Tourism Activities of the Organization “Force through Joy” as a Legitimation Factor of the Nazi Political and Legal Regime (1933-1939)

The article identifies and analyzes the most important area of the organization “Strength through Joy” and its contribution to the support of the Hitler regime by industrial workers in Germany. Created by the Nazis under the auspices of the German Labor Front, which replaced the traditional trade unions, this organization made one of the main emphasis on the mass cultivation of tourism on favorable terms in the ranks of the working community. Having become one of the most important areas of social policy in the Third Reich, the tourism activities of the “Force through Joy” served as one of the effective means of legitimizing Nazi power in the eyes of that part of German society that initially took a hostile position towards them.


Methodological and Theoretical Basis of the Study
The methodological foundations of the study reflect current trends in the study of the world of social everyday life, which is considered as a significant factor in the legitimization of public authorities. In this regard, in foreign and domestic specialized literature, considerable experience has been gained in referring to mental, sociocultural, civilizational aspects of the processes of legitimation. Actually, in the XX century. a very broad interdisciplinary discourse was formed, which included a number of the most important (for studying the subtle mechanisms of legitimizing power, its social conditioning) sections of jurisprudence (philosophy and sociology of law), social psychology (including the method of classical and postclassical psychoanalysis), history, political science, sociology, of course, etc.
This kind of methodological trend, starting in the second half of the 20th century, begins to focus on the principle of complementarity in understanding the specifics of the behavior of individuals (citizens of a particular state, foreigners), their different social groups (and even classes) in the political, legal and economic sphere, in the national world cultures, when, on the one hand, existing political (and legal) institutions, structures, and mechanisms determine human activity, determine its direction and character, and, on the other hand, the effectiveness and sustainability of the most important legal and political components of national statehood are determined, in fact, by a "subjective factor" (Panarin, 2005).
In such a heuristic context, among the works of foreign authors, two groups should be distinguished: firstly, philosophical-political, philosophical-legal, cultural studies, in which their authors identify principles, the most general approaches to the study of the legitimacy of power, and not only in stable, steady states and, accordingly, political and legal systems, relying on the methodology of objectivism, historicism, systematic and widespread use of hermeneutic analysis of a particular culture-civilizational space nations; secondly, very interesting and significant developments in the field of archetypal and mental constants of a particular society, manifested both in the everyday sphere of public relations, and in the sphere of recognition and positive (or negative) assessment of power, state legal policy in important aspects for a person his life (food security, family and marriage, employment, leisure, etc.).
It is this kind of combination of theoretical, methodological and applied sources that allows us to put and suggest our own solution to the problem stated in the subject of the article.
The first group of fundamental works should include, in particular, the works of A. Rosenberg (Rosenberg, 1998), C. Schmitt (Schmitt, 2005), P.D. la Rochelle (Rochelle, 2001), J. Gray (Gray, 2003), who determined the basic principles of a critical understanding of European culture and civilization as a whole, as well as the substantive and historical specifics of Nazism as a kind of creation of spiritual conflicts and the anthropological crisis of the Western (liberal) world (A. Rosenberg, C. Schmitt) or the consequences of the destruction of traditional European foundations, the desire to acquire new social ties and, accordingly, the system of power relations.
Authors of applied research are more "down to earth" to the stated topic. Their work allows us to make a kind of socio-mental and socio-cultural section of the space legitimizing power institutions. Here the ideas of J. Marabini (Marabini, 2003), J. Mosse (Mosse, 2003) are of great importance.
Note that in the domestic humanitarian tradition there is a "bias" towards historical-descriptive, to a greater extent, factual works in the field of the Third Reich, the fascist movement, which, of course, does not contribute to understanding of the nature of fascism in general (Italian, German, etc. .) and National Socialism in particular. It is clear that there is no theory of fascism as a special diagnosis of European culture. Although, of course, there are very interesting developments in the field of understanding the national mental-archetypal field as a whole (Korolkov, 2005;Mordovtsev and Popov, 2007), and especially fascism in particular (Mordovtsev and Popov, 2007;Mordovtsev and Mordovtseva, 2016;Mordovtsev and Petrash, 2019). This kind of "interweaving" of methodological positions, theoretical and applied measurements made it possible to examine the sphere of legitimation of state power in the Third Reich through the prism of the everyday world (Oleinykov, Mamychev, Shestopal, Plotnikov and Sarychev, 2019), which, naturally, includes the tourist activities of the organization "Strength through Joy". Appeal to the works of the mentioned above two levels of problematic "immersion" -theoretical and methodological (philosophical) and socio-applied -allows you to use the method of genetic reconstruction of the power-political and legal field of Germany in the late 30s of the twentieth century.

Main part
large-scale crisis that hit all sectors of the economy and generated massive unemployment, faced the need not only to quickly solve economic problems, but also to stabilize the domestic political situation in the country as a whole. As one of the conditions for the successful achievement of the latter, the National Socialists considered the solution of the problem of the accession of the class world in production. The main role in this matter was assigned to the German Labor Front (DAF) -a corporate organization that replaced the former trade unions (Palamarchuk, 2012: 29-76).
At the demand of Hitler, who considered it necessary to emphasize the classless nature of the organization, workers should have been members of the German labor front (more than 20 million of them were here) (Snyder, 1984: 42), as well as clerks and entrepreneurs. On November 27, 1933, the Reichsleiter Lei, who headed the DAF, the ministers of economics and labor, and Hitler's economic expert Kepler, signed a joint declaration claiming that the German Labor Front was a classless organization of all members of the production community, the status differences between which were officially abolished. The only allowed differentiation was to be based on the value of their personal qualities. Moreover, the mission of the Labor Front was defined as "educating all working Germans in the spirit of supporting the national socialist state" and instilling in them a nationalist worldview " (Noakes and Pridham, 1975). "Today in Germany every person is a worker, regardless of ... whether he is a minister, director, artisan, artist, mechanic or packer," one of the Nazi propaganda publications emphasized (Lotz, 1941: 57). The creation of the German labor front as "a common organization uniting equally both workers and employers" is a new word in social policy -another one stated (TF GARO R -604. Opis`. 1. D. 12. L. 155).
De jure, this character of the organization was enshrined in the Führer's decree "On the Character and Tasks of the German Labor Front" of October 24, 1934. The goal of the DAF was to proclaim the creation of a "genuine national and production community of all Germans," and its main task was "to ensure so that each individual can take his place in the economic life of the nation, "working" as efficiently as his physical or intellectual condition allows him, "and" thus ensuring the maximum benefit for the national community societies " (Noakes and Pridham, 1975: 435). At the same time, the Nazi leaders understood that in order to successfully legitimize their power in the perception of the working class of Germany, one of the most organized in Europe, for many years under the complete influence of social democrats and communists, only legislative steps, propaganda efforts and repressive dissenting policies were not enough. The "blue-collar" workers should have felt a real return on the activities of the DAF in the field of social policy.
In addition to solving the problem of unemployment, the most important socio-political events of the German labor front and the regime as a whole were those included into the work of the organization "Strength through Joy" ("Kraft durh Freuide" -KDF). Founded on November 27, 1933 as part of the DAF and having a strong financial base, largely provided by membership dues and subsidies from the funds of the Labor Front (on average, in 1933-1942 the annual expenses of the KDF reached 26.7 million Reichsmarks) (Plenkov, 2004: 109), it was involved in the organization of leisure, recreation and entertainment for workers: it provided them with preferential vouchers, developing tourism as a form of vacation, conducted walking tours, weekends, distributed cheap tickets to theaters and cinema, cultivated doing sports at enterprises, and engaged in educational activities in the spirit of the ideas of National Socialism, oversaw the creation of Volkswagen. It was believed that, participating in the KDF programs, workers had to draw new forces for each working day. Lei said about this: "It is more important to saturate the souls of people than their stomachs" (Purcell, 1977: 44).
It was the organization's tourism activities the beginning of which was laid on May 3, 1934 that gained the widest scope. On this day, the steamboat Dresden with 969 passengers aboard departed from the port of Bremen, and the liner Monte Olivia, which ran on the Hamburg-South America line, left the home port, accommodating 2000 folksenossen and volksgenossinen in their cabins. During the trip, which lasted 8 days, both groups visited Helgoland Island in the North Sea and the coast of England (Buchholtz, 1976: 23-24).
In autumn of the same year, the phase of the creation of the KDF was completed. On November 27, 1934, making a speech on the occasion of the anniversary of its existence, Lei reported on the first successes. According to Gauleiter reports and the central service, he said that 2168032 workers took part in the trips. In an effort to capture the imagination of his listeners, the Reichsleiter could not resist spectacular comparisons: to transport all those traveling by trains, he emphasized, it took 36,000 rail cars. "If we connect these cars with each other, we would get a huge special KDF train, the locomotive of which would be in Berlin, and the last car would be in Breslau. The train commander standing by the last car would have to follow the train for four to five hours to signal the driver to start. The total mileage traveled by KDF trains is equal to the nineteenfold route around the Earth." At least 80,000 Volksgenossen from all parts of Germany, as he further noted, made voyages on steamboats to the fjords or to the English coast. The cost of such a cruise from Berlin and back, including six-day service, amounted to 42 Reichsmarks (RGVA. F. 1355. Op. 1. D. 7. L. 85-87).
Reporting on the activities of the DAF at the 1935 party congress, Lei emphasized the achievements of the KDF. Noting that over the short period of her existence, it sent 5 million people on various trips, 3 million of them on long trips, he promised that in the future the annual number of vacationers on the line "Strength through Joy" will be increased to 7 million people by reducing of the costs of their placement by one third. In this regard, Lei noted that 90% of all those who took part in such tourism had a monthly income of less than 150 Reichsmarks, in connection with which "in many cases, travel was possible only thanks to subsidies from the fuhrer of the enterprise" (B.R., 1935: 442) Having thus emphasized the reality of the concept of the "production community", Lei simultaneously answered numerous complaints from workers of enterprises with low incomes that although the trips organized by Kraft Durh Freude were much cheaper than individual tours, only highly paid skilled workers and better-off members of the middle strata of the population could afford to participate in them. As a refutation of such charges, he cited a seven-day tour organized in June 1935 from Kurmark to the Thuringian resort area. According to Leia, 70% of the vacationers who took part in it were workers, the rest were employees, small traders and pensioners. It was also indicated here that 85% of those who took part in travels in 1935 had an income of less than 150, and the remaining 15% had no more than 285 marks per month (Merritt, 1981: 74-76).
By 1938, the fleet of "Strength through Joy" already numbered 12 ships, the most fashionable of which were "Wilhelm Gustlov", designed for 1,500 passengers (Rutherford,978: 167) and "Robert Lay", which had a deck with an area of about five thousand square meters, housing spacious halls, club and banquet rooms, a theater, a conservatory, a sports hall (Merritt, 1981: 75). Propaganda called them "classless vessels", since all their cabins, including those intended for the crew, were the same, demonstrating the "reality" of the existence of a "popular community" in the Reich. At the same time, however, the difference still remained between the cabins located on the upper decks and those located on the waterline and below it. The latter were considered less prestigious and were meant for ordinary passengers (Evans, 2005: 741).
"It is not only the worker who must free himself from his sense of inferiority," Lei proclaimed, "The employer will undergo the same transformation of views." As an example, he cited an entrepreneur from West Germany and his wife, for whom sailing on a KDF airliner in company with workers turned out to be a real help in overcoming bourgeois prejudices against the latter.
The number of people who wanted to travel along the line "Strength through joy" grew every year. The KDF was not able to fully satisfy this demand, which was another reason for the discontent of some workers. A certain labor veteran who had 40 years of production experience complained in a letter to Lei dated April 22, 1938 that, despite the latter's promised to send production veterans on trips organized by Kraft Durh Freuide, "judging by photographs in magazines ... mostly young people but not old and honored workers participate in them" and therefore "it seems that the party bureaus send their people to these trips". He "would like to take part in KDF sea voyages, but he was never offered this on the grounds that his salary exceeds 300 marks a month", although, having a large family, he himself cannot afford going anywhere on this money. The letter ended with a rebuke: "Your words remain an empty phrase" (RGVA. F. 500. Op. 4. D. 330.L. 7).
In fairness, it should be noted that there were not sufficient grounds for such reproaches, although, of course, these trips were far from accessible to all workers. According to official Nazi statistics, a total of 2 million Germans took part in travels through the KDF in 1934, in 1936 they were 6 million (Merritt, 1981: 73) and over 9 million people travelled in 1938 (Berghahn 1982: 141). There were 61151people who participated in sea cruises in 1934, and in 1938 there were already 131623 Reich citizens who did it (Noakes and Pridham, 1941: 441).
The program of some tourist routes included the introduction of workers to the cultural life of the Reich. One of the forms of the latter was the organizing for them weekly visits to Bayreuth during the Wagner festivals taking place there (Plenkov, 2004: 113].
However, giving such events a mass character was dictated not so much by real concern for raising the cultural level of the German workers as by other considerations.
The basis of all the activities of the KDF there was an explicit propaganda calculation. By setting the task of integrating the workers into the "popular community" and convincing them that the social barriers that persisted in the Weimar Republic collapsed within the framework of this community, the National Socialists strove to demonstrate to them that in the Third Reich they had access to entertainment that had previously been only the property of the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. "The worker sees the seriousness of our intentions to raise his social status," said Lei. -He sees that we are sending out of the country as representatives of the new Germany not the so-called "educated classes", but him, the German worker ". At the 1938 Congress of "Forces through Joy" in Hamburg, the Reichsleiter officially proclaimed: "There are no more classes in Germany. In the coming years, the worker will get rid of the last vestiges of the sense of inferiority that he may have inherited from the past" (Palamarchuk, 2012: 12).
In the end, the goals that were set by the Nazi leadership in front of the KDF were largely achieved. When one of the Nazi authors, V. Lotz, singled out as the "deep essence" of the organization's activity that "a working person is proud of the things that the public community can give him and the role that he plays in their production" (Lotz, 1941: 14), this was not only propaganda bravado. There is much evidence of the impression that KDF activities produced on ordinary Germans. Under the circumstances, the author's desire to preserve the message incognito is quite understandable but, at the same time, it could cast doubt on the authenticity of the cited letter itself. However, even in reports sent to the SPD leadership in exile by its agents, a high rating of "Force through Joy" was reported in the working environment. One of them said: "KDF events have become very popular, even ordinary workers can afford these hiking trips, which are generally cheaper than private excursions. Almost all "comrades in the nation" consider the KDF one of the true laudable achievements of National Socialism. ... Many of our comrades take this opportunity to take part in excursions" ( Peukert, 1987: 195).
"Strength through Joy" has gained wide popularity abroad. In October 1937, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived in Berlin with a three-day visit. At the border, a brilliant guest poured the entire contents of her wallet into the hands of attack aircraft pilots with the words: "To the KDF funds" (Fromm, 1942: 258-259). S. Roberts, a professor at Sydney University, a specialist in European history, spent more than a year in Nazi Germany, wandering it up and down. He concluded that, despite the propaganda aspect, "Strength through Joy" was the most attractive of the Nazi organizations. "Beethoven for six pence, Bavaria for eighteen pence and Norway for six shillings a day, the sea for a mountain dweller and mountains for a sailor -its prospects are incredibly tempting, and I regret that I could not accept the invitation of Dr. Leah to go on a cruise to the Norwegian fjords -eight days for twenty-two marks, if I insisted on paying myself" (Meyer, 1973: 239). "Ocean cruises organized by the KDF were surprisingly inexpensive," recalls the famous American reporter W. Shearer. "A ten-day cruise to Madeira cost $ 25." Holidays in the summer at resorts and skiing in the Alps in winter cost $ 11 per week. Hundreds of sea and lake resorts were intended solely for vacationing of workers ... I found life in resorts and especially on cruise ships organized. But the German workers and their families seemed to have a great time -the Germans were always great organizers, even on their holidays. Some people with whom I spoke showed pride in the fact that for the first time a working man and his family could afford this ... One miner told me that perhaps in America a worker earns enough to allow himself to spend his vacation this way, but it never happened in Europe including Germany " (Shirer, 1984).
It should be born in mind that, on the one hand, the comparative cheapness of the measures taken by the KDF was largely ensured by insurance and pension funds, multi-million dollar subsidies from the DAF, deductions from wages, and also part of the capital of the ADGB trade union defeated by the Nazis (Palamarchuk, 2012: 51-52), on the other hand, not all free and involuntary participants in these events were accepted positively. This is evidenced by several interviews taken by the famous German journalist B. Fromm.
"Of course, it was great to see Norway," the familiar laundress told her, "but I did not feel rested. For one instant it was impossible to remain alone with myself. Someone has always kept track of what you say or do. No one could speak to a foreigner or buy a newspaper. And went on their propaganda without stopping... No, I'd rather travel alone. Perhaps I could not afford such a long trip, but at least I would be my own mistress. " ... The events of the KDF, which were held in Germany itself, were, according to Fromm, "no less difficult test" due to their mandatory nature (Fromm, 1942: 237). The same data is presented in some official sources. According to a survey conducted in 1936 among working women of A. Rilke, who held a high position in the hierarchy of the women's bureau of the Labor Front, they preferred unorganized and spontaneous excursions to the organized recreation offered by the KDF (Koonz, 1987: 199).
Tourists traveling on the Kraft Durh Freude line were constantly monitored. Those responsible for this, after each trip, compiled detailed reports on the behavior of KdF tourists. Here are some typical examples dating back to 1938. In one of the reports concerning a group of tourists who made a sea voyage from Berlin to Italy on the German steamer (January 24 -February 5, 1938), two KDF vacationers from another ship, who in Genoa exchanged several Reichsmarks for Italian lira, were mentioned. As it was noted further, the surveillance established after them did not give any results, since the violators "disappeared unnoticed due to heavy traffic on this street and on the embankment" (RGVA. F. 501. Op. 3.D. 505.L. 89). During a railway trip of a group of tourists from Palermo to Venice the following violations were noted: some of the travelers paid for Italian goods with German tobacco products, although this was strictly forbidden; several young people laughed at the local customs officers who carried out searches that "acted provocatively" on those who spoke German; one young man from the same group bought a small bottle of Chinzano, paying a bartender 30 pfennigs instead of the prescribed 35 pfennigs. The remaining five pfennigs were paid by the group leader in order to avoid conflict (RGVA. F. 500. Op. 4.D. 330.L. 49).
The Third Reich, in turn, was often visited by Italian tourists traveling along the Dopolavoro line (the Italian analogue of the KDF). Despite the fact that Italy was an ally of Germany, the Nazi authorities made sure that informal relations did not arise between the citizens of both states. A report sent to the central security service on July 5, 1938 from Stuttgart, reported the inappropriate behavior of the women and girls there who were molesting Italian male tourists. It was also noted in this document that in conversations among themselves the Italians cynically designated sexual relations with local residents as the "Berlin-Rome axis" (RGVA. F. 500. Op. 4.D. 330.L. 49). The author of the report was particularly indignant that during the farewell ceremony at the Stuttgart train station, "girls and married women hugged and kissed Italians and cried." Any attempts of the leaders of the "Force through Joy" to stop this unworthy behavior were unsuccessful, and members of the German Labor Front tried to beat them right at the station after the departure of foreigners (RGVA. F. 500. Op. 4.D. 330.L. 49).
Mutual denunciations of "KDF vacationers" to each other were encouraged. A certain M. Wester, traveling on the German ship, reported that she and her friend Fraulein T. Evern, being in cabin 313, heard male and female voices from the neighboring cabin number 314. "We were surprised," she wrote, "that there was a man in this cabin, although we knew that only women lived in it. Since we heard the whisper, as well as the kisses of the couple, we looked through the ventilation hole, which was located just on the wall of the specified cabin. We saw a couple kissing. After 15 minutes, light in cabin 314 was turned off. The rustles subsided. We could assume that the man and the woman went to bed, since we did not hear the door to the cabin open. Our assumption was confirmed when, after a short time, the creaking of the bed began to be heard. After about three quarters of an hour (in cabin 314. -Auth.), the lights were again lit. Through the vent, we could watch the caresses of both again. After the light was on for 5 minutes, the second occupant of cabin 314 appeared and said to both: "You have been in the cabin for a long time. Now it's our turn. A few minutes later a man appeared and also entered the cabin. "Vigilant travelers recognized the first woman who was the vacationer Josie Goebbels (RGVA. F. 501. Op. 3. D. 505. L. 89). After the explanations given by the latter and her cabin companion Millie Emde, as well as the vacationer A. Hart, who was among the "accused," the first officer came to the conclusion that "Fraulein Wester's complaints are based only on assumptions and cannot be proved. He concluded, "It would be right, if the complainant informed immediately instead of eavesdropping" (RGVA. F. 501. Op. 3. D. 505. L. 197).
Among other things, the use or non-use of vacation has ceased to be an employee's private affair. "Every worker," the article on the DAF, published in the New Word newspaper (published during the occupation in Taganrog) on October 17, 1942 (No. 92), noted, "not only has the right to receive his annual statutory leave, but and is obliged to use it in the form of maintaining health. He cannot say: "I do not want to take my holiday" (TF GARO R -604. Opis`. 1. D. 12, L. 163ob). There were manifestations of open arbitrariness. In one documented case, a quarry worker from East Prussia was instructed by the DAF local leadership to take part in an excursion to Silesia, which he did not ask for. In response to his protests, the authorities said that in any case, the period for which the trip is designed would be deducted from his vacation, and he would not receive monetary compensation for the part of his salary lost due to his forced absence from the workplace (Kater, 1983: 80). In addition, moral problems arose, especially when youth groups were sent on KDF trips. The Germans were witty about the fact that during these trips the girls daily "lost strength through joy" (Nelson, 1970: 66).

Conclusions
Summing up the research, it should be emphasized that the KDF has largely fulfilled its mission, which, according to A. Hitler, was to serve as an instrument for creating a "popular community of all Germans" (although in reality this was not formed, the slogan is propaganda its creation played an important integrative role) and spread among the masses the national socialist worldview. By organizing weekend trips and hiking trips to all parts of the country, Lei encouraged the townspeople to get acquainted with the rural areas of Germany, while the program for visiting peasants in the cities was designed so that they could personally see what a usual working day at the factory constitutes.
Encouraging workers to participate in tourism events that were previously accessible only to privileged sections of the population, "Strength through Joy" was to inspire them with a sense of gratitude and duty in relation to the regime that raised their social status. Of course, not all workers could afford the overseas Kraft Durh Freuide tours, but, compared to the period of the Weimar Republic, when even the higher-paid, skilled "blue-collar" workers could not afford anything like this, the Nazis made a significant breakthrough in this direction, which became a kind of compensation to industrial workers for depriving them of the right to form free trade unions and concluding collective agreements.
Despite the dissatisfaction of many workers with the monthly requisitions to the DAF funds, it was the KDF's activity, primarily tourism, that helped to significantly reverse the initial tendency of the "blue collar" negative attitude towards the regime and served as a very effective means of legitimizing the latter in their eyes in the pre-war period, which was of particular importance to the Nazis on the eve of their outbreak of World War II.