"Our final problem concerns the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of German society under the Nazi regime. This term connotes an effort by the state to penetrate all aspects of public life and to leave private as little as possible. Every organization and every individual were to march to the same beat. Those who seemed reluctant would be goaded; those who refused would be eliminated." (Mitchell, 150).
After reading section V of the The Nazi Revolution, by Allen Mitchell, it is fairly easy to address the different perspectives on the impact of Nazism on the German society. The readings gathered by Mitchell cover all kinds of thoughts on numerous subjects regarding the Nazification of German society. These readings cover ideas ranging from "The Nazification of a Town" to "Obedient and Dissident Youth" and finally "The Ambivalence of Anti-Semitism". Each reading gives a spin on different aspects of the Nazification. All in all, the Nazis main intention as far as German society is concerned, was to penetrate all aspects of German life.
The Nazification of German towns began before the Nazis even came into power in 1933. In fact, this could be one of the most important reasons for the NSDAP success in gaining control of Germany. Each town had NSDAP party members in it. These party members had one goal in mind, to take control at of the townspeople at the first chance they had. This was Hitler's idea and it seems that it paid off. William Sheridan Allen writes, "Hitler also gave his followers a simple goal that not other party shared: the idea of taking total and exclusive power at the first chance". (Allen 153) .
So how did the local Nazi leaders take control of their towns? According to Allen, the most important factor in the victory of the Nazism was the active division of the town along class lines. In Northeim (the town Allen choose to analyze), the middle class was trying to suppress the lower class.
