To subvert an organization often means to change or reverse the values and principles of that organization, frequently while leaving the outward appearance deceptively unchanged. People may see a subverted organization as continuing its established traditional patterns, while it in reality is now serving a very different function.
Some historians cite the events of Kristallnacht in 1938 as the beginning of the Holocaust. Others see the Holocaust as starting in 1941, with the mass executions of Jews on the eastern Front. In either case, the reader will note that there is a significant timelapse from the National Socialist takeover in 1933 and the beginning of the Holocaust.
Why the delay?
Hitler ordered the expansion of the military, the increased manufacture of weapons, and armed occupation of the Rhineland — a region which had been demilitarized since the 1919 Treaty of Versailles — quickly after becoming chancellor. Why not launch the Holocaust at that time as well?
Part of the answer is this: The National Socialists knew that they needed to neutralize potential sources of resistance. Only when the Gleichschaltung of German society was completed — the synchronization and coordination which would bring aspects of daily life into line with the National Socialist Party — could they begin the brutal excesses of the Holocaust. At that point, so the Nazis thought, resistance would be minimal or nonexistent.
The National Socialists set about remaking Germany. Medical facilities and healthcare professionals, instead of preserving life, became places to kill. The “T4” program carried out medical assistance in dying (MAID or physician-assisted suicide) and euthanasia, killing people who were considered by the Nazis to be “unworthy” of life. Although they were called “suicides,” they were murders. The T4 program also performed forced sterilizations: men and women who did not want to be sterilized were required to be sterilized, so that they could never have children.
Another program called “Lebensborn” conducted involuntary abortions on women who were considered to be genetically inferior.
An increasing number of schools and medical facilities were government owned or government operated.
Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and church youth groups were largely abolished, and young people urged to join National Socialist groups like the Hitlerjugend for boys aged 14 to 18, the Jungvolk for boys aged 10 to 14, the BDM for girls aged 14 to 18, the Jungmädlebund for girls aged 10 to 14, and the Glaube und Schönheit for girls aged 18 to 21. The Nazis could shape a person’s thinking starting at age 10.
The German people were being controlled and managed by the Nazis. It became more and more difficult for the Germans to find a part of life that was not oppressive.
Even ordinary groups like gardening clubs, music clubs, skiing clubs, etc. were bullied into allowing the National Socialists to reorganize them.
One of the clearest examples of this Gleichschaltung occurred among religious institutions. The Nazis shut down most Christian churches, and in their places — usually in the same building — established propaganda centers which they called churches. The Nazis created a confusion of language: The things called churches by the Nazis were, in fact, not churches; they were National Socialist ideology centers. But because they used the church buildings, in which the churches used to meet, and because they met on Sunday mornings with the trappings of a church — candles and music — they seemed like they might be churches.
The differences were apparent to those who looked closer: instead of a cross at the front of the church and Christian banners with slogans about peace, faith, hope, and love, these counterfeit churches had swastikas, images of Hitler, and Nazi banners in red, white, and black. These fake churches took the place of the real churches in towns and cities throughout Germany. Meanwhile, the real churches had to meet in secret, in people’s homes, outdoors in the countryside, or wherever else they could escape being detected by the Nazis. Hitler’s government forbade them to read the Old Testament. The National Socialists despised Jesus because he was a Jew.
Defying the National Socialists, Christians met covertly to read and discuss the Old Testament, which is part of the Christian Bible, and to learn about Jesus. They also began organizing resistance: clandestine groups planning ways to undermine the Nazi war effort and save the lives of Jews.
Meanwhile, in public, the so-called “churches,” which were not churches and which were actually Nazi propaganda centers, continued to meet in those buildings which had traditionally been used as churches.
Another part of Hitler’s Gleichschaltung was the infiltration and takeover of the labor unions. The purpose of a union, as the reader will know, is to negotiate for better pay for the workers. But the National Socialists would not tolerate any type of negotiating or bargaining. The unions, once the Nazis subverted them, no longer strove assertively to maximize wages. Instead, they sought to, and succeeded in, urging the workers to comply with the directives from the National Socialist Party.
In these ways, the Nazis preemptively neutralized potential sources of resistance. They co-opted the groups which would have resisted: Boy Scouts, churches, labor unions, schools, medical facilities. Not only did Hitler’s government prevent resistance from these organizations, but it created fake versions of these same groups to comply with National Socialist ideas.
In each case, however, alert people saw what was happening, and formed their own undercover groups which stuck to the original authentic anti-Nazi ideals of these organizations. They preserved their moral values, and implemented those values as they formed hidden resistance movements.
