What were the most common ideologies of the citizens of Nazi Germany?

by orinxone

What was the popular stance in Nazi Germany? I don't think everyone had such deep antisemitism that they would want to kill them.

HistPolAnswers

The ideological composition of German citizens in 1928 was not majoritively in favour of the Nazi Party. As a matter of fact, the Nazi Party won only 2.6% of the vote in the 1928 election, far less than the Communist Party and Social Democrats. However, by 1932 this had increased to over 30%. As Robert O. Paxton has pointed out, successful fascist parties were coopted into power by pre-existing conservative elites. This is, of course, also the case with the Nazi Party. Despite lacking a popular majority, the Nazi Party, in over the next few years would unleash successfully a reign of terror known as the Holocaust. And by 1939, although elections cannot be entirely relied upon as historically authoritative due to the nature of Germany's government, we can still deduce that the Nazi Party enjoyed the popular support of their population. But that still leaves the question of anti-semitism.

Your questions ask whether the anti-semitism exhibited by the Third Reich during this period (1932-1945) was also prevalent within society, and you hold the opinion that not "everyone had such deep antisemitism that they would want to kill them [Jews]". However, this isn't the case. The anti-semitism exhibited by the Third Reich can also be observed to have been unleashed by civilians in Germany as well as their occupied territories such as Lithuania (notoriously the Kaunas garage pogrom where a Lithuanian man killed 68 Jews with a pipe, one by one, as the crowd cheered and parents lifted their children to observe), Romania (Antonescu was vehemently anti-semitic and perpetrated a policy of anti-semitism on a similar scale to pre-Wansee Conference Germany), Poland, and Vichy France (under Petáin, who enacted anti-semitic policy without any instruction from Berlin), etc. In these territories, such as Austria, countless anti-semitic incidents took place which reinforces and invalidates the claim that widespread anti-semitism wasn't present, e.g. in Austria Jews were forced to scrub the streets while onlookers cheered, yelled anti-semitic comments, and held up their children to observe. The SS also encouraged and backed civilian anti-semitic action, thus taking advantage of the prevalent anti-semitism in order to rid their territories of what National Socialism considers dangerous, disgusting and in constant conflict with the Volk's destined place in history. Another misconception is that the German Army was not complicit in the Holocaust, which is absolute nonsense. The German Army, although not tasked with the removal of "Jewry", perpetrated horrible crimes against Jews in various territories. For another harrowing example of anti-Semitism in action and reaction to it, after what is known as Kristallnacht or The Night of the Broken Glass, where, after the assassination of a German diplomat by a Jew, the Third Reich unleashed Hell on the Jews in a night of retribution where synagogues, Jews, and their properties were destroyed and defaced. Rudi Bamber, a Jew living in Germany at the time, recalls his house being raided by German Stormtroopers at night, destroying her family home, beating residents including an elderly woman, and his father murdered. He also made clear the reaction of local non-Jews to this tragic treatment and suffering, saying that his family received no sympathy or support from local Germans, with some Germans going as far as to throw stones at his house. However, across Germany, the reaction was more varied. This is an important point, as anti-semitism, although highly widespread, differed from area to area, however, in general, anti-Semitism was more prevalent in the late 1930s and early 1940s than sympathy or even neutral views towards the Jews.

Source - Laurence Rees, The Holocaust: A New History (2017).

Note: I constructed this response quite quickly, do excuse it's poor structure and grammar.