Forbidden History - Recreation For The Reich

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we look into how Adolf Hitler leveraged recreation and leisure activities to control Germany's workforce and instill the ideals of the Nazi regime in the citizens of the Third Reich. Cast List: Guy Walters: A British author, historian, and journalist who has written several books on WWII. As a journalist for The Times, he writes on historical topics for the national press.  Andrew Gough: Writer, presenter and editor of The Heretic Magazine  Terry Charman: Historian & Author  Michael Lynch: Author of ‘Understanding Nazi Germany’ Adrian Weale: Author & Former British Army Intelligence Officer Prof. Steven Klipstein: Author & Historian  Nigel H. Jones: Author & Historian Colin Philpott: Author of "Relics of the Reich" Jim Meigs: Author & Historian Jan Seidler: Prora Documentation Centre Eric Meyers: Narrator   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Recreation, leisure, and Nazism. These aren't words that you would normally find put together. But for Adolf Hitler, they were an integral part of his plan to control Germany's workforce and to indoctrinate citizens of the Third Reich with the ideals of the Nazi.

regime. In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we'll take a look at how Hitler used the Olympic Games to promote Nazism and how he controlled the leisure time and holidays of his citizens by developing the world's largest travel agency. And how? By constructing the world's biggest beach resort. He hoped to brainwash the people of the Reich in preparation for World War II. When people say that Nazism is totalitarian, that really means they wanted total control of all aspects of lives. If you're going on a Nazi holiday, you better prepare for some Nazi indoctrination. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he was keen to provide a showcase for his new Nazi regime, one that would make the international community take notice of the new Germany

and to stamp his country's mark firmly on the world map. and he chose to do that with the staging of the Olympic Games. By far, the largest single international event held during the Nazi period was the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world came to view the sporting spectacular. But for the Nazi regime, it presented another opportunity. It enabled them to show the world that Germany was now a tolerant place, a wealthy place, a place that seemed, in fact, happy.

It was an opportunity the Nazis seized with both hands. Hitler was particularly keen to outshine the Americans who had hosted the successful 1932 games in Los Angeles. He therefore ordered a newly built 100,000 Cedar Stadium for the track and field events, six gymnasiums, and multiple other venues. And what's more, he was going to put on the most spectacular ceremony the world had ever seen. I think they really had three main objectives with the 36 Olympics.

One was to produce the Olympics which were faultlessly organized. Secondly, to produce the Olympics which were meticulously choreographed. Thirdly, most controversially, of course, to produce the Olympics which would demonstrate Aryan superiority. In August, the Olympic Games are held in Berlin, which Hitler has transformed into the showplace of the Third Reich. On this occasion, he intends that foreign visitors be impressed by Nazi efficiency and the material achievements of his new order. They built this ultra-modern stadium in Berlin to house the main events. They cleaned up their act to the extent of that they removed anti-Semitic signs from Germany. Temporally, there were signs like, you wouldn't sit here,

Nichter Wunsch, Jews are welcome here, outside most, if not every village in the Reich. Those went, signs saying only Aryans could sit on park benches. They went too. But this was just, if you like, a massaging of the image, masterminded by the propaganda and Enlightenment Minister Yosef Goebbels. The Nazis actively mask their racial views, from the international community. But while black and Jewish athletes

were allowed to compete in the events, the local population of gypsies in Berlin was rounded up and held in camps. So people who visited were left with the impression that the country was warm, welcoming, and peaceful. Little did they know. During the buildup to the Berlin Olympics, there were several campaigns worldwide,

calling for a boycott on the basis that Nazi involvement made the whole event morally questionable. The Germans had been awarded the Olympics before Hitler came to power, and there was real indecision in part of some of the world's nations, specifically Britain and the United States, whether they wanted to participate in this particular Olympics because they kind of figured that the Germans would use it purely for propaganda purposes. The British told them right up front,

that unless they ease the restrictions on Jews and they let all Jewish athletes compete, they would not come. And the Americans, there were, of course, Americans who were also telling them that, well, unless you do this, we're not going to come. But despite this, a total of 49 nations took part in the games,

and ambassadors and spectators from across the globe filled the venues in support of their home countries. And as well as being televised, it was also the first sporting event to be broadcast live to special screening rooms throughout Berlin, while coverage of the events could also be accessed via the radio in over 40 countries worldwide. The Nazis actually developed a look for it, which probably hadn't happened before. They showed things like the torch relay, which was an innovation of the 1936 Olympics, which was designed to, to sort of link it back to the classical past and to link Nazi Germany to the classical past as well. Inside the stadium, the world's greatest athletes competed for their places on the winner's podium.

There were many notable achievements from the Netherlands, Hungary, and of course Germany. But the one person everybody was watching was the USA's Jesse Owens. It was the African American athletes that gave Hitler his problem. and they were there to compete, and they were there to win. And this was right in the face of Aryan superiority. And he did not really know how to handle this, and neither did the German propaganda teams. They didn't know how to handle the fact that African Americans

were winning medals against German-Aryan athletes. For the Nazis, it would have been highly embarrassing if Germany had done badly during the games. But, lucky, for Hitler, Germany did spectacularly well. They won 33 gold medals, nine more than the Americans, and even topped the medal table. But the Nazis also won another games. They won the propaganda games, because many of the international visitors went home and told everybody that actually Nazi Germany was a pretty decent place. Hitler had tricked the world. The international media

were there in force. There were a lot of international visitors. You know, although there was some disquiet amongst the more observant and insightful foreign correspondence, a lot of people went away and wrote rather glowing accounts of the game. So, you know, in that sense, Goebbels and Hitler and others will have regarded it as a success. And, you know, famously, a lot of international and particularly American business visitors and American journalists went away and basically said, you know, all these things you've heard about the Nazis, Actually, I think these guys are okay.

The newspapers heralded them as the greatest Olympics ever. In fact, that New York Times went as far as to say the Olympic Games brought Germany back into the fold of nations. What a result this was for the Nazi regime. Hitler wanted to capitalize on the success of the Olympics by promoting Germany as an international tourist destination for foreign visitors. We hoped that in doing so it would bring in much needed money for the economy and to help towards his plans for the rearmament of the German military.

Yes, I mean, part of what the Nazis were focused on during the 1930s after they'd come to power was the projection of their image of Germany abroad. Welcome in the Reichshaustadt, Berlin. The Nazis were always trying to package Germany to create an impression of growth and forward movement and strength, both for their own population, but also for other people coming in to visit the country. It's no coincidence that they built the biggest airport in Europe, even though they didn't have very many planes. It was all for effect. They did also market Germany as a holiday destination.

Germany was portrayed in a lot of the holiday literature as this idyllic, particularly sort of rural idyllic place. And that theme was taken through into the advertising of Germany as a holiday destination. But it was done, I think, overwhelmingly for propaganda reasons. To try and demonstrate that Germany was now back on a more secure footing. and it was a place that people would want to come and visit. As well as advertising campaigns, they also offered favorable exchange rates and subsidized travel to and from the Reich,

in the hope of luring foreign holiday makers with foreign money. The Germans are a very hospitable race, and that sort of helped the Nazis. I think a lot of what was in the German character, and in fact a lot of achievements of the Weimar regime, which actually had been underplayed, the Nazis capitalized. upon. So the Germans were very friendly people and that, you know, showed when foreign tourists

went there. But they did a lot in the way of publicity and that and, you know, tourist offices in most countries. Part of the Nazi tourism policy was to make Germany an international capital of arts and culture, with museums of fine art to rival those of Paris, London and New York. Linz was a town in Austria where Hitler had spent part of his youth. and he sometimes spoke wistfully of one day retiring to Linz with Frou Brown, Eva Brown, his mistress, late his wife. He wanted to make Linz one of the few German cities, German after the Anselauss when Austria was conquered, that would be a special showtown of the movement of Nazism, along with Berlin, the capital

of Germany and Munich, the cradle of the movement. Bairaute, the cultural capital, the town where Wagner's favorite composer, had lived. And Linz was one of the towns on that list. But while the creation of museums and galleries might be seen as a positive step, Hitler had intended to fill the museum at Linz with stolen art from the countries he was planning to invade and conquer. But Hitler had very strict views on the kind of paintings that people should be admiring. So he set about trying to control the way people viewed and even appreciated art.

He loved the classical art. He had no trap with any sort of modernism, anything after the late 19th century, around the time of his birth was anathema to him. And this was, of course, the period of expressionism, of surrealism, of abstract art coming in. All those were banned by the regime. And then they went so far to stage a special... exhibition, originally in Munich, it later traveled around, called an exhibition of entartite of degenerate art.

Despising modern art, Hitler ordered the removal of artworks he deemed inappropriate for museums and galleries across Germany. They were then to be displayed alongside other so-called degenerate works, in the hope of discouraging citizens and foreign visitors from pursuing their appreciation of the growing surrealist art movement. In fact, it attracted more visitors, despite the mocking captions around the pictures and sculptures displayed, than an exhibition of official approved German art that went on at the same time. But while the Nazi tourism machine used vacations to promote the virtues of the regime,

they were also an integral part of Hitler's plan to remove the anti-Nazi German labor unions. He started this process by declaring the 1st of May an annual public holiday for all workers across Germany, and he used this opportunity to give a speech directly addressed to the workers themselves. He declared that the slogan of the day would be, honor the work and respect the workers, and he urged them to unite for the good of the nation. The very next day, with the workers on his side, the Nazis marched into the labor union offices, arrested their officials, and closed the organization down.

The Nazis wanted to take control of the labor unions because they didn't want industrial unrest, they didn't want any resistance to their plans to rearm, re-militarized Germany. That involved a massive ramping up in production across a range of industries. and it was felt that the labour unions with their links to the Social Democrats and to the Communists and possibly also to the Soviet Union would be a source of resistance. The Nazis wanted to get control of the unions and to stamp out any left-wing opposition that might come from those unions, and they were quite effective in doing that when they took over the trade unions on the 2nd of May 1933.

Hitler replaced the labor unions he had closed with a single nationalized union known as the German Labor Front. He made membership compulsory for all workers and demanded absolute loyalty and obedience. In return, he would offer them something they had never been given before. State-funded recreation and leisure time. The German Labor Front decided that it not only wanted to control people in work, but also outside of it. of it. So it established a whole program of sports, entertainment, and socializing that it called Strength Through Joy. Strength through Joy, run by Robert Lay, under this umbrella organization called the German Labor Front, this was supposed to replace the trade unions. So German workers were not members of trade unions, but when you actually compare them with the situation

of industrial workers in Britain and France, the extracurricular activities they were given made their work situation a lot better. In German, the word Freud, Joy, has a rather special meaning. It doesn't easily translate. Joy was not an individual emotion. It was a collective ecstasy that came from a shared objective fulfilled. So that joy is the reward. for effort. So strength through joy isn't just a sort of throwaway line. It meant the people could become people of a joyous nature if they could contribute positively to the Germany of their building. Strength through joy was a good way of giving, if you like, sweetness to the public, but also

controlling them. Controlling this was an aspect of their private life when a family went on holiday. So the Nazis wouldn't want that. They would want at all times the state to be the be-all and end-all for people, not the family. So the best way of doing that was to have an organization that provided cheap holidays, cheap travel, on cruise ships, on purpose-built holiday blocks on the North German coast, and controlling people's leisure time through this state organization, through this Nazi outfit. the Strength Through Joy program, the average German worker could only have dreamed of a family trip to the theater. But under the Nazi regime, it was made accessible to them for the first

time through open-air amphitheaters known as Thingplatz. Here, German citizens could see plays, performances, or classical music concerts. It was free to everyone, so long as you didn't mind the fact that all the performances were skewed towards promoting. including Nazism. These venues were modeled on ancient classical amphitheaters, with grand rows of seats and steps rising up to around 30 or 40 feet, and a perfect semi-circular stage which would provide fantastic acoustics. By putting on plays that venerated National Socialist ideology in these sorts of venues

made the audience feel as if that very ideology was rooted in something quite ancient. and therefore gave the impression that Nazism had roots far deeper than they actually were. In addition to this, Strength Through Joy also provided vacations for its members, and in 1937 they began construction of the first of their custom-built cruise liners, the mighty M.V. Wilhelm Gustloff. Launched that same year, it was 684 feet in length, and weighed over 20,000. thousand tons, big enough to accommodate some 1900 German workers, functionaries, and crew members. It would go on to complete over 60 cruises and

transport roughly 65,000 holiday makers. The holidays and the cruises were, I mean part and parcel of the Nazi policy to keep the people sweet, the bread and circuses aspect of the regime. And undoubtedly, I mean, it worked. William Shire in his capacity as American Foreign Correspondent goes on one of these cruises. And although he says it was very organized, much more organized than his taste, really, but he felt the German workers on the cruise were all enjoying themselves very much. And there was this feeling, well, you know, the regime is providing this for us. The cruises went to destinations such as Italy, Madeira, and the Norwegian fjords.

And all food, drink and entertainment were provided for the passengers as part of the package. But while it may seem idyllic, the reality was quite different. Many passengers remarked on the strict daily routines and the lack of free time for any relaxation. It was a very controlled, activated holiday in which people wouldn't be allowed to wander off on their own, or wouldn't be encouraged to wander off on their own and do their own thing.

They would do the recognized approved things. But a key part of strength through joy also was the sort of educational aspect of it. So, you know, people might go on a Nazi cruise, but they'd have to listen to a lot of Nazi lectures while they did it. They had 40 bathrooms. They had 100 showers. But they had 156 propaganda speakers. If you're going on a Nazi holiday, you better prepare for some 9.

Nazi indoctrination. But if cruises weren't your thing, or you wanted to get your feet back on dry land, the Nazis had that covered too. In 1936, Hitler had ordered the construction of a truly colossal holiday resort. Head of the German labor front, Robert Lay had wanted to emulate and even surpass the British vacation resort, Butlands. He believed that every German worker deserved a beach vacation. a beach vacation. The biggest single surviving edifice from the Strength Through Joy Movement is the Prora Holiday Camp.

It was built between 1936 and 1939 on the island of Rougan in northeastern Germany. Prora was designed to hold 20,000 beds in total, with two in each room, which would also contain a wardrobe and a sink. There would also be communal showers and washrooms on each floor. Historian Guy Walters meets Jan Seedler, a guide at Prora, to discuss what life at this Nazi holiday resort would have been like. So Jan, this place is absolutely huge. Do we know how many people helped to build this camp?

Yeah, 2000 workers worked here in the National Socialist time. Yeah. 2000, and were they slave laborers or forced laborers? forced laborers or they were normal builders? Normal builders, forced labors came in the Second World War to poor. Do you think that German people during the Nazi period would have liked to have come on holiday here? Do you think this would have been a fun thing for people to have done?

Yeah, it's a paradise because holiday, make holidays only for people with a lot of money in the past. past and for a worker it was a paradise to come here on the island you're on the Baltic Sea. Well they were extremely popular and again this was one of these sort of the aspects of Nazi Germany that a lot of more sympathetic foreign observers thought was you know something that the Western democracies could imitate or introduce a camp where all the facilities were provided and where you need leave the region you could be there for

for how many days you were. And you wish shared experience, families could be catered for. The idea of all provisions, holiday, all provided holiday, is really a very advanced, a modern notion. And it becomes a model of so many other things. But that's a groundbreaker, you might say. For a German worker, just to be able to go on a cruise or to a beach resort, was unprecedented.

Nothing like this existed anywhere in Europe. But in true Nazi style, there would have been little time for the holidaymakers to relax. So do we know what the typical day would have been like for the holiday maker here? Yeah, the holiday makers haven't free time. It's all you have to go from one program point to the next. We have to go to reports about Adolf Hitler or something like this. Swimming, go to the flag parade. That was the idea behind the holiday.

It's no free time you have to make holiday with the community because the community can say this is not a national socialist person, so we can take him out of the community. So in a way it's like brainwashing, isn't it? You're making everybody think and behave in the same way. Yeah, yeah. Hitler's idea was to motivate them for the war. There was a great emphasis on sport and in control of all leisure time.

You know, it would be like, if you like, a militarized version of Bhattninn's holiday camp, that the idea that you must be at all times active. And if you were active in a Nazi organization, if you were doing organized gymnastics, that was all the better. better. Anything against the private sphere when ideas contrary to the Nazi ideology might prosper was to be encouraged. So again, another instrument of control. When people say that Nazism is totalitarian, that really means they wanted total control of all aspects of life. So that was everything from how women had babies to what kind of sports children would play, right up to how

you worked, what associations you had, it all had to be organized in one coherent model in service of Hitler and the state. Made up of eight identical buildings and occupying over three miles of beachfront, at Prora, families of the Third Reich would sit together to enjoy their catered meals and be provided with Nazi propaganda-based entertainment. Strictly scheduled, there would be little in the way of downtime or individual activities. was designed to be done in groups and participation was mandatory. Were there other camps similar to Prora?

Yeah, from this seaside resort, the plan was to build five of these, all of them on the Baltic Sea, but only Prober was built. The Strength Through Joy organization organized other holidays. Yeah, other holidays in all of the Germany parts. You can go walking, you can go to the North Sea, you can go make holiday in Bavaria or something like this. But what the people on these vacations did not realize is that they were being secretly watched and monitored the entire time. The Geheims state police, police, Gestapo, go in there in ships with the holiday makers,

and look for people who are thinking other opinions and say, okay, we look to them. So just to make this clear, the Gestapo would have been here on Praora or on Strength Through Joy cruise ships, keeping an eye on the holiday makers. Yeah, yeah. It was so since Strange Through Joy was created

that the Gestapo where they were, in these programs. And the Gestapo would not have been wearing big coats and hats, they would have been like normal holiday makers, spying. Yeah, normal holiday makers. And after this holiday, they wrote a report, and this report goes to the central station. Proro was never fully completed

and lay abandoned on the shores of the Baltic Sea for around 70 years before being renovated into vacation Apartments. Despite its abandonment all those years ago, what the Nazis had achieved with strength through joy made them incredibly popular with the German people. And it helped them to cement their hold on the country in the lead up to the Second World War. Subsidized holidays, subsidized rail travel, fitness centers, sporting events as well were organized, you know, athletics leagues, fantastic cafeterias. enormous state-of-the-art cafeteria so that people could go to work, get a really good meal,

maybe listen to some classical music. I mean, if you actually look at strength through joy, you've got to say that it did improve the working conditions of industrial workers, for example. In 1938, 180,000 Germans had been on a cruise. Three million had enrolled in evening gymnastics and physical education courses. And furthermore, just two years before, the 1936 Berlin Olympics had been an absolute triumph for the Germans. It had seemingly shown the country to be prosperous, and the international community had seen a country that seemed to be at ease with itself.

The start of World War II signaled the end of strength through joy, as Hitler now directed his resources towards military efforts. The people of Germany would now have to make their own entertainment. And one option that was readily available was the beer hall. Beer was as much part of the German national identity as Laterhausen or Bratwurst. Nevertheless, Hitler wanted to control that too. The Nazis thought about banning alcohol in the Third Reich, and of course Hitler was mostly a teetotaler.

But there were two issues. One is they were making a lot of money on taxation of alcohol, and two, they were afraid of the public backlash. Imagine during these tough times you tell your people, sorry, you can't have a drink. The Nazis also had very strong policies when it came to what their citizens were supposed to eat. It was considered the duty of every German to protect their health and to guard against disease so that they could be productive members of the community.

But with that in mind, the regime published extensive dietary guidelines as pamphlets and propaganda campaigns. The likes of white bread and butter were out, while meat and alcohol were to be consumed in moderation. Instead, fresh fruit and vegetables, potatoes, brown bread, grains and pulses, all cooked in olive oil were favored. Ironically, many of Hitler's favorite foods were the ones considered to be out. Hitler had quite cranky views on health. Having lived a rather sort of loose life in Vienna before the First World War, where he was a heavy smoker, a drinker.

In later life he became a vegetarian, he rarely drank and he certainly didn't smoke. And he tried to impose these views on Germany as a whole. The Nazis promoted a diet that really had very little meat. It was all about fresh foods free of preservatives. Now, they also believed that cooking was bad, and they promoted raw foods, which is actually a good thing. But they did have some prejudices about certain types of food. For instance, whipped cream was too pretentious. And of course, if you overate, that meant you were a traitor of this state.

Butter consumption in Germany was much lower. half the amount of Britain, and even worse when you put it against America, steak, beef consumption. Beef consumption three times greater in America, twice as great in Britain. And in Germany, a vast majority of their diet is potatoes and bread. I mean, Gorbils made the famous statement, you know, we've got to put guns before butter, but people weren't getting butter in Nazi Germany. Although, of course, the propaganda would say,

suggest they're rolling out this wonderful master race. As we can see, in terms of the food that they ate, they were on a very limited, restricted budget all the way through the period before the Second World War, and people were much better off in Britain. The German ideal for the countryside was reactionary, really. A throwback, a back to the land movement against much mechanization.

Hitler had an idealist picture of happy, shining, happy peasants on their farms, harvesting in a natural way organic crops. But by a large, I think the Nazi ethos as regarding food and diet was quite a healthy one, but one that would encourage self-sufficiency in Germany as far as possible the Germans would eat, drink German products. With the onset of war, vacations and living, leisure were soon replaced by death and destruction. So instead of becoming a place where tourists would take their vacations, Germany was now seen as a place of evil, a country to be feared and avoided. The only guests that stayed at the beach resort of Prora were the Nazi troops that were billeted there.

And the Wilhelm Gustloff luxury cruise liner, once the flagship of the Strength Through Joy movement, was attacked by a submarine while evacuating German troops and civilians from Prussia, killing nearly 10,000 passengers, the largest single naval disaster of all time. Unexplored catacombs buried beneath the city, a crumbling castle perched on a mountain peak, a top-secret government bunker, a cursed mansion cloaked in legend. I'm Sasha Auerbach. Join me in Tom Ward every Wednesday and Sunday as we reveal the mysteries and histories behind these abandoned places and ask, where did everyone go? We'll hear from Sasha, who knows the history the best.

In fact, there's a very famous book by a chap named Marcus Rediker called the Many-Headed Hydra, and he talks about pirate ships as an experiment in radical democracy. And me, who knows nothing, aeronautical scientists can't quite explain it. They say, we don't actually know how it gets up there. How it stays up? You're just not good at a science. No, there are experiments. There are explanations?

There are explanations. It's just plain physics. Brought to you by Like a Shot, makers of forbidden history. Search for Where Did Everyone Go on your favorite podcast platform.