It was never anything we were told in so many words, it was just something everyone understood. There were organisations that were on the right side, and organisations on the wrong side. You had to choose. It wasn't something you could pick and mix. Your father was in the SPD, you could go out hiking with the Sozialistische Jugend or play football with Rot Sport, your mother would be in a party women's organisation, shop at the PRO, and ideally live in a Genossenschaft flat. If your father was Catholic, you'd be out with the Franziskusbund, your mother was in the Frauenwerk and you cheered for the diocesan clubs. And if your dad was national, you'd be in the Deutsche Jugend and go to Wehrsport, your mother was in the Frauenbund, your club was called Teutonia or Vaterland, and your dad would hope to get a Siedlungshaus. And it was understood where you could go for help if you needed it. Nobody from a red family would do well in the civil service. If you were Catholic, you'd go to a parish school and maybe a diocesan Gymnasium if you were gifted. The son of a national father would be welcome, or at least not rejected, at a traditional school. Especially the Realgymnasien in Prussia were great if you wanted to make a career. Social Democrats would go to the Reformschulen and study at technical colleges, if they could. Or through the party's schools. You didn't meet the others, you didn't play with them. Sometimes you'd play against them, but that was all. That was how the world worked.
Now, it wouldn't have been all that bad if things had been fair. But when are they ever? The Deutsche Jugend had all the good stuff – cheap uniforms, and good quality, which you were allowed to wear to school. They got reduced train tickets and they got to sleep in barracks, ad their Feldwanderungen got to practice obstacle courses and shoot on army ranges and learn to use lorries and even serve artillery pieces. It cost almost nothing, and if you passed the course you could join the army as an Unteroffiziersanwärter. Some even got to fly aeroplanes or sail on navy training ships. The pilgrimages and choir practices of the Catholics couldn't beat that. So in the end, a lot of kids did cross over. It was a problem, some got beaten up by their parents or their former friends. Soon enough, though, they would be welcome in other schools and find new friends. That was what changed, really, the völkische were really welcoming if you were willing to come over. They didn't laugh at you for being working class – Arbeiter- und Bauernsohn was a badge of honour for them. Salt of the earth. And you knew that if your dad changed over, he'd have a better chance at promotion. And of course for young people, it was a different world: If you went Unteroffizier, you could get a civil service job after the army. You could go to technical colleges on scholarships if you were smart and dedicated. And the opinion of your youth leaders counted. Really, what was there not to like?
And then, of course, people had just had enough of the Social Democrats. Twenty years of promising a golden future, and I suppose it wasn't fair. They'd built all the houses and the undergrounds and trams, and people got gas and electricity and indoor plumbing. And after the war, there was just no money. But when the völkische took over, things just got better. Wages went up, you could really buy things with the money, and everybody was talking about technology, it came in really exciting ways. We had radio. Radio was really cheap – you could get a set for 30 marks – and it was really a game changer for everybody. Even if you lived away from the big cities, you could now listen to the latest music, hear theatre plays, listen to the speeches in the Reichstag. And there was cinema, the films getting better and longer and really cheap, much cheaper than the variety shows. If you were a little better off, your father might buy a car. And you never stopped hearing about how great the military was becoming, the armoured wagons, the aeroplanes, the new battleships. Very few papers still wrote about corruption and crime. It was a good time to be young.
Haller, Fritz: Ein deutscher Held, Verlag der Büchergilde, Altona 1957