The Volksgemeinschaft and the Problems of Permeability: The Persistence of Traditional Attitudes in Württemberg Villages

Abstract

Some historians are intent on implicating all Germans in the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust. This has come to be seen
within a new definition of what the Volksgemeinschaft was. The Volksgemeinschaft has long been the subject of scholarly debate. More recently, Michael Wildt has argued that antisemitism was what bound members
of the Volk together in a racist community. His impressive evidence does not, however, sustain his argument that all members of the Volk were ‘self-empowered’ by their participation or complicity in antisemitic violence. Evidence from rural Württemberg contradicts
his assertions to this effect and presents a more variegated picture of the potentialities for antisemitic violence in smaller
communities. The absence of Jews from the overwhelming majority of small communities in Württemberg in the 1930s, and the
absence or ineffectiveness of Nazi organizations in these same communities, mean that the two critical conditions for antisemitic
violence were missing from most of Württemberg’s rural communes. It is possible that the same may be said for rural communities
in some other parts of Germany, including southern Bavaria. Sweeping assertions about antisemitic violence characterizing
and shaping society in smaller communities are therefore unhelpful. Extrapolation to nationwide dimensions from a number of
well-researched local cases does not provide evidence for Wildt’s all-encompassing argument.