What was life like for those in Germany who lived during Hitler?

Question

I am doing a research paper on the lives of my family. My great grandmother ran an underground newspaper against hitler, lost two unborn twins when the nazis beat her for it, and helped transfer Jews out of Germany (According to my mother and her accounts of my grandmother). I want to know what life was like for my great grandparents both born in 1910, and for my grandmother born in 1930. Their last name was Ardnt and they left Germany in the 1950's. I can't really find anything on Germans who weren't Jewish or pro-Nazi, at least not on the Internet (I plan to raid the library today). The outline for it is due Monday, so any ideas now would help me a lot. Thank You so Much!

The paper is about what they might have gone through (sort of a "how it all led to me" type of thing, just not about me). They weren't Jewish: they were protestants that hated hitler. I'm supposed to use sources to create a picture of what their lives were like, as close as I can to reality. (PS please no conspiracy theories). Thank you for your help so far guys!

Answer 1

i only know a little. Last name Biewald
i will share it here in case it helps with your paper
my grandparents, my dads folks, left before the war, like 1928 maybe, they were 20 years old or so, my gramp was being asked to join the Nazi's to become a supervisor in the coal mines. Anyone who was gonna have ANY postion of power, teachers, politicians, had be Nazis I think. There was not much food, my great grandma starved to death. My Dads aunts and uncles could not find a way out or choose to stay. My great uncles were drafted. It freaks me out to see them wearing swastikas in the old photos. I met some of em once or twice when I was a kid. My grandparents sent care packages to relatives there during WW2, cigarettes were used like money, they sent coffee too. It must have been very difficult, especially if people were Jewish.

Answer 2

it was very difficult to be anything but pro-nazi as you have heard from your mother...people who spoke out against the nazis were put into concentration camps along with the jews - they weren't all killed like the jews but they were forced into hard labour. In the couple of years before the concentration camps they had "ghettos" for jews and political opponents (ie anyone who was not pro-nazi) the people in these ghettos were forced into hard labour. Towards the end it got very bad and neighbours were reporting one another as anti-nazis just so they could keep suspicion from their door and look like good followers of hitler. I'll try to find some websites for you to read, hang on a sec....

this is a good one - widerstand means resistance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widerstand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

There is also a film about the white rose group who resisted hitler (can't remember what it's called - sorry) but it's very sad the members of the group were executed (beheaded) in 1943...

Just read what another lady said about the hitler youth group - attendance was mandatory and most parents were even afraid of their children as they were pretty much brainwashed by the nazi regime and encouraged to report on their parents at the youth group meetings....it was a really awful time for the german people I bet.

BAPHOMETBOUNCING - awesome point, I'm glad I'm not the only one who is a bit scared about what's going on in america (and the uk....unfortunately) You're totally right, hitlers power didn't come overnight...but suddenly it was far too late to stop him. There is a huge lesson in that for all of us - we shouldn't turn a blind eye to the horrible things our govts are doing in the name of "national safety".

Answer 3

You could check out Schindler's List...I think what you have heard about your grandparents is a good place to start. You should look for interviews with Germans who lived through it as well as people who worked for the Nazis--they have interesting things to say and from what I have learned most didn't want to do what they did, they were just terrified of the regime. Hitler started a youth movement to recruit teenagers...they had meetings and social events ands songs. You might want to look into that, too.

Answer 4

It might be interesting were you to outline your paper against the background of "what it's like to live" in the United States under Bush/Cheney.

Now it's important to state that those Germans who suffered during Hitler's reign had it much worse (the SS kicking down their doors, for example, as opposed to the NSA "just" wire-tapping their phones and scanning their emails): but consider the similarities, however broad.

Did the "ordinary" (meaning civilian and non-Jewish) Germans of the Nazi period surrender personal freedoms to a government that claimed such sacrifice was in their best interest and the security of their nation?

Yes. And so have we.

Did the German "men on the street" blinker themselves to atrocity and abuses of the Geneva Convention due to government propaganda that made or at least helped them believe that such lawless brutality was demanded "in times such as these?"

Yes. And so have we.

Did the everyday, non-political German begin to accept doctored and sometimes outright manufactured "evidence" against the enemy (be that "enemy" the allied forces or those barbaric, plotting, Well-poisoning Jews)?

You bet. Sound familiar?

Did those Germans who actually worked with the Nazi government but found themselves opposed to increasingly power-crazed policy find themselves, at the very least, out-of-a-job?

Just have a look at the details behind the resignation of Colon Powell, the scandal-soaked Justice Department firing of several US District Attorneys and the "retirement" of our last CIA chief.

Did the German citizenry face cuts in municipal, infrastructural and medical services in order to feed an increasingly voracious war machine?

Anything starting to sound familiar?

Because the point is, the decent of "ordinary" populations into Fascism doesn't happen the way it always seems to on the Sci-Fi Channel. We don't suddenly awake to find ourselves in identical jumpsuits, watching the cameras in our ceilings as those cameras watch us. It happens...

slowly at first.

Then all of a sudden.

Answer 5

I would suggest going to the library and checking out The Diary of Anne Frank. I read it when I was a child and it is a VERY GOOD book. You will be able to read it quickly and gain the information you need as well as thorouhly enjoy yourself:
The Diary of a Young Girl
Author Anne Frank
Original title Het Achterhuis (Dutch)
Country The Netherlands
Language Dutch
Genre(s) Autobiography
Publisher Contact Publishing
Publication date 1947 Dutch, 1952 English translation
Media type Print (Paperback & Hardback)
Pages 352 pp (paperback)
ISBN ISBN 978-0140385625
The Diary of a Young Girl is a book composed of extracts from a diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the war, the diary was retrieved by Frank's father, Otto Frank.

First published under the title Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven van 12 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944 (The Annex: diary notes from 12 June 1942 – 1 August 1944) by Contact Publishing in Amsterdam in 1947, it received widespread critical and popular attention on the appearance of its English language translation Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Doubleday & Company (United States) and Vallentine Mitchell (United Kingdom) in 1952. Its popularity inspired the 1955 play The Diary of Anne Frank by the screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which they subsequently adapted for the screen for the 1959 movie version. The book is now considered one of the key texts of the twentieth century.

More than 25 million copies of the book have been sold and it has been translated into more than 50 languages.[1]

Answer 6

I doubt that you will find a whole lot simply because of the secrecy involved in the actions of your grandparents and people like them. There is a lot of info on pro-Nazis and Jews because those were well documented. Try searching the History Channels’ website, they might have some info.

Answer 7

What you "think" you know is NOT what really was.

99.9% Of ALL previous German historical information for this period 1920 to 1945 has been redacted(changed) to suite the ideas and beliefs of todays present society.It will take far far more than an old school try to pry the lid off this can ow worms.Good Luck

http://www.hitler.org/

http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazis_and_the_german_economy.htm

http://judicial-inc.biz/1_master_supreme.htm

http://www.nukeisrael.com/holohoax.htm

http://www.overthrow.com/creator/ner/ner.asp

http://www.white-history.com/

Answer 8

Actually, non-Jewish Germans were pretty happy and comfortable when the Nazis were in power.

Answer 9

Hitler is the worest man ever,he went to the trash heap of history.
what he did for Jews and his own people is a shame.

Answer 10

you should read Anne Frank ( but it's a girl book) it's a real dairy of a teenager who lived durning this time she was in hidding and then had to go to a consentraction camp ( but the dairy stops there. It's so sad!!!!!!!!!!!