National Socialist Welfare

In addition to make-work programs, the National Socialist regime also introduced welfare programs that were designed to link poverty relief with sacrifice for the common good of the racial community, or Volksgemeinschaft. The principal manifestations of this endeavor were the Winter Relief Agency (Winterhilfswerk or WHW) and the National Socialist People's Welfare (NS-Volkswohlfahrt or NSV).

The WHW was founded in September 1933 under the supervision of the Propaganda Ministry to coordinated the collection of money and supplies for emergency relief to needy or homeless “racial comrades.” WHW volunteers, often members of the Party, the HJ, and BDM collected donations door-to-door or on the street; people who donated received a token lapel-pin, which soon one of the most visible signs of National Socialist rule in everyday life. Something like 8,000 different tokens, each corresponding to a distinct fund-raising campaign, were produced between October 1933 and March 1943.

Image: “BDM im Dienste des Winter-Hilfswerk des deutschen Volkes 1934/35,” 120 x 80 cm; Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum (1990/532). The slogans read “Everyone will be wearing the Winter-Hilfswerk flower on Sunday, November 4” (Jeder trägt am Sonntag 4. November die Blume des WHW) and “You too must give!” (auch Du mußt opfern!).

This token is from a collection undertaken in January 1934 and bears the slogan “Protect the Family -- We Sacrifice”. The object, greatly enlarged here, has a diameter of 2.5 centimeters. To see more examples of the these tokens, click here.

On the right is a photograph of Hamburg senator von Allwärden exhorting his fellows to participate in a campaign carried out in that city in 1933.

Sources: WHW token: Deutsches Historisches Museum; photo: Deutsches Historisches Museum.

 
Despite widespread corruption, the WHW managed provide relief to large numbers of people--about 10,000,000 received parcels or cash in the winter of 1937, for example. In Berlin alone, some 75,000 WHW volunteers collected 375,000 RM in October 1935.

The WHW was formally independent, but in practice became ever more closely allied with the main social welfare agency of the NSDAP, the People's Welfare (NS-Volkswohlfahrt, or NSV). As the 1930s wore on, the personnel and finances of both organizations were increasingly intermeshed, starting at the top with Erich Hilgenfeldt, who headed them both. By 1943, the NSV had 17,000,000 dues-paying members, which made it the second-largest subsidiary organization of the NSDAP after the Labor Front (DAF).

It is crucial to bear in mind that for the NSV, as with the WHW, poor relief was inextricably bound up with the regime's evolving racial agenda. There could be no question of donating proceeds, for example, to Jews (who had their own relief system, the Jewish Winter Relief Agency or Jüdisches Winterhilfswerk). Nor was relief intended for alcoholics, asocials, Gypsies, or anyone else whose survival did not promote the interests of a “racially healthy” people. In this sense, the activities of the WHW and NSV can be regarded as instances of “positive eugenics”--policies designed to promote the survival of the race by strengthening it from within.

Image: a lapel pin for NSV members. The object has a diameter of 1.7 centimeters. Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum. 
In addition to its door-to-door collection campaigns, the WHW also sponsored so-called “Stew Sundays” (Eintopfsonntage): on the first Sunday of every month from March through October, every family in Germany was to have stew for the main meal, and donate the money saved in this way to the WHW. In the winter of 1935/1936, proceeds from “Stew Sundays” generated no fewer than 31 million RM.
“The stew meal is here - no one should starve” (1934); lithograph, 83,4 x 60 cm
Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum (1987/263).

A contemporary photo conveys the implicit threat in “Stew Sundays”: “Political leaders remind [one and all] of their duty. Remember to eat stew [on Sundays].” Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum.		 It didn't take long before “Stew Sundays” became a tool of conformity: restaurants were required to offer only single-pot dishes on “Stew Sundays”, and local party functionaries made informal visits to see if their charges were actually tightening the belt on the appointed day. Part of the extraordinary success of WHW collections can be traced to the attention party officials paid to who was donating and who was not. Chronic non-donors risked falling out of the Party's good graces. 

Winter Relief Agency booklets:
The Führer Makes History, 1933
The Führer Makes History, 1938
The Führer in the Mountains
The Führer's Battle in the East


Bibliography:
Thomas E. J.DeWitt,  “The Nazification of Welfare: Organization and Policy, 1933-1939,” Societas 7 (1977): 303-327.
Christoph Sachsse and Florian Tennstedt, Der Wohlfahrtsstaat im Nationalsozialismus: Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992).
Herwart Vorländer, “NS-Volkswohlfarht und Winterhilfswerk des deutschen Volkes,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 34 (1986): 341-380.
Herwart Vorländer, Die NSV: Darstellung und Dokumenation einer nationalsozialistischen Organisation (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt, 1988).