What does voluntariness do to participation? Mitmachen in New Deal America and National Socialist Germany, 1933−1945

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the significance of voluntary participation to both liberal and illiberal societies. Based on conceptual discussions of the terms voluntariness and mitmachen, the article merges two exemplary studies of court cases in New Deal America and Nazi Germany. Both cases bring out how liberal and illiberal societies depend on, rely on, motivate, inculcate, demand, and try to enforce their citizens’ voluntary participation, which is best captured by the German term mitmachen. In both New Deal America and National Socialist Germany, it was evidently the voluntariness of participation that constituted what was perceived as a good citizen-subject. Yet both cases show citizens’ reluctance and even refusal to comply with the state’s demand for voluntary participation. They also exhibit differences in this regard. Whereas the defendants in the American court case succeeded in denying the state the right to enforce their participation against their will, for the German defendant, accused of undermining the war effort, his voluntary engagement for the National Socialist state in other respects had only mitigating effects.