3) To what extent did Germany’s governments rule by consent in the years 1918-89?

Question 1

is it possible to find evidence of significant support for the idea of a democracy during the Weimar government?

Answer 1

yes it is possible.

Question 2

What was one of the most notable signs of support for democracy in the Weimar government?

Answer 2

-one of the most notable signs of support was that a significant number of people turned out to vote at every election
-this suggested that they were in favour of the democratic process because they were prepared to go and vote.

Question 3

Did the SPD consistently support the Weimar constitution?

Answer 3

yes it did

Question 4

did the other moderate parties that often played a part in forming coalitions support the Weimar consitution?

Answer 4

yes they did, although to different degrees.
-the DVP was the most lukewarm, despite the fact that its leaders was Gustav Stresemann the person who produced the more settled economy between 1924 and 1929

Question 5

What were the moderate parties in the Weimar republic?

Answer 5

these were:
-the Centre Party
-the German Democrats (DDP)
-the German Peoples Party (DVP)

Question 6

Where did the problem lay in? (Weimar rep) and what did the parties have to be prepared to do?

Answer 6

the problem lay in the fact that supporting the constitution and the idea of a democratic government was not enough.
-the parties had to be prepared to work together and try to negotiate policies that would help the gov to function properly - and they could not do that

Question 7

In the Weimar republic, which people favoured the constitution?

Answer 7

-if we think about the support that the moderate parties got and the SPD, it should suggest the people who favoured the constitution:
-these were, in the main, middle-class business people, Catholics and the professional classes

Question 8

It is noticeable that many people welcomed the Weimar Constitution when? And give an example

Answer 8

when they were presented with something they liked less.
-For example, in 1923 the people of Saxony welcomed Reichsexekution and the removal of the communist government, which had not been elected but had imposed itself on the region. The American ambassador in Dresden said the troops were greeted with cheers as if they were an army of liberation.

Question 9

What did critics of the time of the Weimar republic often criticise, give an example, and what did this suggest?

Answer 9

they often criticised what the government was or was not doing, not the ideas behind the constitution. For example, many people wrote angrily about the various parties in the Reichstag failing to make coalitions work.
-this suggests that it is likely that the Weimar Constitution had more supporters, as a template for democratic government, than the actual government had.

Question 10

When the Weimar gov did get things right, what was there a rise in? Give an example.

Answer 10

there was a rise in support.
-so from 1924 to 1929, as the government seemed to be making the economy work and getting Germany accepted as a power in Europe again, the constitution and the parties that supported it got more support.
-in 1924 the SPD, the face of the constitution, won 131 seats in the Reichstag. This rose to 153 in 1928, surely a sign of approval.

Question 11

However, what happened when the Weimar gov failed?

Answer 11

when the gov failed, democracy swung into action again.
-A right-wing president was elected by popular vote and then the Nazis won a rapid rise to power in the Reichstag, again with voters exercising their democratic rights. Once there, they (Nazis) dismantled the Weimar Constitution.

Question 12

Why was it difficult to judge the amount of support there was for the Nazis?

Answer 12

it is difficult to judge the level of support there was for the Nazis because:
-you cannot believe Nazi propaganda on the subject (support) and you can not necessarily believe the photos of hordes of people cheering and waving - the Nazi system of control meant that many people would smile and wave even if inwardly they did not support the Nazis.
-However, there were people who supported the Nazis, and when these were added to the people who withdrew from politics and got on with their lives, it was quite easy for the Nazis to give the impression that the whole country was behind them.

Question 13

what was a vital concept for the Nazis? what did Hitler tress?

Answer 13

-complete support was a vital concept for the Nazis.
-Hitler stressed the importance of actual support, not just the appearance of support, for the war he knew was coming.

Question 14

What was one way the Nazis gained support? (hint: to do with making Hitler into something)

Answer 14

-one way the Nazis gained support was to make Hitler into a national hero, a god-like figure who could do no wrong.
-the ‘Fuhrer myth’ that the Nazis created made people willing to make sacrifices when Hitler asked them to.

Question 15

What was one of the methods used by the Nazis to gain support? (HINT: slogan, radios)

Answer 15

-the Nazis use of propaganda was very sophisticated. As early as the 1920s, Hitler was saying that people could be won over to almost anything if it was presented as a simple idea, with a single slogan or image repeated over and over again.
-For example, ‘One people, one Reich, one Fuhrer’ or the image of a Jewish person as an ugly dark man with a huge hooked nose.
-Nazis control of the media enabled them to manipulate what people saw and heard from very early on. E.g. they made sure a Nazi reported the reaction to Hitlers appointment as chancellor. He reported huge, cheering torchlight processions in Berlin, with a mass of people chanting ‘Sieg Heil!’ (the Nazi chant ‘Hail victory!’). So everyone listening to the radio was immediately convinced of Hitlers huge popularity.
-The Nazis made sure that the cheapest and most widely available radio was the Peoples receiver. In 1939, over 70 percent of the population owned a radio; by 1943, one-third of all radios were People’s Receivers. These had a limited range and, unless the owners lived close to the German border, they could not pick up foreign radio stations.

Question 16

What was one of the methods used by the Nazis to gain support? (HINT: news, and anti-Semitic propaganda)

Answer 16

-from 1933 on, the Nazi propaganda machine manipulated the news and other information to make people think that Nazi policies were working, or that Nazi prejudices were right. E.g. Nazi propaganda told people that Jewish people were greedy, dirty, subhumans.
-After 1939, the Nazis crowded all the Jewish people they could into ghettos where food, water and electricity were only sporadically available. Selected images of Jews living like this then reinforced the anti-Semitic propaganda

Question 17

What was one of the methods used by the Nazis to gain support? (HINT: punishing and rewarding)

Answer 17

-the Nazis punished opposition, but they made sure to reward conformity as well.
-mothers were rewarded with medals for having babies. One mother, Anna Klein, remembered that she loved the way that she was valued as a mother. It was all she had ever wanted to be and no mothers in her parents generation had received the extras she got just for doing what she wanted: a 1,000 mark loan on marriage that was reduced by 250 marks for each child (so four children cleared the loan); regular check-ups and vitamins while pregnant.
-in 1939, the Nazis introduced a series of medals of honour for having more than four children.
-It was not just women who were rewarded for conformity. E.g. workers were rewarded with free trips with the Kraft Durch Freude (KDF) programme.

Question 18

Who did the Nazis have the support of? (Hint: prejudices)

Answer 18

-the Nazis had the support of the people who’s prejudices they shared.
-there were people who hated Jews, gays, Gypsies, communists and other groups seen by the Nazis as ‘undesirable’.
-for them (those sharing the same prejudices), it was a pleasure to see these groups victimised by the Nazis.
-The support ranged from informing on people in their appartement building who were listening to banned foreign radio broadcasts to running Hitler Youth groups or acting as an official of the DAF, the Nazi ‘trade union’

Question 19

Who did the Nazis have the support of? (HINT: benefited)

Answer 19

-The Nazis had the support of the people who benefited from their rule.
-these ranged from the wealthy industrialists (who benefited from the banning of the KPD and trade unions) to the middle classes (who found their savings had value again) to people who applied to ‘Germanise’ an area. Those who were accepted were given homes and farmland on which to live. They were usually people who would not have owned their own farms without having been given the chance to Germanise by the Nazis. They were therefore prepared not to think too hard about how, exactly, the land they were taking over had been acquired. They were told that the owners were part of a move eastwards and were starting new lives on farms there.

Question 20

Who did the Nazis have the support of? (HINT: treaty)

Answer 20

-support also came from those Germans who saw the Nazis as reversing the losses of the Treaty of Versailles and asserting the power of Germany in Europe. They were people who failed to see how Stresemann had managed, with his careful work in Europe, to improve reparations and gain other reversals of Versailles because he had done so by working with ‘the enemy’

Question 21

How did the German attitude towards the war (WWII) change? what kept support going? how did the support vary?

Answer 21

-while many Germans were initially lukewarm about going to war, many changed their mind when the German army started to sweep through Europe and the East.
-the ‘Fuhrer myth’ kept support going even when the Nazis made the mistake of invading the USSR and began to struggle to keep advancing.
-this support varied from collecting for the various charities organised by the Nazis to joining the special murder squads that took part in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, and Slaves as the German army swept through Poland and then the USSR

Question 22

While there were always some people predisposed to support the Nazis in the war (WW2), what was it harder for the Nazis to retian?

Answer 22

it was harder for the Nazis to retain the support of the majority of ordinary people during the war as their living conditions deteriorated and Allied bombing devasted the cities

Question 23

At the end of WW2 what did the German people have to face?

Answer 23

had to face defeat, huge economic problems and the division of their country by the Allies into zones of influence

Question 24

What was the first thing that needed to happen in Germany (after ww2) which all the Allies agreed about? What did this not mean? and what did it actually mean?

Answer 24

the Allies all agreed that one of the first things that had to happen in Germany was de-Nazification.
-this did not simple mean finding all Nazis, especially those who had taken part in the Holocaust and prosecuting them - although they wanted to do that. It did not even mean just making people face up to the more extreme Nazi policies, for example, marching them pas the piles of dead bodies in concentration camps, although they also did that.
-what it actually meant, and wanted, was to produce a changed culture, a changed political outlook. The national identity that had been hammered into them by the Nazis had to change, as did the racial and cultural ideas that had also been imposed over the years.

Question 25

what were the Nuremberg Trials? (after ww2)

Answer 25

these were war crime trials held in Nuremberg (where Hitler had held yearly mass rallies).
-these were the trials of those Nazi leaders who had neither committed suicide nor escaped.

Question 26

When did the first Nuremburg trial begin? what were the sentencings? what did surveys at the time show about the Nuremburg trials?

Answer 26

-began on 18 October 1945. Of the 22 defendants, 12 were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment and three were acquitted. The remaining defendants went to prison.
-surveys at the time showed that the trials were accepted by most Germans as a necessary part of losing the war, although there was also a feeling that there should be an end to the pursuit of Nazis. The ‘Fuhrer myth’ changed for many people - Hitler became the person to take all the blame. Now he was dead and may of the most famous Nazi leaders had been dealt with, many people felt they should be allowed to get on with rebuilding their lives, without too close an examination of what they had done before 1945, which should be allowed to become ‘year zero’. This policy was firmly supported by right-wing politicians (e.g. Adenauer, who was to become chancellor of the FRG) and many of those who had lived through the war as adults

Question 27

What did the different Allied zones pursue differently? (after ww2)

Answer 27

-the different Allied zones pursued de-Nazification differently, although thousands of people were arrested in all of the zones: about 250,000 were arrested by the end of 1946

Question 28

What were there problems with classifying? (after ww2) what was it possible for more involved Nazis to do?

Answer 28

-there were problems with classifying who was a Nazis. Many people had joined the party to keep their jobs, but they did not really have Nazi sympathies.
-it was possible for more involved Nazis to remove themselves from the record.
-there were also problems with the sheer scale of the process. Inevitably there were injustices in all zones at all levels. The problems with this was that the process came to look bungled and corrupt - and this did not encourage people to welcome the democratic process set up by the same Allied authorities

Question 29

What was the approach to de=Nazification in education?

Answer 29

-the Western Zones, having seen the effect of the Hitler Youth movement and Nazi propagandist education, set out to re-educate the young.
-they faced an uphill battle because the young were most likely to have been indoctrinated.
-in May 1946, the Allies banned Nazi schoolbooks, films, and slides that taught Nazi racial theory. They also banned books that used such theories as examples, such as the school textbook that asked how many marriage loans could be paid from the cost of keeping one disabled person alive over a year.
-teachers were vetted to weed out Nazis at universities and teacher training institutes.
-libraries and librarians had to go through a similar process.
-

Question 30

What was one problem with de-Nazification?

Answer 30

-the problem was that Nazification had been so thorough that de-Nazification meant there were not enough people to do many of the key jobs, not only in education but in government as well.
-this was something the Allies had to adapt to, as well as the FRG government; there was not a single uniform policy

Question 31

who was the most ruthless in weeding out of Nazis? what approach did the British have?

Answer 31

-the USSR
-the British were most pragmatic in accepting that they would have to employ some ex-Nazi Party members in order for government to work

Question 32

Immediately after the war, as the Allies pressed for de-Nazification, what were the combination of reactions? (5)

Answer 32

-resigned acceptance
-indignation
-avoidance
-cynicism
-desire to move on

Question 33

Explain about resigned acceptance being one of the reactions to de-Nazification immediately after WW2?

Answer 33

resigned acceptance:
-they had lost; all the Allies were bound to want to punish Germany and do their best job to eradicate Nazism.
-this was especially widespread between 1945 and 1949, when US opinion polls suggested that between half and two-thirds of those asked though that de-Nazification was necessary.
-however, after 1949 (and the Withdrawal of Allied troops) the number of people saying this fell to under a quarter in 1951

Question 34

explain how/why indignation was one of the reactions to de-Nazification immediately after WW2?

Answer 34

Indignation:
-the Allies had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, they had bombed Dresden to bits, and Soviet troops had wiped out German villages on the push to Berlin. Why should only the Germans be punished for war crimes?
-also, the Allies were censoring the press, vetting teachers and so on. Yet they had been critical of the Nazis doing the same thing

Question 35

Explain why avoidance was one of the reactions to de-Nazification immediately after WW2?

Answer 35

avoidance:
-those who had supported the Nazis, even if they had not taken part in any war crimes, wanted to avoid too close an examination of who did what during the war

Question 36

explain why cynicism was one of the reactions to de-Nazification immediately after WW2?

Answer 36

cynicism:
-some people pointed out that, apart from the Nuremburg Trials, the prosecution of ex-Nazis was patchy. All of the Allies were guilty of allowing ex-Nazis with useful skills to leave Germany and start a new life in their country (about 1,600 ex-Nazi scientists and doctors avoided prosecution by agreeing to work for the USA, including the rocket scientist Werner von Braun)

Question 37

explain why desire to move on was one of the reactions to de-Nazification immediately after WW2?

Answer 37

desire to move on:
-these were the people who believed in the ‘year zero’ theory and many people in the new government of the FRG wanted to follow this pragmatic course.
-the quickest way for the government to rebuild the country’s structure (e.g. schools, hospitals, the civil service) was not to look too closely at the past of those who were qualified to do the work.
-By 1947, more than 85 percent of the school teachers in Bavaria who had lost their jobs through de-Nazification were back at work. In other cases, teachers banned in one zone moved and applied for work in another zone, and were taken on without question. The same was true in universities and many other places. This meant that the education system that had been meant to work hard towards distributing democratic ideas was, quite often, slow to do so.
-in 1961, only one-third of all students in the University of Frankfurt believed in the future of democracy.

Question 38

By the 1960s was there a new reaction to de-Nazification?

Answer 38

-yes there was.
-many of the young who had grown up in the new Germany were impatient with the ‘year zero’ policy.
-they wanted to know what their families had done in Nazi Germany, they wanted to clear the air.
-they were angry at the way de-Nazification had been sloppily applied
-while some accepted that it might have been necessary to allow those who had been Nazis only in name to keep their jobs, they were unhappy that more prominent Nazis had been allowed to take quite significant jobs in the government.
-some students were unhappy at the numbers of ex-Nazis among the older teaching staff, members of staff who encouraged the formation of right-wing student groups that had distinctly Nazi policies, including anti-Semitism

Question 39

What had Germans been taught to view Germany as during the Nazi regime?

Answer 39

they were taught to see democracy as weak

Question 40

who was Germany’s only experience of democracy under? for the first few years of the FRG, what were there fears of?

Answer 40

under the Weimar government - and a few people thought that had turned out well.
-for the first few years there was genuine concern that, despite its constitutional differences, the new government would be another Weimar, and it would fail as the Weimar had.

Question 41

What is one way that the level of support for democracy in the FRG can be seen?

Answer 41

-it can be seen in the voter turnouts for elections, for they show whether people wanted to participate in the democratic process. The figures show a high level of voter turnout in the FRG.
-The only time it was less than 84 percent was in 1949, when voting happened for the first time and some people were still stuck with old attitudes and nervous of the democratic process.
-in Britain over the same period, voter turnout was always lower, only going above 79 percent twice.
-using this as a measure, there was a significant level of support for democracy between 1949 and 1989.

Question 42

What did research by the Allensbach Institute show?

Answer 42

-the institute was set up in 1947 to conduct surveys of public attitudes.
-it showed that the number of people who believed that members of the Bundestag represented the public interest doubled in 151 and 1964, while in the same period the number of people who believed that a monarchy should be restored fell from one-third to one-tenth.
-by the 1960s surveys showed that the majority of Germans felt that the FRG represented the best time in German history and that most people believed that democracy was the best kind of government

Question 43

what are the 3 other measures of support for democracy apart from voter turnout (in FRG)?

Answer 43

-people demonstrated against some of the changes that the government wanted to make that would restrict democracy and the civil liberties that they had under the Basic Law. E.g many people demonstrated against the Emergency Law that the gov wanted to introduce all the way through the 1960s and even after it was made a law in 1968. People were beginning to demand that the country live up to the ideals of democracy that were set up in the Basic Law
-they marched in support of democracy and against repressive regimes in other countries, e.g. the military junta that ruled Greece after 1967, and against their gov having diplomatic or trade relations with these regimes, e.g. South Africa under apartheid.
-they protested against the shift to Ostpolitik if it meant establishing relations with the USSR, because of the repressive communist regime in that country. This was a difficult issue for supporters of democracy because they were often in favour of reunification with the GDR and also in favour of helping to establish democracy in Soviet satellite states. So they approved of a realignment eastwards. However, they found it difficult to accept that such a realignment, at least at first, had to include the USSR, because of their influence in the GDR