Himmler’s SS Knights: Who Were They Part 2
*Note: Quotes, statistics and graphs in this piece are taken from Herbert F Ziegler’s work Nazi Germany’s New Aristocracy: The SS leadership, 1925-1939, published in 1989.*
Class
The class distinctions of early 20th Germany and 21st century America are remarkably similar. Both societies saw the rise of the ‘upper middle class’, composed of liberal professionals, entrepreneurs, managers of finance and the high-ranking government officials. In Germany, this group was breaking away culturally and economically from the generalized ‘middle class’ from which is arose in the 19th century. This same change has taken place today in America. The distinction between liberal ‘swpl’ culture and conservative ‘prole’ culture is as sharp as ever (see Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 by Murray for details). At the same time as the Germany’s new upper middle class was entering the scene, a new ‘lower middle class’ of white collar clerks, bureaucrats and salesmen was growing to replace the ‘old lower middle class’ of shopkeepers and independent merchants. Again, the parallels in modern America are clear.
It was from these two new classes that the SS drew the majority of its recruits. Though the National Socialists attracted more workers than any other German party at the time–other than the Communists—theirs was essentially a middle-class movement [as is often said]. A third of the SS leaders were upper middle-class professionals (a large over-representation in a Germany where only 3 % could claim such status). And among those classified as upper middle class, around half listed their profession as ‘student’. Ziegler notes, these young men [who listed themselves as students and nothing else] must have been unwilling to commit themselves to traditional professional careers because virtually all students within our samples had either just finished secondary school [college]…or had just dropped out of a university before accepting the non-traditional careers of SS leaders in Himmler’s Black Order. The older UMC [upper middle class] recruits who already had established a career were most often physicians or lawyers as they had solid economic motives for joining the Nazis; the former feared a decline in earning and socialized medicine and the latter because young attorney’s in particular suffered from an overcrowding of their profession. Sounds familiar? The next 40% of recruits came from the sons of the new lower middle class. Indeed most of the recruits to the SS in general were salaried white-collar employees and civil servants–not craftsmen or farmers.
But despite the middle-class domination of the SS, the organization had a healthy share of working class men. There was no formal education requirement so the best men from the lower class could rise as far as their ability would take them. Because National Socialists sought and indeed delivered increased social opportunity, the Nazis, it has been argued ‘must be placed within a long European tradition of struggle by the lower orders against the restraints imposed upon them by their ‘betters’. Professionals with graduate’ degrees worked and fought side by side with men who had only eight years of formal education.
Conclusion will be posted tomorrow