Monsters or ordinary people? What the everyday life of the Third Reich looked like
No matter what, life always goes on. The new state regime may pursue a policy that many suffer from, but at the same time the citizens unaffected by it continue to live their normal lives.
While the Nazis brutally persecuted Jews and everyone else who was considered second-class people, many Germans did not notice any special changes in their daily routine. They went to school, joined clubs, got married, worked, made purchases…
It was an ordinary life against the background of one of the most terrible periods in history. Then, when the war broke out, destruction and violence touched everyone — but even against the background of the war, civilian life in the rear did not stop.
These photos show what "normal" life looked like in Nazi Germany, which existed from 1933 to 1945.
1. Students greet the teacher, Berlin, January 1934
2. Children buy fruit ice cream from a tray, Berlin, 1934
3. Volunteers collect Christmas donations for the poor, Berlin, December 1935
4. Children wave flags, leaving Berlin for evacuation, circa 1940-1945.
5. Representatives of the Union of German Girls (the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth) are engaged in gymnastics, 1941.
6. German children at a geography lesson at a Nazi school in Silesia (Poland), October 1940.
7. Members of the Hitler Youth tug of war in gas masks, Worms, 1933
8. Distribution of portraits of Adolf Hitler for hanging in apartments, a camp for displaced persons in Lublin (Poland), 1940.
9. Members of the Hitler Youth on a campaign, place unknown, 1933
10. Passers—by read a propaganda stand with the headline "Jews are our trouble", Worms, 1933.
11. Members of the Imperial Labor Service, where all young men were conscripted for six months, on field work, circa 1940.
12. Children with Down syndrome in the Schoenbrunn psychiatric Clinic, 1934. Initially, all children with developmental delays were forcibly sterilized, later all mentally ill began to be physically destroyed.
13. Activists of the Union of German Girls hang posters about their organization, Worms, 1933
14. A family looks with admiration at a boy in a Hitler Youth uniform, February 1943.
15. A Jewish woman examines the goods of a street vendor, Radom (Poland), 1940.
16. Activists of the Union of German Girls are cleaning, Berlin, date unknown.
17. Jews stand in line at a travel agency hoping to leave Germany, Berlin, January 1939.
18. The newlywed flaunts in SS uniform at the wedding, December 1942.
19. Members of the NSDAP with election campaigning at the gates of the church, Berlin, July 23, 1933.
20. Ritual jumping over a bonfire during the traditional summer solstice festival, Berlin, 1937
21. Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller delivers a speech in Berlin Cathedral from a pulpit wrapped in a Nazi flag, September 1934.
22. SA stormtroopers hang leaflets calling for a boycott on the window of a Jewish-owned shop on April 1, 1933.
23. The newlyweds admire their rings, the place is unknown, 1944
24. Newborns under the Lebensborn program are descendants of carefully selected "racially pure" parents, September 1941.
25. Two SS men at the christening of a child, 1936
26. Children salute banners in one of the camps for evacuees, the date is unknown.
27. Miraculously surviving Jewish store after Kristallnacht — a terrible pogrom during which thousands of synagogues and Jewish offices were destroyed, Berlin, November 10, 1938.
28. A French woman in forced factory work, Berlin, 1943
29. Ostarbeiters at lunch at the Scherl Publishing House, Berlin, February 1943.
30. Children with their parents descend into a bomb shelter, Berlin, October 1941.
31. Boys at night in the bomb shelter of the Imperial Ministry of Aviation, Berlin, 1940
32. Men, women and children fighting fires after an air raid, location unknown, 1942
33. The mayor of Leipzig committed suicide in the workplace, fearing retribution, 1945.