Winterhilfswerk
Donations were theoretically voluntary but de facto required of German citizens, with high levels of social pressure to contribute.
[7][8] It went on to grow rapidly, counting 3.7 million members in 1934 and becoming the second largest mass organisation in Nazi Germany, behind the German Labour Front.
[11] The "Law on the Winterhilfswerk of the German People",[d] passed on 1 December 1936, formally established the WHW as a registered association, to be led by the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
[20] A paper Monatstürplakette (monthly placard) was issued to place on one's door or in one's window to show others that one had given and also to keep the roaming bands of charity workers at bay.
[21] Donors were often given small souvenir gratitude gifts of negligible value, somewhat similar to the way modern charities mail out address labels and holiday cards.
[citation needed] Booklets included The Führer Makes History,[22][23] a collection of Hitler photographs,[24] and Gerhard Koeppen and other decorated heroes of the war.
[citation needed] Some depicting occupational types or geographic areas of the Reich, others animals, birds and insects, nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters, or notable persons from German history (including Hitler himself).
[citation needed] When he visited Germany in 1939 as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance, Lothrop Stoddard wrote:[26] Once a fortnight, every city, town, and village in the Reich seethes with brown-shirted Storm Troopers carrying red-painted canisters.
And I never saw a German formally refuse to drop in his mite, even though the contribution might have been less than the equivalent of one American cent.During these periodic money-raising campaigns, all sorts of dodges are employed.
On that notable occasion the Big Guns of the Nazi Party sally forth with their collection-boxes to do their bit.The 1933–1945 collection drives issued a large number of themed ceramic medallions and other badges given to donators.
[27] However, in 1937 a group of exiled German economists writing under the pseudonym 'Germanicus' produced figures comparing the Winterhilfswerk of 1933 with the pre-existing Reich Winter Help of 1931.
[citation needed] American diplomat William Russell's eyewitness book Berlin Embassy pointed out that no account was ever made of where the huge amounts raised by Winterhilfswerk were spent.
In 1941, after complaining that large amounts of WHW and NSV funds were being siphoned off without his agreement, Schwarz was told by the Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann, that Adolf Hitler alone controlled and allocated the money.
