmann in Frank Becker , Ralf Schäfer (ed.): Sport and National Socialism. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1923-3 , p. 29.
  2. ↑ Rüdiger Hachtmann in Frank Becker, Ralf Schäfer (ed.): Sport and National Socialism. P. 30.
  3. ^ DAF Information Service of January 26, 1934, quoted in n. Frommann 1992, p. 108.
  4. ^ Arnd Krüger : Strength through joy. The culture of consent under fascism, Nazism and Francoism, in: James Riordan & Arnd Krüger (Eds.): The International Politics of Sport in the 20th Century . London: Spon 1999, 67-89.
  5. ↑ Rüdiger Hachtmann in Frank Becker, Ralf Schäfer (ed.): Sport and National Socialism. P. 35.
  6. ↑ C. Selzner 1937, cit. n. Spode 1991.
  7. ^ DAF Information Service of November 20, 1933, quoted in n. Frommann 1992, p. 106.
  8. ↑ Aly 2005
  9. ↑ Robert Ley: breakthrough of social honor , p. 208, quoted. n. Frommann 1992, p. 108.
  10. ^ The village beautification campaign of the Nazi community "Strength through Joy" - annual report 1936
  11. ↑ Yacht 3, 1936, p. 22. online
  12. ^ A b Rüdiger Hachtmann in Frank Becker, Ralf Schäfer (eds.): Sport and National Socialism. P. 44.
  13. ↑ See Spode 1982, Spode 1991, Fromman 1992.
  14. ↑ Excerpt from Robert Ley's speech at the 1934 Nazi Party Congress , based on: Paradiesruinen , p. 20, 8th edition, Ch. Links.
  15. ^ Organization handbook NSDAP