Nazi Germany's Organised Leisure

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 51, 16 March 1937, Page 13

Nazi Germany's Organised Leisure

"Strength Through Joy" and its Mass Holiday Tours

WITH every alarum and excursion on and off the European stage the Nationalist s i d e o f National-Socialist Q e rmany naturally advances to the footlights (writes E. D. CBrien in the Daily Telegraph). Meanwhile, and just as naturally, the Socialist side of the movement which dominates the new Germany finds itself thrust into the wings. Yet the social structure being erected by the Nazis compels attention and, in some directions, admiration. Of all Nazi social experiments the most remarkable iii the curiously named organisation, "Strength through Joy" (Kraft durc^i Freude). On November 27, 1936, this celebrated its third birthday. The English version of the report on its aims and achievements by the head of the organisation, Herr Horst Dressler-Andress, which has just appeared, is worth study. Fart of Labour Front. "Strength through Joy" is a department of the Labour Front, the vast and as yet incomplete organisation which under Dr. Ley, is destined to control every aspect of German industriai and commercial life and to exercise control over ' every working German. The Labour Front as a whole deals with the German workman while he is actually at work. It is the task of "Strength through Joy" to regulate his leisure, to provide him with suitable recreation, and so to control his non-working hours that he will become a more efflcient, because less dissatisfled, and a more virile and less class-conscious member of the NationalSocialist State. fHE ultimate object of "Strength through Joy" is therefore political. It may be true that, as the report claims, the organisation aims at closing "the gulf between the world of every day and the world of the Intellectual, the Beautiful, the Sublime," which "Marxism and bourgeois obscurantism" in unholy alliance had created. But it is even more true that "National-Socialism regards politics and culture as a unity" and that the goal of "Strength through Joy" is to make the German off duty not only a good and healthy citizen, but also, by injecting National-Socialist Weltanschauung into him during his every waking moment to make him a dutiful Nazi. On Italian Model. "T)OPO Lavoro" (After Work), the Italian organisation on which "Strength through Joy" is modelled, cannot be disassociated from the aims of its parent Fascist party. In the same way "Strength through Joy" is a tool, a weapon for the realisation of "the National-Socialist People's State, the cultural policy of the Third Reich under the leadership of Dr. Goebbels." THE gift for organisation in the German amounts almost to genius, and the machinery for realising the aims of "Strength through Joy" has been designed on a gigantic scale. Germany, for the purpose of pleasure and recreation is divided into 32 districts, 800 sub-districts and 18,000 local ofBces. Every office and factory has its voluntary local Kraft durch Freude steward. Of the various branches of the organisation perhaps the most important is the so-called Leisure Time Department. This deals with all cultural matters. Herr Dressler-Andress, who is nothing if not a lover of statistics, reveals that on an investigation in the great Siemens works in Berlin in 1934 87.6 per cent of the men and 81.3 per cent. of the women had

never seen an opera (greater signlflcance in the land of Wagner and Strauss than in the land of Sir Thomas Beecham) and 63.8 per cent of the men and 74.2 per cent. of the women had never been to the theatre. "gTRENGTH through Joy" is determined to change all that. Through the Leisure Time Department the German worker can attend operatic and theatrical performances given in the best theatres and by the best artists in the country. To achieve this "Strength through Joy" either takes blocks of seats for every performance throughout the season, or entire theatres for- one or more evenings of every week. In the flrst 10 months of 1936 alone nearly 5,000,000 people were thus taken to the theatre. In addition the Leisure Time Department arranges community singing on a monster scale. It sends out touring theatrical companies to hundreds of small towns and villages. It has its own symphony orchestra of 90 players to concentrate on the small towns and such places as factories and children's centres which could not otherwise hope to hear a flrstclass performance. Variety and Cabaret. JJOWEVER "Strength through Joy" is not solely engaged in providing solid intellectual fare for German workers. Nearly 17,000,000 Germans have attended "K.d.F." (Kraft durch Freude) popular evenings for variety and cabaret performances. The aspect of "Strength through Joy" which impresses itself most on foreign visitors to the country is the Holiday and Travel Department. In the flrst ten months of 1936 6,000,1)00 pepple went on holidays in Germany and outside it through "K.d.F." If all the "K.d.F." travellers joined hands — I quote the sfcatistically minded Herr Dressler-Andress— they would stretch from Berlin to Tokio. Doubtless as the result of a recent diplomatic engagement the 6,000,000th would receive a rousing welcome. During 1936 "Strength through Joy" special trains travelled a.distance equal to 54 times the circumference of the earth. ^HE cost of these trips to "K.d.F." members, most of whom in the past could not have dreamt of any holiday of the sort, was astonishingly low. Ten days to the Bavarian Alps— to quote the report of our Commercial Counsellor in Berlin — cost £2/13/-. Seven days to the Rhine, £1/18/-. Fourteen days to East Prussia, £2/16/-. All these figures include fares from Berlin, full board, and lodging in hotels or private houses. An 18-day cruise to Madeira cost £5, a shorter one to the Baltic considerably less. In 1936 150,000 German workmen went on such cruises. QRIGINALLY these mass outings were financed partly by the State and partly out of the subscriptions paid by employers and workers to the Labour Front. Now, however, "K.d.F." is, I believe, self-support-ing with a turnover of about £5,200,000, The principle of collective activity so dear to the German heart is responsible for it being possible to put these grandiose schemes into operation at so low a cost. The "Strength through Joy" Travel Department is a travel agency on a gigantic scale and runs itself on the principle of gettlng immense reductions for quantity. It pays the German steamship companies, hard hit by years of depression, to arrange "K.d.F." cruises which, even though they do not do more than cover running costs, at any rate prevent ships and crews from lying idle. It pays the hofcel keeper to put up "K.d.F." parties at an infinitesimal profit" per head. For a steady flow of a large number of visitors paying very little is

more welcome in the long run than a trickle of lmpoverished middle-class Germans or occasional and uncertain inrushes of foreigners. JT pays the State, if a factory has to close down temporarily because not even Dr. Schacht can maintain its supply of raw materials, to send the workers on a "Strength through Joy" hike through the ® Bavarian mountains rather than to keep them in idleness on some form of relief. Not that "K.d.F." travel is luxurious. In the nature of things it could hardly expect to be. I can think of no holiday less personally congenial than travelling — if en garcon — six or eight in a cabin to Madeira. I doubt, too, if the British workman would like the hint of compulsion in the report's ruling: "In Germany there is now not only the right to a holiday but also a moral obligation to spend it suitably, i.e., a holiday without travel is no holiday." The Sport Department. JF the Briton on his day off plays football and scores a goal or a try he-may, if he is human, take pleasure in his personal prowess. In Germany the "Strength through Joy" Sport Department, which has probably arranged the match for him, impresses on him that his principal emotion should be that by playing the game well he has rendered himself better fitted to raise up worthy sons to the Fatherland. To the average Briton that sort of organisation may appear a bit too perfect. But then between the Briton and the German there is, in the matter of fun, a great gulf fixed. The impoverishment brought about by the war, the revolution, the inflation and years of depression had largely achieved the Nazi aim of a levelling of the - classes long before they came into power. ^yHEN there is added to this the German genius, amounting almost to a passion, for community effort and co-operative activity, the success and popularity of an organisation such as "Strength through Joy" can be better appreciated. ( In Leipzig in the hot summer of 1928, at a time when there were only 12 Nazi Deputies in the Reichstag, I remember watching thousands upon thousands of young Germans marching out in fours to do mass physical exercises. It was their idea of a Sunday afternoon's fun during a heat-wave. "Beauty of Labour." AN annexed department of the Labour Front is the so-called "Beauty of Labour" (Schoenheit der Arbeit) organisation, the task of which is to ensure that the German worker in . his . factory or plant shall have the most cleanly and, where possible, the most attractive working conditions. Thus up to November of last year, 1000 workers' club hpuses had been erected, and 3000 new canteens, 3500 gardens in factory yards, thousands of sports grounds, 200 swimming baths, and 1500 washing and dressing rooms had been provided as the result of the help and, in some cases, the goading of "Beauty of Labour." ^HESE are achievements in social amelioration of which any country could be prqud. They may constitute the gilding of a political pill which is not to the taste of everyone. The regimentation of the German working class and of German industry which they involve may be utterly foreign to British; ideas'; but for - Germans "Strength through Joy" represents a social advance on the whole in accord with their temperament and national genius. As an anti-Nazi said to me in Berlin last summer, "If the regime should break up I think that, in one form or another, we .should have to keep 'Strength through Joy."'