In 1932, Germany had 6 million unemployed workers, many of them wandering amlessly through the country,...

 

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In 1932, Germany had 6 million unemployed workers, many of them wandering amlessly through the country, begging for food and seeking shelter in city lodging houses for the homeless. The Great Depression was an important factor in the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. This selection presents a description of the unemployed homeless in 1932 Heinrich Hauser, "With Germany's Unemployed" An almost unbroken chain of homeless men extends the whole length of the great Hamburg Berlin highway..... All the highways in Germany over which I have traveled this year presented the same aspect.... Most of the hikers paid no attention to me. They walked separately or in small groups, with their eyes on the ground. And they had the queer, stumbling gait of barefooted people, for their shoes were slung over their shoulders. Some of them were guild members- carpenters... milkmen... and bricklayers... but they were in a minority. Far more numerous were those whom one could assign to no special profession or craft- unskilled young people, for the most part, who had been unable to find a place for themselves in any city or town in Germany, and who had never had a job and never expected to have one. There was something else that had never been seen before-whole families that had piled all their goods into haby carriages and wheelbarrows that they were pushing along as they plodded forward in dumb despair. It was a whole nation on the march. I saw them-and this was the strongest impression that the year 1932 left with me I saw them, gathered into groups of fifty or a hundred men, attacking fields of potatoes. I saw them digging up the potatoes and throw- ing them into sacks while the farmer who owned the field watched them in despair and the local policeman looked on gloomily from the distance. I saw them stag- gering toward the lights of the city as night fell, with their sacks on their backs. What did it remind me of? Of the War, of the worst periods of starvation in 1917 and 1918, but even then people paid for the potatoes..... I saw that the individual can know what is happening only by personal experience. I know what it is to be a tramp. I know what cold and hunger are.... But there. are two things that I have only recently experienced- begging and spending the night in a municipal lodging house. I entered the huge Berlin municipal lodging house in a northern quarter of the city.... Distribution of spoons, distribution of enameled-ware bowls with the words "Property of the City of Berlin" written on their sides. Then the meal itself. A big kettle is carried. Men with yellow smocks have brought it in and men with yellow smocks ladle out the food. These men, too, are homeless and they have been expressly picked by the establishment and given free food and lodging and a little pocket money in exchange for their work about the house. Where have I seen this kind of food distribution be fore? In a prison that I once helped to guard in the win- ter of 1919 during the German civil war. There was the same hunger then, the same trembling, anxious expecta- tion of rations. Now the men are standing in a long row, dressed in their plain nightshirts that reach to the ground, and the noise of their shuffling feet is like the noise of big wild animals walking up and down the stone floor of their cages before feeding time. The men lean far over the kettle so that the warm steam from the food envelops them and they hold out their bowls as if begging and whisper to the attendant, "Give me a real helping. Give me a little more." A piece of bread is handed out with every bowl. My next recollection is sitting at a table in another room on a crowded bench that is like a seat in a fourth class railway carriage. Hundreds of hungry mouths make an enormous noise eating their food. The men sit bent over their food like animals who feel that someone is going to take it away from them. They hold their bowl with their left arm part way around it, so that nobody can take it away, and they also protect it with their other elbow and with their head and mouth, while they move the spoon as fast as they can between their mouth and the bowl. Why did Hauser compare the scene he describes from 1932 with conditions in the years 1917 and 1918? How did the growing misery of many ordi- nary Germans promote the rise of extremist politi- cal parties like the Nazis? In 1932, Germany had 6 million unemployed workers, many of them wandering amlessly through the country, begging for food and seeking shelter in city lodging houses for the homeless. The Great Depression was an important factor in the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. This selection presents a description of the unemployed homeless in 1932 Heinrich Hauser, "With Germany's Unemployed" An almost unbroken chain of homeless men extends the whole length of the great Hamburg Berlin highway..... All the highways in Germany over which I have traveled this year presented the same aspect.... Most of the hikers paid no attention to me. They walked separately or in small groups, with their eyes on the ground. And they had the queer, stumbling gait of barefooted people, for their shoes were slung over their shoulders. Some of them were guild members- carpenters... milkmen... and bricklayers... but they were in a minority. Far more numerous were those whom one could assign to no special profession or craft- unskilled young people, for the most part, who had been unable to find a place for themselves in any city or town in Germany, and who had never had a job and never expected to have one. There was something else that had never been seen before-whole families that had piled all their goods into haby carriages and wheelbarrows that they were pushing along as they plodded forward in dumb despair. It was a whole nation on the march. I saw them-and this was the strongest impression that the year 1932 left with me I saw them, gathered into groups of fifty or a hundred men, attacking fields of potatoes. I saw them digging up the potatoes and throw- ing them into sacks while the farmer who owned the field watched them in despair and the local policeman looked on gloomily from the distance. I saw them stag- gering toward the lights of the city as night fell, with their sacks on their backs. What did it remind me of? Of the War, of the worst periods of starvation in 1917 and 1918, but even then people paid for the potatoes..... I saw that the individual can know what is happening only by personal experience. I know what it is to be a tramp. I know what cold and hunger are.... But there. are two things that I have only recently experienced- begging and spending the night in a municipal lodging house. I entered the huge Berlin municipal lodging house in a northern quarter of the city.... Distribution of spoons, distribution of enameled-ware bowls with the words "Property of the City of Berlin" written on their sides. Then the meal itself. A big kettle is carried. Men with yellow smocks have brought it in and men with yellow smocks ladle out the food. These men, too, are homeless and they have been expressly picked by the establishment and given free food and lodging and a little pocket money in exchange for their work about the house. Where have I seen this kind of food distribution be fore? In a prison that I once helped to guard in the win- ter of 1919 during the German civil war. There was the same hunger then, the same trembling, anxious expecta- tion of rations. Now the men are standing in a long row, dressed in their plain nightshirts that reach to the ground, and the noise of their shuffling feet is like the noise of big wild animals walking up and down the stone floor of their cages before feeding time. The men lean far over the kettle so that the warm steam from the food envelops them and they hold out their bowls as if begging and whisper to the attendant, "Give me a real helping. Give me a little more." A piece of bread is handed out with every bowl. My next recollection is sitting at a table in another room on a crowded bench that is like a seat in a fourth class railway carriage. Hundreds of hungry mouths make an enormous noise eating their food. The men sit bent over their food like animals who feel that someone is going to take it away from them. They hold their bowl with their left arm part way around it, so that nobody can take it away, and they also protect it with their other elbow and with their head and mouth, while they move the spoon as fast as they can between their mouth and the bowl. Why did Hauser compare the scene he describes from 1932 with conditions in the years 1917 and 1918? How did the growing misery of many ordi- nary Germans promote the rise of extremist politi- cal parties like the Nazis?

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The scene Ha user describes from 1932 reminded him of the conditions in the years 1917 and 1918 because of the hunger and desperation he saw in the people He also saw that the people were gathered in ... View the full answer