Nazi Germany

Hitler's Early Role in the Nazi Party

1919 - Hitler joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), a right-wing group led by Anton Drexler.

1920 - Hitler became the Party's leading public speaker and propagandist.

1920 - Name changes to National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)

1921 - Hitler is elected Party Chairman and leader of the Nazis.

Nazi Ideology

Fuhrer

• The idea that there should be a single leader with complete power rather than a democracy.

Autarky

• The idea that Germany should be economically self-sufficient.

A strong Germany

• The Treaty of Versailles should be destroyed and all German-speaking people united in one country.

Germany was in danger

• Communists and Jews were a 'threat' that needed to be dead.

Lebensraum

• The need for 'living space' for the German nation to expand.

Social Darwinism

• The idea that the Aryan race was superior and Jews were 'subhuman'.

Changes to the party in the 1920s

• In the 1920s, the German Workers' Party changed its name to the Nationalist Socialist Workers' Party.
• Hitler took over party leadership due to his reputation as a charismatic speaker and attracting new members.
• The party set up its own armed group called the SA - brown-shirt storm troopers that protected Nazi leaders and harassed their opponents.

The Great Depression and the Nazis

• In 1929 the American stock market crashed, Germany was very badly affected and the in-power democratic parties just couldn't get Germany running again, so people started getting desperate.
• When people are desperate, they tend to turn to more radical ideas for help.
• Goebbels made powerful campaigns that made Hitler seem like a destined leader and blamed Jews, Communists and 'non-Aryans' for Germany's problems.
• People wanted law and order, and the NAzis presented that.
• The Nazis appealed to traditional German values, unlike what the Weimar Republic had brought them.

Hitler becoming Chancellor

July 1932

• After the Reichstag elections, the Nazis were the largest single party.
• Hitler demanded the position of Chancellor from Hindenburg the President, but he refused.
• Von Papen, the current Chancellor, had little support, so-called an election.

November 1932

• The Nazis again came out as the largest party although having lost 2 million votes.
• Hitler saw this as a disaster, and the Nazis were running out of funds.

December 1932

• Kurt von Schleicher was appointed Chancellor, but he resigned in January.
• Hindenburg was running Germany using his emergency power.

January 1933

• Hindenburg and Von Papen offered Hitler the position of chancellor on the 30th.
• They thought they could control him. I mean... they were a little off.

Consolidation of Power

Reichstag Fire

• In march 1933 Hitler called another election to try to get a Nazi majority, and Germany saw speeches, rallies, procession... the works.
• On February 27th, the Reichstag building burned down.
• Hitler blamed the Communists and said it was their uprising.
• He demanded emergency powers that he got and with them, he arrested Communists, broke up meetings and frightened voters.
• In the election, Nazis won the majority.
• The Reichstag was intimidated into passing the enabling Act, which mad Hitler a dictator.

Enabling Act

• On the 23rd of March 1933, the Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag 441 vote to 94.
• This Act gave Hitler the right to make law without the Reichstag.
• Arguably this was the most critical event during this period. It gave Hitler absolute power to make laws, which enabled him to destroy all opposition to his dictatorship.
• This Act removed the Reichstag as a source of opposition. The Reichstag rarely met for the remainder of Hitler's time in power.

The Army Oath

• Soon after the Night of the Long Knives, Hindenburg died.
• Hitler took over as Supreme Leader (Fuhrer) of Germany.
• On August 2nd, 1934, the entire army swore an oath of personal loyalty.
• In return, Hitler spent tons of rearmament, brought back conscription ad started making Germany a great military power.

Night of the Long Knives

• Hitler and others were suspicious of the SA leader Ernst Rohm.
• June 29-30, SS men broke into Rohm's house and other SA leaders' and arrested them.
• Over that weekend Rohm and as many as 400 others were killed.
• The SA then became a Nazi paramilitary organization.

Elimination of other powers

✰Gleichschaltung - Coordination of everything to fit in with Hitler's ideas.

• Trade unions were abolished, Catholic signed Concordat, the establishment of the People' Courts, Nazification of local government, a one-party state created.

Nazi Ideas for Germany

A strong Germany

• A strong government - no opposition.
• Every aspect of a life controlled.
• Destroy the Treaty of Versailles.
• Re-build the army (rearmament).
• Preparation for an invasion of Eastern Europe.
• Remove "burdens on society".

A racial Germany

• Eugenics programs to selectively breed Germans.
• Create a "pure Aryan" race - blond, blue eyes and strong.
• Remove "undesirable" races from Germany.
• Remove Jews from Germany, then Europe.

Propaganda

Nuremberg Rallies

• Joseph Goebbels (Minister for Enlightenment and Propaganda) organized huge rallies, marches, torchlit processions and meetings).
• The Nuremberg Rally took place each summer.
• The Rallies presented order out of chaos and it made Germans feel as though they were part of a great and powerful movement.

• No books could be published without Goebbels permissions and in 1933, a high-profile 'book-burning' as organized and Nazi students burn and non-Nazi books.
• Only Nazi-approved painters could show their paintings, usually depicting Aryans being heroes and the ideal Aryan painting.
• German newspapers were controlled very closely by Goebbels, and they became so boring that circulation fell to 10%.
• Any kind of movie carried a pro-Nazi message. Newsreels preceded the movies, full of Hitler and the achievements of Nazi Germany.
• Jazz music was banned by Goebbels because it was 'black' music.
• Goebbels made radios cheap and accessible to all Germans so they could listen to Hitler's speeches and other Nazi leaders. The radio had a short-range and couldn't pick up foreign radio stations.

The Gestapo

• The most feared force by the German people.
• Under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, the Gestapo could arrest anyone or send them to concentration camps without trial.
• A lot of people thought the Gestapo was a lot more powerful than it actually was, so they told on each other thinking the Gestapo would find out anyways.

The SS

• Formed in 1925, fanatics that were loyal to Hitler were led by Heinrich Himmler.
• When the SA was pretty much destroyed in 1934, the SS expanded to two units: Death's Head (which was responsible for concentration camps and killing Jews) and the Waffen-SS (a special armoured regiment that fought alongside the regular army).
• SS men were all Aryan and highly skilled.

The police and courts

• High-ranking positions in the police force and in the law force, so they always got their way and crimes committed by Nazi officers were always ignored.

Concentration Camps

• The first concentration camps in 1933 were makeshift prisons in unused factories and warehouses.
• Food was very limited and prisoners were subject to harsh discipline and forced labour.
• Jews, Communists, trade unionists, churchmen, homosexuals, gypsies and anyone else who opposed Nazis ended up there.

Policies towards Youth

Hitler Youth

• Prepared German boys to be future soldiers; they wore military-style uniforms; activities centred on PE, rifle practice ad well as political indoctrination.

The League of German Maidens

• It aimed to prepare German girls for future motherhood.
• Girls wore a uniform of a blue skirt, white blouse and heavy shoes.
• Girls undertook physical exercise, but activities mainly centred on developing domestic skills such as sewing and cooking.

• Every aspect of school and curriculum was reorganized to make children, from the very start of their schooling, loyal to the Nazis.
• Any other youth organizations had been absorbed or made illegal, so there weren't any other alternatives for people to join.

Policies Towards Women

• Goebbels said, "The mission of a woman is to be beautiful and to bring [children] into the world.

Marriage and Family

• Law for the Encouragement of Marriage gave newlywed couples a loan of 1,000 marks and allowed them to keep 200 marks with every child produced.
• Mother's Cross was given to women with lots of children.
• Women volunteered to have babies with Aryan SS members.

Employment

• Law for Reduction of Un-employment gave women financial incentives to stay home.
• Women weren't conscripted until 1934, but because the German economy grew female employment grew by 2,4 million between 1933-1939.

Policies towards Churches

• In 1933, Hitler made a deal with the Pope called 'Concordat', which said that Hitler would let the Catholics keep control of their schools if they stayed out of politics.
• Hitler tried to get all churches that were protestant together under the Reich church which was headed by Bishop Ludwig Muller.
• Hitler also created the Pagan German Faith Movement, which worshipped the Sun.

Policies towards Minorities

• Due to the Nazis' views on race, people like Eastern Europeans, gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and most Jews were persecuted.
• Eugenics, the idea that people with disabilities or social problems were degenerates whose genes need to be eliminated from the human bloodline, was pursued vigorously.

Sterilization

• People were prevented from reproducing.
• Mentally and physically disabled people, the deaf, blind, mute etc. and people with hereditary diseases were sterilized.

Euthanasia

• Between 1939 and 1941 over 200,000 physically and mentally disable German were killed in secret.
• It was called 'euthanasia' because the children were taken away from their families to a facility where they were "taken care of", and then when they died it was written off as pneumonia.

Concentration Camps

• Homosexuals, prostitutes, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, alcoholics, pacifists, beggars, hooligans and criminals were rounded up and sent away to camps, for either forced labour or just death.

Jews

1933: Jewish businesses were boycotted; Jewish books were burnt Jewish civil servants, lawyers and teachers were fired; race lessons were introduced in school that taught that Jews were sub-human.

1935: The Nuremberg Laws formalized anti-Semitism by stripping Jews of German citizenship, outlawing relationships between Jews and German and taking away all their civil and political rights.

1938: Jews couldn't be doctors, had to add Israel (for men) or Sarah (for women) to their name, and children were were forbidden to go to school. IN November, the SS organized attacks on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues (Kristallnacht).

Economic Policies

• A huge program of pulu works, which included building hospitals, schools and public buildings (such as the 1936 Olympic Stadium) was started.
• The construction of 7,000 km of autobahns created work for 80,000 men.
• Rearmament was responsible for the majority of economic growth from 1933 to 1938. In 1933, 3.5 billion marks were spent on making tanks, aircraft and ships, and by 1939, the figure was 26 billion marks, creating millions of jobs.
• Hitler passed the Unemployment Relief Act in June 1933 which helped establish an important organization, the National Labour Sevice which aimed to reduce unemployment and indoctrinate the workforce.

Invisible Employment

• Germany claimed to have full employment by 1939, but 1.4 million men in the army, Jews had to give their jobs to non-Jews and women were encouraged to give up their job.

Autarky

• In 1936, Hermann Goring was appointed the leader of the Four Year Plan (1936-40).
• The Four Year Plan aimed to speed up rearmament and make Germany self-sufficient to ensure it was ready for war. Its measures, which included tighter controls on imports and subsidies for farmers to produce more food, were not successful.
• By 1939 Germany was still importing 20% of its food and 33% of its raw materials.

Effects

Big Businesses - The Nazis had promised to curb the power of monopolies, but by 1937 they controlled over 70%. Rearmament boosted their income, which rose by 50% between 1933 and 1939.

Small businesses - Rules on opening and running small businesses were tightened, so 20% of them closed.

Farmers - Farmers benefitted under the Nazis. By 1937, agriculture prices had increased by 20% and agricultural wages rose quickly. The Hereditary Farm Law of 1933 prevented farms from being repossessed from their owners, which gave farming families greater security.

Effect of the War on Germany

• Throughout the 1930s, Hitler fulfilled his promises to Germans that the Treaty of Versailles would be reversed, Germany's armed forces would be rebuilt, Germany and Austria would unite and the German territory would extend into Eastern Europe.
• When the war began in September 1939, it didn't change much because Germany had been preparing for it since Hitler came to power in 1933.
• From 1939 to 1941, civilian morale was easy to keep up because of Germany's war success.
• In 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and that's when the war became more expensive and began affecting people more.
• Goebbels did is best to keep morale up.
• Women were drafted into the labour force, country areas took in refugees, All entertainment places were closed (except cinemas for propaganda cinemas), post-service closed.

Opposition

Churches

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller formed an alternative protestant church.
• Niemoller spent 1938-1945 in a concentration camp.
• Bonhoeffer kept on preaching against Nazis until 1937, then became involved in anti-Nazis secret services until he was arrested in 1942 and was hanged in April 1945.
• Bishop Galen made speeches about the Nazis killing mentally and physically disabled people so much that it was temporarily stopped.

Young People

• Edelweiss Pirates (based in the Rhineland) were made up of working-class teenagers ages between 14 and 17.
• They duped anti-Nazi slogans and sang pre-1933 folk songs.
• In 1942 over 700 of them were arrested ad in 1944, the Pirates in Cologne killed the Gestapo chief, so 12 of them were publicly hanged.
• The White Rose group was formed by students at Munich University in 1943. They published anti-nazi leaflets and marched through the city in protest. Its leaders, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, were arrested and guillotine.
• During the war, 'Swing Youth' and 'Jazz Youth' groups were formed. These were young people who rejected Nazi values drank alcohol and danced to jazz. They were closely monitored by the Gestapo.

 July Bomb Plot

• In July 1944, officers were starting to see that Hitler was leading Germany into ruin and that they'd lost the war.
• On July 20th, Count von Stauffenberg left a bomb in Hitler's conference room.
• The plan was to kill Hitler, close radio stations, round up leading Nazis and take over Germany.
• It failed because it was poorly planned, and 5,000 people were killed.

Other

• The most widespread and persistent opposition to the Nazi regime came from ordinary German workers, often helped by communists, who posted anti-Anzi posters and graffiti or organized strikes.

Effect of the War on Jews

Ghettos

• After defeating Polan in 1939, Jews were persecuted much more.
• Jews were rounded up and transported to ghettos.
• Able-bodied Jews were used for labour, and the others were left to die.

Mass Murder

• In 1941 when Germany invaded the USSR, the Nazis were left to deal with over 2 million Jews.
• By the fall of 1941, mass shootings were taking place in eastern Europe.
• In Germany, Jews were forced to wear Stars of David.

The "Final Solution"

• In January 1942 senior Nazis discussed the "Final Solution".
• Himmler was put in charge of systematically killing all Jews.
• Concentration camps were built in Auschwitz, Treblinka and other places.
• Old, sick and children were killed immediately.
• The able-bodied were used for slave labour or medical "experiments".
• Six million Jews, 500,000 gypsies and countless other "asocials" died.

Opposition

• Jewish authorities in Palestine sent parachutes into Hungary to help Jews.
• Inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto rose up in rebellion, holding up for four weeks against the Nazis.