Winter Relief Organization of the German People

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Glass mosaic (1935/1936) by the Puhl & Wagner company , exhibit in the Braith Mali Museum in Biberach an der Riss

The Winterhilfswerk (short Winterhilfswerk or WHW ) was in the era of National Socialism , a public foundation based in Berlin collected, the materials, and financial and needy " fellow " either directly or through subsidiary organizations of the " National Socialist People's Welfare " (NSV ) supported.

Through the Winter Relief Organization, the Nazi regime was able to alleviate the material need of parts of the population and contribute to internal stabilization. At the same time, the collection of donations aimed to create a sense of togetherness in the “ national community ”. From the financial year 1939/1940 onwards, donations exceeded the amount raised from tax revenues for public welfare associations. The state budget was thus relieved of social spending .

precursor

Aid campaigns and fundraising that were carried out in the winter half-year and benefited the needy sections of the population existed at the regional level as early as 1933. For the unemployed, for example, the “Workers' Council Greater Hamburg” organized winter collections since 1923; A wide variety of organizations such as the trade unions, the German Association of Officials and the German National Sales Aid Association took part .

Nationwide, the carriers of "free welfare" - Caritas , Inner Mission , German Red Cross , Central Welfare Office of German Jews and German Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband - formed the German League of Free Welfare as a common mouthpiece in 1924 . While trade unions and workers' welfare (AWO) demanded comprehensive economic and social policy measures, the "League" planned a centrally organized collection on "People's Aid". The appeal under the heading "Not, bitter hardship lies above the German people" was supported by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning .

The first nationwide collection for so-called "winter aid" was carried out from September 15, 1931 to March 1932 and brought in 42 million Reichsmarks ; another collection followed in the winter of 1932/33.

organization

Law on the Winter Relief Organization of the German People in the Reichsgesetzblatt 1936 Part I, p. 995

In the summer of 1933 Joseph Goebbels began with the organizational preparations for the collection campaign of a National Socialist winter aid. On September 13, 1933, Adolf Hitler opened the “First winter aid campaign against hunger and cold”. In his speech, he contrasted the “international Marxist solidarity” that was always opposed to the “living national solidarity of the German people”, which was “eternally founded in blood”. A few days later, Hamburg Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann called the winter relief organization “a major state political task” with the aim of “winning internally” the workers.

Organizationally, the Winter Relief Organization was subordinated to the NS-Volkswohlfahrt and its head Erich Hilgenfeldt , who also functioned as the head of the NSDAP's Office for People's Welfare and as Reich Commissioner for the WHW. Some charities such as the AWO were banned, others such as the "Deutsche Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband" were incorporated and dissolved. The predominantly denominational associations were to be pushed back to the work fields of care and institutional management, while the NSV claimed the material supply of needy "national comrades", which could be better evaluated propagandistically . High-ranking National Socialist functionaries presented themselves in public as collectors with ties to the people.

With the "Law on Winterhilfswerk" ( RGBl. I, p 995) of 1 December 1936, the WHW based in Berlin was declared legally responsible foundation under civil law, by the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda out and should be supervised. The “Constitution for the WHW of the German People” of March 24, 1937 (RGBl. I, p. 423) emphasized the principle “Common good before self-interest”, which was already included in the 25-point program of the NSDAP.

On October 10, 1945, the Winter Relief Organization was banned by the Allied Control Council in Control Council Act No. 2 and property was confiscated.

Collection campaigns

The total number of mostly voluntary "permanent helpers" was around 1,500,000 people in the winter of 1933/1934 and leveled off at around 1,200,000 in the following years. The streets were systematically recorded for the monthly money collections; the fine-meshed collective districts were adapted to the structure of the National Socialist party organization and the helpers were subordinated to the block leaders and "block administrators" of the NS-Volkswohlfahrt . From 1934 onwards, the nationwide street collections were crowned by the National Solidarity Day , when high party officials and popular artists took to the streets with collection cans.

Winter Relief Organization 1935.jpg

The winter relief campaign was opened every year with a speech by Hitler that was broadcast on the radio. For the clothing collection that started in October, the residents were in the mood for Hitler Youth marches and the Sturmabteilung chapels, and later they rang the doorbells at every apartment door. All households received bags and were asked to donate pounds . In December, tickets from a Reichswinterhilfe lottery were sold for 0.50 Reichsmarks. A five-meter-high swastika was erected in Hamburg, which could be nailed on for a specified donation. The monthly stew Sunday, on which the money saved on the usual Sunday meal was expected and collected as a donation, was particularly emphasized by the propaganda . In addition, there was various other income from specially organized sports competitions, "victim shooting", theater and concerts, WHW postage stamps, Gau street collections and collection boxes in shops.

A Hamburg criminal investigation department noted in October 1933, "The prerequisite for the success of winter aid [is] the fight against begging ". In a special manhunt in the Hamburg city area, around 1400 people were taken into " protective custody " for days and some of them were detained in the "Farmsen care home" for a longer period of time.

Victims of wages and salaries

In the pre-war years, however, the largest items on the income side were "donations from companies and organizations" and "victims of wages and salaries" as well as - with declining importance - donations in kind.

Monthly deductions from employees' wages for the WHW were regarded as mandatory in the winter half-year . The employers adhered to certain proportions of wages or salaries and transferred the sum to the account of the Winter Relief Organization. Initially, the deductions were not regulated uniformly across the empire. In Hamburg, with a monthly income of 200 RM, a childless family withheld 1.50 RM; with three children the deduction was halved. With a higher income it rose to a maximum of RM 25. In autumn 1936 the deductions were adjusted across the empire: for six months, an amount equal to ten percent of the tax deductions was withheld and paid to the winter welfare organization. Employers themselves were encouraged to donate a certain percentage of their personal expenses. As a visible sign of recognition, the donors received monthly plaques with the words “We help”.

Furniture, worn clothing, coal and potatoes initially predominated among the donations in kind. The freight costs for this alone amounted to around 10 million Reichsmarks, but were not billed by the Deutsche Reichsbahn .

Donations

The first collection of the WHW brought money and donations in kind worth 358.1 million Reichsmarks . In the following winter months, the amount donated increased steadily. The total value of donations was:

  • 1933/34: 358.1 million Reichsmarks , the equivalent of 1.6 billion euros today
  • 1934/35: 367.4 million Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 1.6 billion euros today
  • 1935/36: 364.5 million Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 1.6 billion euros today
  • 1936/37: 415.2 million Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 1.8 billion euros today
  • 1937/38: 419.0 million Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 1.8 billion euros today
  • 1938/39: 566.0 million Reichsmarks, corresponds to a current equivalent of 2.4 billion euros
  • 1939/40: 680.1 million Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 2.8 billion euros today
  • 1940/41: 916.2 million Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 3.7 billion euros today
  • 1941/42: 1.209 billion Reichsmarks
  • 1942/43: 1.595 billion Reichsmarks, the equivalent of 6.3 billion euros today

The annual report for the winter half of 1937/38 lists the income and expenditure comprehensively; the following are the larger items:

Value (RM) WHW 1937/38: Income through comment
103,615,000 Donations from organizations and companies
101,972,000 Donations in kind Coals, potatoes, food, furniture, books etc. / including pound donation
80,554,000 "Victims of wages and salaries" withheld by the employer (10% of the wage tax sum)
34,741,000 Stew donations see Stew Sunday
34,290,000 Street collections including six imperial street collections with RM 30,162,000
9,958,000 Freight allowances for coal transports Waiver of freight costs for the Deutsche Reichsbahn
8,084,000 National Solidarity Day on December 4, 1937
7,175,000 Gau events Sacrifice books, victim shooting, events
6,404,000 Individual donations Including agricultural donation 1,968,000 RM
1,404,000 WHW postage stamps Sale of special stamps

distribution

Packing Christmas packages, December 1935

Those in need of help were able to submit applications through the district offices of the Winter Relief Organization and received vouchers for the purchase of coal and potatoes for the cellar and other donations in kind and in kind. Cash was not provided. In the winter of 1936, an eligible family with three children could receive up to thirteen fuel vouchers, 200 kg of potatoes, food vouchers worth 30 Reichsmarks, five vouchers for clothing or food, and three packages for Christmas, Easter and January 30th (anniversary of the takeover ) ; the total value of these services is calculated at around 100 RM.

Of the donations listed above for 1937/38 with a total value of around 420 million Reichsmarks, almost 70% were distributed to 8,931,456 people in need, according to the annual report. Around 30% went through the National Socialist People's Welfare Association (NSV) to the mother and child aid organization , the “Reich Mothers Service” of the German women's organization , the tuberculosis aid organization , school dental care and the German Red Cross . The proportion of donations that were diverted to NSV aid organizations increased in the following years: Of the donations raised by the WHW campaign in 1940/41, which amounted to 916.2 million Reichsmarks, around 540 million were transferred to that directed by the NSV "Aid organization mother and child" transferred.

The Winter Relief Organization thus became an indispensable financier of the National Socialist People's Welfare, which in turn operated a “National Socialist, racial and hereditary biological people care”. Primarily the NS-Volkswohlfahrt with its sub-organizations aimed to promote the “hereditary healthy” and “racially high quality” in the sense of a “people care” with “socio-biological, eugenic and educational mandate” to “maintain and train the efficient members for their tasks in of the national community ". In the first few years, the Winter Relief Organization clearly set itself apart from this ideological restriction, as basically all those in need could receive support. Since October 30, 1935, impoverished “full Jews” were no longer cared for by the WHW, but by the newly founded Jewish Winter Aid . Jewish mixed race and needy families from mixed marriages continued to be supported by the WHW, provided that the head of household was “ German-blooded ”.

The official statement of accounts does not indicate that Goebbels determined and diverted funds about the collected donations. Goebbels wrote in 1937: “We are discussing the use of the funds. I stop that from now all the amateurs messing around with it. These funds are used exclusively for socialist rebuilding. ”Before that, however, in January of the same year he had withheld 100 million Reichsmarks“ for free disposal ”and left part of it to Adolf Hitler:“ ... the 30 million from the WHW are used for [missing word: building] a giant factory for the Volkswagen. ”Donations also financed the construction of hospitals and the purchase of“ 40,000 people's receivers for Austria ”.

Judgments from contemporaries

“A 'voluntary winter aid' has been deducted from my salary; Nobody asked me about it beforehand, "wrote Victor Klemperer in 1933, calling this a" barely veiled compulsion ". In Bertolt Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich , which was written in emigration, a short scene set in 1937 deals with winter aid. In it, two SA men first give presents to an old woman and her daughter. After the old woman gossiped about thanking her, saying that it wasn't as bad as the daughter's husband said, the daughter was arrested by the SA men, despite the old woman's desperate protests and pleadings. The scene is preceded by the following poem:

The winter helpers step
with flags and trumpets
Even in the poorest house.
They proudly haul blackmailed
rags and scraps of food
for the poor neighbors.

The hand that
slays their brother reaches out so that they do not complain.
A gentle gift in a hurry.
The alms wakes
get stuck in your throat
and also Hitler's salvation .

The Germany reports of the exile SPD Sopade wrote: “Thanks to the uninhibited 'readiness for action' of the HJ, BDM , SA and SS, the street collections have completely assumed the character of organized highway robbery.” - “The 'willingness' of these collections is well known. The 'spontaneous' acts of terrorism against particularly reluctant donors are still remembered. In various cases, authorities have made the placing of orders dependent on sufficient WHW donations from the applicants. "

The Sopade service also pointed out the high costs of administration, distribution, storage and spoilage: “The technology of the Winter Relief Organization, which puts the emphasis on natural economy, appears very primitive in the age of the money economy. [...] Propagandistically, you can do more with this type than with just collecting money. "

However, the Sopade reporters admitted: “And there are many people who are really wholeheartedly into the cause [collections for the WHW] and who just get the others carried away. The Nazis are extraordinarily skilled at these things: [...] they create new forms of participation by the masses ... "

In the background, the letter combination WHW was reinterpreted as “We continue to hunger” or “Weapons Relief Organization” and the suspicion was expressed that armament was being financed for an imminent war.

Interpretations by historians

Herwart Vorländer summarizes: Despite all the annoyance, the prevailing feeling among contemporaries was that they had done something “for a good cause”: “That at least here the Third Reich had its good is in the memory of many as an adhesive impression and as The late effect of the propaganda of the time has been preserved. "

Compared to the state social policy developed in the 19th century, which was fed from general tax revenues, the donation system was an outdated form of aid. Florian Tennstedt put it: "The Winter Relief Organization initially also involved large circles of the bourgeoisie, gained sympathy among the poor and, above all, had a depoliticizing and disciplining effect within the party supporters" by directing their activism towards the collection campaigns.

Comparable organizations

The concept of the winter relief organization was adopted by Francoist Spain , there in the form of the Auxilio de Invierno .

In Gdansk there was a winter relief organization since 1934, for which additional postage stamps were issued and a postcard lottery was organized.

Picture gallery

literature

  • Herwart Vorländer: The NSV. Representation and documentation of a National Socialist organization. Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1988, ISBN 3-7646-1874-4 . (Publications of the Federal Archives; 35)
  • Herwart Vorländer: NS-Volkswohlfahrt and Winter Relief Organization of the German People. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 34 (1986), pp. 341–380 ( PDF ).
  • Florian Tennstedt : Benefit and interest. The winter relief organization of the German people. The Weimar prehistory and its instrumentalization by the Nazi regime. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 13 (1987), pp. 157-180.
  • Winter Relief Organization of the German People 1937/38. Accountability report. Edited by the Reich Commissioner for the WHW.
  • Peter Zolling: Between Integration and Segregation - Social Policy in the “Third Reich” using the example of the NSV in Hamburg. (Diss.) Frankfurt / M. 1986, ISBN 3-8204-8530-9 .

Web links

Commons : Winterhilfswerk  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.verfassungen.de/de33-45/winterhilfswerk36.htm
  2. Norbert Götz. Unequal siblings: the construction of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft and the Swedish Volksheim . Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2001. 390–395
  3. Florian Tennstedt: Benefit and interest. The Winter Relief Organization of the German People: The Weimar Prehistory and Its Instrumentalization by the Nazi Regime. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 13 (1987), p. 157.
  4. ^ Peter Zolling: Between Integration and Segregation - Social Policy in the 'Third Reich' using the example of the NSV in Hamburg. (Diss.) Frankfurt / M. 1986, ISBN 3-8204-8530-9 , pp. 170 and 190.
  5. Florian Tennstedt: Benefit and Interest ... , p. 173.
  6. Florian Tennstedt: Benefit and Interest ... , p. 174.
  7. ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels , ed. by Elke Fröhlich. Munich 1998f, ISBN 978-3-598-23730-0 , Part I, Vol. 2 / III, pp. 207 + 220.
  8. Max Domarus: Hitler. Speeches and proclamations. Würzburg 1962. Vol. 1, p. 300 f.
  9. Peter Zolling: Between Integration and Segregation ..., p. 164.
  10. Herwart Vorländer: The NSV. Representation and documentation of a National Socialist organization. 1988, ISBN 3-7646-1874-4 , p. 237.
  11. Quoted from Peter Zolling: Between Integration and Segregation ... , p. 164.
  12. Uwe Lohalm: For a willing and 'genetically healthy' national community ... , p. 399. In: Hamburg in the 'Third Reich' , ed. from the Research Center for Contemporary History Hamburg , Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 .
  13. Table in Peter Zolling: Between Integration and Segregation ... , p. 350.
  14. Herwart Vorländer: NS-Volkswohlfahrt and Winterhilfswerk ... p. 373.
  15. The source Winter Relief Organization of the German People 1937/38: report ed. from the Reich Commissioner for the WHW names 417,169,177 RM.
  16. Winter Relief Organization of the German People 1941/42: Accountability Report
  17. Winter Relief Organization of the German People 1937/38: report ed. by the Reich Commissioner for the WHW / essential items, values ​​rounded here.
  18. Peter Zolling: Between Integration and Segregation ..., p. 170.
  19. Information according to the Winter Relief Organization of the German People 1937/38: report ed. by the Reich Commissioner for the WHW.
  20. ^ Herwart Vorländer: NS-Volkswohlfahrt and Winterhilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 34 (1986), p. 374.
  21. Herwart Vorländer: NS-Volkswohlfahrt and Winterhilfswerk ... p. 373.
  22. ^ Ina Lorenz, Jörg Berkemann: The Hamburg Jews in the Nazi State 1933 to 1938/39. Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1811-3 , Vol. 3, p. 317.
  23. The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , Vol. 1 (1933–1937), Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58480-6 , p. 615 (Doc. 254).
  24. The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels , Part I, Vol. 5, p. 41 (December 8, 1937)
  25. ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels , Part I, Vol. 3 / II; P. 327 (on January 13, 1937)
  26. ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels , Part I, Vol. 5, pp. 187 + 213 (March 17, 1938)
  27. ^ Victor Klemperer: LTI - notebook of a philologist. Leipzig 1966, p. 47 on October 23, 1933.
  28. Bertolt Brecht: Fear and misery of the Third Reich . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 1970 1 , p. 91.
  29. Germany reports of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SOPADE), 1934–1940, unv. Nachdr. Salzhausen 1980, 2 (1935) p. 1422 (December 1935) / 3 (1936) p. 1070 (August 1936)
  30. Germany reports of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , 2 (1935) p. 1423.
  31. Germany reports of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , 2 (1935) p. 1432.
  32. a b Herwart Vorländer: NS-Volkswohlfahrt und Winterhilfswerk ... , p. 53.
  33. Florian Tennstedt: Benefit and Interest ... , p. 179.