This chapter explores personal property and the desire for possessions as a dimension of private life in Nazi Germany. It examines the regime’s promotion of ‘German advertising’ as part of its drive against ‘Jewish’ business and asks how far, if at all, popular aspirations for consumer goods were accommodated within a dictatorship that was geared to a war economy at the expense of private consumption. It goes on to ask how far and with what arguments the regime in wartime encouraged private saving, and it shows that the promotional material used by savings banks often encouraged private saving using arguments – even in wartime – that focused less on patriotic duty than on personal dreams of material possessions. In promoting wartime saving, the regime thus in many respects continued its pre-war encouragement of private consumer aspirations, even if such aspirations were largely deferred.

This chapter explores rituals of communal flag-raising in the late years of the Weimar Republic and the early years of the Nazi regime, challenging the prevailing view that such events merely demonstrate a growing mass conformity after 1933 to Nazi dictates. Instead, it is argued that, paradoxically, these mass rituals allowed scope for individuals to express private political views and even a degree of distance from the regime. Conversely, individuals who did conform to the mass flag-raising could also protect their private sphere from intrusive Party scrutiny. However, between 1933 and 1936–7 the room for individual manoeuvre was increasingly squeezed out as the Party sought to stop individuals expressing political preferences through a particular configuration of flags; moreover, the regulations concerning the ritual also evolved in order to visibly exclude German Jews from the national community.