2) How successfully did Germany’s governments control the German people in the years 1918-89?

Question 1

Where did the Weimar governments problems of controlling extremist groups stem from?

Answer 1

The Weimar governments problems controlling extremist groups stemmed from both conditions at the time and the fact that they were setting up a liberal democracy
-the government had come to power through a revolution and many people wanted a revolutionary government -not the old empire and not a compromise democracy.
-but there were not enough of them to sweep the country into revolution.

Question 2

The Weimar government was a what? and with opposition? (hint: from both sides)

Answer 2

-the Weimar government was a theoretical democracy
-it had left-wing opponents who thought it was not radical enough and right-wing opponents who wanted a strong, authoritative government that would return Germany to something like the old system.

Question 3

What did the Weimar government give people? and what was there no knowing of?

Answer 3

it gave people freedom of speech and assembly; it also gave the press freedom to print what it liked. This meant that criticism of the government was open and it spread.
-there was no knowing if this government would last any longer than Prince Max’s had - and this uncertainty meant that the various political groups still felt they had a lot to play for, that they could still change the government to make it more to their liking.

Question 4

What did he fact that the Weimar government have to leave Berlin do?

Answer 4

the fact that the Weimar government had to leave Berlin and spend its first days in Weimar during the Spartacist uprising and its aftermath just underlined its precarious position.

Question 5

What was it that the Weimar government needed to do for Germany? and was it strong enough to do this? and what did Ebert do?

Answer 5

-it needed to provide stability and to show it had support.
-it needed to reform the army, the civil service, the educational system and the judiciary to make sure of support in these key areas of society.
-it also needed to rein in revolutionary ideas.
-however, it was not really strong enough to do either, at least not without taking sides and using one group to control the other. Without support, the gov was not going to be strong enough to deal with opposition. Ebert saw this and met with the army and the trade unions, offering concessions for their support.

Question 6

On the 10th of November, what did Ebert agree on? (Weimar rep)

Answer 6

-Ebert agreed the Ebert-Groener Pact with the new leader of the army

Question 7

What was the Ebert-Groener Pact? (Weimar rep)

Answer 7

it was an agreement that the army would support the new government as long as it opposed the more left-wing ideas of parties in the Reichstag.

Question 8

On 15 November, what agreement did Ebert reach?

Answer 8

-he reached the Stinnes-Legien Agreement with the leader of the labour unions, Carl Legien, and the industrialists Hugo Stinnes.
-For their support, Ebert offered legislation on hours of work and on adequate union representation

Question 9

Did the army or the representatives from industry know about the agreement with the other that Ebert made? (Weimar rep) and what did the government often have to do?

Answer 9

no.
-however, there were half-hearted alliances on all sides and the government often had to turn to the Freikorps to restore order if the army refused. When both refused, the government was in a very difficult position.

Question 10

What was the situation like in Germany’s regions after the Kaiser abdicated? (Weimar rep)

Answer 10

-the Weimar gov had varying control in each of the regions of Germany, all of which were having their governmental struggles as rulers followed the Kaiser and abdicated, some willingly some less so.
-they did all eventually adopt the Weimar Constitution, but not all at the same time. E.g. Thuringia did not hold elections until the end of June 1920. This added to the uncertainty and meant that, in some places such as Bavaria and Saxony, it was possible for the communists to set up a government of their own.
-the Weimar gov used the army and the Freikorps to restore order in these places using a system of Reichsexekution - a takeover by the federal gov and the army until the Weimar constitution and the Weimar system of government could be put back in place

Question 11

Who was the Weimar government forced to rely on to manage external threats? and what was noticeable all through the period about the reaction of the Reichswehr and judiciary to these threats? and what effect did this have on left-wing and right-wing opponents?

Answer 11

it had to rely on the army.
-it was noticeable all through the period that the reaction of the Reichswehr (army) and the judiciary to the external threats was different, depending on whether they came from left-wing groups or right-wing groups.
-left-wing problems were delt with quickly, and often brutally, by the army. Those brought to court were sentenced harshly. On the other hand, the army sometimes did not act against right-wing groups at all, e.g. against the Kapp Putsch, and the judiciary were noticeably less harsh on right wingers who came to trial, e.g. Munich Putsch.
-this made left-wing opponents more angry. And made its right-wing opponents more confident

Question 12

What was the name of the army during the Weimar government?

Answer 12

it was the Reichswehr

Question 13

As Hindenburg became president, what was happening? and what effect did this have? (Weimar rep)

Answer 13

-as Hindenburg became president, chancellors changed rapidly and the economy went into a depression, it made its (Weimar gov) right-wing opponents increasingly confident that people wanted a strong, right-wing government, not the Weimar.
-eventually, the people voted in sufficient numbers for the Nazis to gain a foothold in government and rapidly replace the democratic Weimar government.

Question 14

What are the different methods of control that the Nazis used?

Answer 14

-censorship, repression, policing and the courts
-the Nazis used violence against their political enemies or, as in the Night of the Long Knives, enemies within the Party. They used censorship and repression to create a situation where ordinary people were, in the main, too scared to oppose the Nazis. The Decree for the Protection of the People and the State allowed the Nazis to ban publications and also suspend civil rights; the Nazis could search homes and workplaces and take people into ‘protective custody’ without then taking them to trial. This supposedly short-term emergency measure was never lifted.

Question 15

Explain how the Nazis used Censorship (hint: try to remember all things censorship)

Answer 15

-the Nazis were quite clear that all forms of communication were subject to Nazi control.
-On 25 March 1933, Goebbels (minister of propaganda) told all of the controllers of German radio that radio stations served the government, so they had to express Nazi ideology and follow the government instructions about what to broadcast. Not only was the content of radio programmes controlled, the staff were purged to get rid of Jews, half-Jews and people married to Jews as well as people who had been part of the communist KPD or the socialist SPD.
-the press was also censored, although this was harder (radio was a newer medium with fewer people to control). Germany had more daily newspapers than the USA; they were national, regional and even printed for cities and towns. On 4 October 1933, Hitler issued a decree that made the content of any paper the responsibility of the editor and made it a crime for the editor to publish anything that might weaken the Third Reich, at home or abroad, or harm the German economy, culture or people. It established a Reich Association to compile a list of ‘accredited’ journalists. Many journalists (those with Jewish connections or who were ‘politically’ unsuitable) did not make the list. At the end of 1932, there were 59 Nazi newspapers with just over 780,00 readers. At the end of 1933, the Nazis had 86 newspapers and over 3 million readers.
-In December, a state-owned press agency was set up and all newspapers were expected to pick up their news stories from the agency, with guidelines on how to report the stories. It also issued a list of stories that were not to be reported. These lists were incredibly detailed, ranging from not reporting the arrests of certain people to not publishing photos of Nazi leaders sitting at tables with several bottles of alcohol on them.

Question 16

What did Hitlers decree on 4 October 1933 establish? (Hint: censorship)`

Answer 16

-it established a Reich Association to compile a list of ‘accredited’ journalists. Many journalists (those with Jewish connections or who were ‘politically’ unsuitable) did not make the list.

Question 17

Explain how the Nazis used repression to control the people

Answer 17

-Nazi repression began with banning all political parties but the Nazi party. This made forming a political party a crime, and the Nazis set up a series of concentration camps to hold political prisoners.
-Between 1933 and 1945, over 500,000 non-Jewish people were sent to these camps for political crimes.
-the first, at Oranienburg in Prussia, opened in 1933. Imprisonment in these camps was a severe deterrent to political protest

Question 18

How did the Nazis use policing and the courts to control the people?

Answer 18

-the Nazis also ran their own security system alongside the existing police and judicial system, despite the fact that these underwent the same ‘co-ordination’ (purging) as the civil service and the media
-the Gestapo, the secret police, inaugurated its own legal system and operated independently of the existing legal system. Gestapo agents were in all parts of Germany and spread as Germany spread. The Gestapo’s brief was to weed out enemies of the state, and people could be arrested by the Gestapo for anything from plotting to kill Hitler to telling jokes about the Nazis in a bar. The Gestapo did not wear uniform which encouraged people to think that any stranger they met might be a member and make people be very careful about they say.
-the SS was a political force and, after removing most of the SA in 1934, ran the concentration camp system. As the SS numbers grew, so did its responsibilities. By 1936, about 240,000 SS were in charge of the Gestapo with their own economic branch to run labour and concentration camps.
-the Peoples Court was set up specifically to try people accused of being traitors to the Third Reich. It had two Judges and five other members chosen from the Nazi Party, the SS and the armed forces. The trials were not publicly held and it was not possible to appeal against the verdict. Tens of thousands of people had passed through the Court by 1945
-Nazi Party officials, from those who ran a region or Gau down to the Bloc Wardens (Blockwarts) who ran individual apartment blocks, were all assumed to be watching for the smallest infringement of Nazi rules. People listened to banned music with the volume down low and their ear against the radio. Conversations edged round and round and seldom strayed into political matters. It was hard for people to be frank with anyone about dissident views in case people who they thought would agree with them, even old friends, reported them to the Gestapo.

Question 19

When was the Gestapo set up and by who?

Answer 19

it was set up in April 1033 by Hermann Goering

Question 20

What did the SS begin as?

Answer 20

it began as Hitlers bodyguard of 240 men

Question 21

When and where was the People’s Court set up?

Answer 21

it was set up in 1934 in Berlin

Question 22

When did political extremism in the FRG become very severe and what did it turn to? and in some ways, what was the increase in extremity of the protests linked to?

Answer 22

political extremism in the FRG became very severe in the 1970s turning to terrorism.
-in some ways the extremity of these protests was linked to the government responses to these protests.

Question 23

Did people turn to terrorism in large numbers? (during FRG) and what is surprising?

Answer 23

no, but what is surprising was the level of sympathy there was for terrorist groups in the early 1970s

Question 24

What did a public poll in 1970 show? (in the FRG) and what did it suggest?

Answer 24

-a public poll in 1970 showed that one in five Germans felt some sympathy for the Baader-Meinhof Gang and five percent of them would be willing to let a member of the group stay in their house for a night if that person was on the run.
-this suggests that government action against these groups did not always get a positive reaction from the members of the public, which could be seen as a lack of success.

Question 25

Why was the government in the FRG in a difficult position?

Answer 25

the gov was in a difficult position in that it wanted to uphold democracy and free speech, but it did not want this democracy overthrown by groups from either side.

Question 26

Who did the FRG government come down harder on?

Answer 26

as it turns out, just like the Weimar government, the FRG gov came down more heavily on left-wing extremists, although it could be argued that these were the groups that posed more of a threat - certainly terrorist groups in the 1970s were left wing

Question 27

What were the BfV and BND entitled to do?(during FRG) and where did they each work and who did they report to? What were both organisations hampered by?

Answer 27

they were entitled to investigate people they suspected of working against the Basic Law.
-the BfV only worked inside Germany and reported to the minister of the interior.
-the BND reported directly to the chancellor and it conducted investigations abroad as well as in Germany.
-both organisations were hampered by the civil liberties granted to people under the Basic Law: they were forbidden to open mail, search homes or monitor phone calls.

Question 28

What did the FRG gov try to pass in order to allow the BND to use measures that were not allowed under the Basic Law? what years did the gov try to introduce such a law in? what year was it finally passed and what was it called?

Answer 28

-the gov tried to pass a law to supplement the Basic Law to allow the BND to use measures that were not allowed (open mail, search homes, etc), and to have wider powers of arrest and detention, in what was described as ‘moments of political tension.’
-the gov tried to introduce such a law in 1960, 1962, and 1965.
-it was finally passed in 1968 as protests by students, unions and other groups became more violent, and called the Emergency Law

Question 29

What did the passing of the Emergency law lead to?

Answer 29

-it certainly led to a drop in the number of open protests and a significant number of arrests.
-however, while some groups were silenced, others decided that underground, violent opposition (terrorism) was the only way. This was an unintended, and unwelcome, consequence

Question 30

What did the Emergency law allow?

Answer 30

it allowed police activity that could track down terrorists even though they kept on the move.

Question 31

With the introduction of what was the Emergency law made much more successful?

Answer 31

-it (emergency law) was made much more successful after the introduction of BEFA, a system that gave the BND centralised access to all police information in the FRG.
-by the end of the 1970s, there was much less terrorist activity in the FRG, which could be seen as a success for the government, but this needs to be set against the possibility that it was the govs actions that had encouraged the rise of terrorism in the first place.

Question 32

After the shooting of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, what was set up? who did it have close links with? give an example of one of its successful missions?

Answer 32

GSG-9 was set up as a special operations unit to act against terrorists. It operated worldwide
-it had close links with the British SAS and the US Army’s Delta Force, which were trained for similar missions.
-on 17 October 1977, a team successfully rescued hostages on a plane that had been hijacked on its way to Frankfurt and ended up in Mogadishu, Somalia. It also took part in some arrests of Baader-Meinhof members

Question 33

What did the FRG’s governments attempt at policing extremism met with? and what about its other tactic

Answer 33

met with a good deal of criticism; so did its other tactic against extremism, which was to restrict the work that known extremists could do

Question 34

Explain the FRG’s other tactic of controlling extremism - restricting the work that known extremists could do. Was it applied a lot?

Answer 34

-there had been employment restrictions in government from 1949 on. This Berufsverbot (employment ban) was initially aimed at specified political parties that might be thought to pose a threat to democracy, including the KPD and parties with similar aims to those of the Nazis.
-it was very seldom applied - fewer than 100 people lost their jobs between 1950 and 1972, although it is possible to estimate how many people were not employed because of their political views.

Question 35

What Article did Adenauer eventually pass in May 1951? (in FRG)

Answer 35

he eventually passed Article 13, to allow for the employment of ex-Nazis in the civil service.
-however, the ban was still in place and was occasionally used.

Question 36

With the rise of extremist protest, what did the government introduce? (in FRG)

Answer 36

with the rise of extremist protest, much of it coming from universities, the gov introduced the Radikalenerlass (Anti-Radical Decree) in January 1972. This allowed for political vetting of everyone applying for a state job, from teachers to postmen to civil servants.
-the protests against it usually labelled it the Berufsverbot, confusing the two.