Michael R. Hayse. Recasting West German Elites: Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse Between Nazism and Democracy, 1945-1955. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003. xi + 287 pp. $59.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-57181-271-1.

Reviewed by Alexander Peter d'Erizans (Department of Social Science, Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY))
Published on H-German (November, 2004)

A Genuine Change?

Scholarly analysis of post-WWII history in the Federal Republic has blossomed in recent years. Historians have challenged the view that Germans, as Alexander and Margarette Mitscherlich argued, experienced a collective amnesia and engaged in a "global retreat from their past" and an "unhampered dedication" to the Wiederaufbau.[1] Recent studies have acknowledged "the different ability of victims and perpetrators to remember, to forget and to evade, and to weave their stories into larger ... narratives" and have demonstrated that Germans were indeed not silent about the Third Reich and World War II.[2] These works have shown that Germans did not forget the past but rather energetically remembered and memorialized it in particular ways, emphasizing their own victimization not only at the hand of a small clique of Nazis but also resulting from Allied policies of bombing and forced expulsion during the war. Germans privileged their own suffering above that of other groups, projecting themselves as victims of an almost catastrophic fate. In his study of societal elites in Hesse throughout the first decade following the war, Michael R. Hayse adds yet another voice to the chorus proclaiming that Germans suffered only from a "selective amnesia" (p. 250). Instead of forgetting the past, his subjects pushed their own suffering to the fore. They emphasized their own victimization while relinquishing responsibility for the crimes of Nazism. The author, though, goes one step further, for he argues that this "power of selective recollection ... provided them with an intact, if highly skewed, self-image that integrated them into the newly forming conservative democracy as supporters rather than antagonists" (p. 250). Ultimately, the narrative of suffering which German elites in Hesse wove for themselves, along with the limitations of Allied reform efforts and the limited success of denazification in removing many former National Socialists which accompanied it, did not constitute a "restoration." In fact, they ultimately assisted in the successful "recasting" of West German elites which, slowly but surely, strengthened Germany's march towards democracy.

Before delving into his analysis, Hayse lays out the reasons why he made the choices he did concerning his study. Interested in the study of social rather than political elites and wishing to choose groups representing a broad range of prominent professions, the author focuses on business leaders, higher civil servants, and physicians. These groups also deserve particular attention since each of them contributed in definite ways to the failure of Weimar and the rise of Nazism (pp. 5-6). Geographically, the focus on Hesse has several merits. It is more central than other more scrutinized states such as North-Rhine Westphalia and Bavaria. Further, Hesse is "politically distinct" (p. 7). Its balanced demographic composition between urban and rural areas, for example, enabled both the SPD and CDU to draw many votes. Finally, the population density, as well as the denominational make-up, is closer to the West German average than most other Laender (pp. 7-8). Hayse chooses the years 1945-55 for several reasons. An explanation of the success of the Federal Republic demands a concentration on the postwar years, not only covering changes of the occupation yeas but also the implications of those changes which followed. The year 1955 indicates an appropriate ending point for this period since "most of the groundwork for the political, social, and economic development" of West German democracy was already in place by this time (p. 9).

Utilizing a wide variety of government reports as well as analyzes, statistics, and letters emerging from the government, business and medical communities, Hayse begins his study in chapter 1 with an analysis of the experience of his elites in the Third Reich and their attitudes towards Nazism. Electoral data, as well as party membership, demonstrate that, especially after the depression hit in 1929, the elites under study turned increasingly towards the Nazis. After 1933, though, their proportion in the NSDAP fell as the years proceeded. Many factors influenced their initial support for the party, but "none was more important than material security" (p. 25). Ideologically, many elites were attracted to Hitler's nationalistic, anti-Marxist, and anti-Semitic stance (p. 46). Physicians, in particular, also often identified with Nazi racial biology. Still, the decision to support the Nazis was principally pragmatic rather than ideological. Elites were attracted to the Party's apparent concern for their particular "occupational complaints" (p. 46). After the Nazis took control, though, elites became increasingly disillusioned with the party as it failed to carry through on many of their own particular interests. Senior civil servants, for example, often saw their real incomes decline as well as their ability to affect policy inhibited. Business leaders, although benefiting from the dismantling of unions, disliked the increasingly heavy-handed interference of the government in their affairs, especially after the beginning of the war in 1939. Although physicians did tend to prosper materially, they increasingly witnessed the curtailment of their professional freedoms as well. Ultimately, for elites, "no rhetoric could effectively negate their experience in the Third Reich" (p. 46).

After discussing in chapter 2 the often tension-filled changes (the relationship between incoming natives and refugees, for example, was often far from amicable) which elite composition underwent as a result of war-related demographic disruptions, Hayse analyzes in the next chapter elite resistance to Allied efforts at reform following the war. In the end, elites were able to "gradually rebuil[d] their organizations according to pre-1933 blueprints. The three-track civil service, intertwined business associations, and self-regulation of the economy and free professions survived" (p. 127). Ultimately, "the slate was not wiped clean ... the existing laws and structures that pertained to each of these occupational groups were frequently interrupted, or at least disrupted, but not replaced entirely" (p. 90). In most cases, elites "continued to operate upon the foundation of Nazi-era legislation that had been cleansed of its National Socialist components" (p. 94). Despite the limitation of reform, though, "the victory of tradition fell far short of a restoration" (p. 127). Resistance to Allied reform efforts by no means signified the desire to revive Nazism, an ideology which "projected as the 'other,' had destroyed, disrupted, co-opted, or undermined their venerated professional institutions" (p. 127). Whether justifiable or not, elites believed that the traditions which they were seeking to preserve were thoroughly anti-Nazi and quite compatible with pluralist democracy. In chapter 5, Hayse notes that the effects of denazification efforts concerning the high civil service, the business leadership, and the medical profession were "ambiguous" (p. 183). Denazification did help promote the careers of those who were not blemished with a criminal past. Still, it did not lead to a fundamental replacement of the elite. Former Nazis certainly did return to elite professions. Again, though, reinstatement did not signify "renazification" (p. 184). Elite claims that they had joined the NSDAP out of opportunism or that they had genuinely lost any ideological adherence to Nazism "were not always fabrications" (p. 184). This shift of attitude is the focus of Hayse's final chapter, in which he argues that elite occupational groups, despite experiencing "a high degree of structural and even personnel continuity with the Third Reich were nevertheless capable of changing their minds on crucial issues" (p. 238). A reluctance on the part of elites in facing up to their own responsibilities and complicity in Nazi crimes was indeed prevalent following the war. Believing that the Nazis had betrayed them, their institutions, and their values, elites did fail to consider or reflect upon their own complicity in the crimes of the Third Reich. Still, this rejection of Nazism and focus on their own victimization and suffering should "not be construed ... simply as a conspiracy of the perpetrators" (p. 238). Although elites may not have been champions of the democratic order yet, they were nonetheless willing to give the existing system a chance. They were certainly not interested in imposing another Nazi regime onto Germany. Further, and perhaps most importantly, selective memory ultimately had a positive result: it compelled elites to not only focus on their own past traditions which were most consistent with democracy but also reject all overtly Nazi ideas. In time, these processes slowly transformed the elites themselves into defenders of the new democratic order.

Hayse provides a quite nuanced view of not only the limited success of de-nazification and resistance to change of a vital portion of the German elite but also of the particular historical narrative of victimization and suffering which Germans already began spinning for themselves during the war, for he throws a positive light on both. The reader must consider the intriguing idea that the developments above actually did have some quite fruitful long-term effects on the eventual development and solidification of democracy in the Federal Republic. Although his argument is quite persuasive, and Hayse argues his case with conviction, one must still truly be cautious in labeling German elites promoters of democracy too soon. The author himself argues this point. He qualifies his overall positive assessment by indicating that the limitations of denazification, along with the failure on the part of elites to face up to crimes in which they were complicit, were hindrances in certain ways to the establishment of democracy. Ultimately, any change of conviction on their part, along with a more extensive discussion of their complicity in Nazi crimes, took time and occurred in incremental steps and, as Jeffrey Herf has argued, the political freedom and open debate which existed in the Federal Republic (in contrast to the more suppressive atmosphere in Eastern Germany) provided an excellent environment for such reckonings to eventually take place.[3]

Notes

[1]. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior, trans. Beverley R. Placzek (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. xxiv-xxv.

[2]. Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, "Introduction: Noises of the Past," in The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, ed. Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 5. For studies dealing with German historical narratives which emerged in the post-WWII period, see James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Helmut Dubiel, Niemand ist frei von der Geschichte: Die Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft in den Debatten des Deutschen Bundestages (Muenchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1999); Norbert Frei, Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration (New York: Columbia University Pess, 2002); Elizabeth Heineman, "The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany's 'Crisis Years' and West German National Identity," The American Historical Review 2 (1996): pp. 354-395; Jay Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehrmacht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1955 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); and Robert G. Moeller, "War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany," The American Historical Review 4 (1996): pp. 1008-1048; and Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001).

[3]. Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 390.

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Citation: Alexander Peter d'Erizans. Review of Hayse, Michael R., Recasting West German Elites: Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse Between Nazism and Democracy, 1945-1955. H-German, H-Net Reviews. November, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9986

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