Q2 Why do the interpretations differ Practice Questions: Germany

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: from the memoirs of a retired Prussian army officer who had served at the Kaiser's court before 1914, published in Germany in 1925.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

When I entered the Kaiser's service, Germany was becoming the greatest power in Europe. Our factories and shipyards were the envy of the world, our army the finest ever seen, and the new battleships gave the Reich its proper place among the nations. The Kaiser understood that Germany needed strength, not endless talk in the Reichstag. Working men were given insurance and protection in the factories; those who still followed the socialists did so out of envy, not out of need.

Interpretation B: from an interview with a man who worked in a Hamburg shipyard before 1914 and belonged to a trade union and the SPD, recorded in West Germany in 1960 for a local history project.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

People forget what the Kaiser's Germany was really like. We elected a Reichstag, but it could not choose the government: the Kaiser picked his Chancellor, and the generals were listened to long before any deputy. Millions of marks went on battleships while we worked eleven hours in the yards and lived four to a room. That is why so many of us joined the union and voted Social Democrat, until by 1912 we were the largest party in the Reichstag — and still nothing changed.

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: from the memoirs of a man from Hamburg who was unemployed for two years during the Depression and who in 1934 was given a job building the new motorways, one of the Nazis' public works schemes to reduce unemployment. His memoirs were published in West Germany in 1979.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

Before 1933 I queued for the dole for two years and my children went hungry. Then the work came back. I was given a job on the new motorway, with a wage packet every Friday and my dignity restored. Later my brother earned good money in an aircraft factory. People say now that we were cheated, but in those years there was work for any man who wanted it, and we felt that the country was being rebuilt.

Interpretation B: from a book about the Nazis' policies to reduce unemployment, written in 1938 by a former trade union official who lost his post when the Nazis abolished the trade unions in 1933 and who left Germany in 1935. The book was published abroad for foreign readers.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

The fall in unemployment is a conjuring trick. Jews and married women pushed out of their jobs were simply struck off the registers, and conscription removed hundreds of thousands more young men. Others are marched into the Labour Service for six months of spade work at pocket money. Since the unions were destroyed in 1933 wages have been held down and hours lengthened, and the factories turn out guns rather than the goods a worker might wish to buy.

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: from the memoirs of a woman from Leipzig, the widow of a schoolteacher, who in 1923 was living on a small pension and the family's savings. Her memoirs were published in 1961.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

In 1923 everything we had put aside for our old age vanished. My husband's insurance money would not buy a single loaf. Each morning I hurried to the shops before the prices were changed again, and by the evening I had less than nothing. Respectable families sold their furniture and even their wedding rings in order to eat. The Republic had robbed honest people who had worked all their lives, and my neighbours never trusted it again.

Interpretation B: from an interview recorded in 1973 with a man who in 1923 was running his family's small farm in Bavaria, which carried a large mortgage taken out before the First World War.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

People talk about 1923 as though the whole of Germany starved, but on the land it was quite different. We always had milk, eggs and potatoes, and townspeople came out to the farms with silver spoons to trade for them. Best of all, my father's mortgage was cleared with a handful of worthless notes. Once the new money came in at the end of the year the whole business was finished with. It was a storm that passed over us.

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: from a tape-recorded interview given in 1979 by a man who had been an unemployed factory worker in Düsseldorf during the Depression and who later worked in an armaments factory.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

In 1932 I had been out of work for two years and my family was close to going hungry. Within three years of Hitler coming to power I had a steady job and my wife had a place on a cheap holiday by the sea through Strength Through Joy. People say now that we were all forced into it, but nobody forced me. We supported him because he gave us work, order in the streets and pride in being German again.

Interpretation B: from an account written in 1946 by a German schoolteacher who had been dismissed from his post in 1935 after refusing to join the Nazi teachers' organisation, published for German readers after the defeat of Germany.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

It is too easy to say that the German people chose Hitler. From 1933 the newspapers, the radio and the cinema said only what Goebbels permitted; the trade unions were abolished and the other parties banned. I lost my post in 1935 and my neighbours stopped speaking to me, not out of hatred but out of fear of the Gestapo and the camps. What looked like enthusiasm at the rallies was largely obedience. Germans cheered because silence had become dangerous.

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: from the memoirs of a labourer from Berlin who had been unemployed for two years before joining the SA in 1930, published in West Germany in 1970.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

I had been out of work for two years when I joined the SA. In the hostel there was soup, a bed and men who treated me as a comrade again. We marched with the band through districts where the Communists ruled the streets, and for the first time people looked at us with respect. Of course there were fights, but the Reds started most of them. The SA gave thousands of us the discipline and the hope that the Republic never gave us.

Interpretation B: from an article by a local Social Democratic Party official in a town in northern Germany, printed in a party newspaper in the summer of 1932 before the Reichstag election.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

Do not be deceived about these brown columns. The SA does not win Germans by argument but by terror. They come into our districts to provoke, they break up our meetings, and this summer scarcely a weekend passes without funerals. Working men who shout them down are beaten in the dark. Those who put their cross beside the Nazis on polling day do so because they are frightened of the stormtroopers, not because they believe a word of what Hitler promises.