Chapter 14 Flashcards
What was the Nazi concept of authority based on?
The leadership principle - Hitler’s word was law.
What did the Nazis do to the legal system after January 1933?
They forced it to conform to their will rather than replace it.
How was the law applied in Nazi Germany?
In an arbitrary and inconsistent pattern.
Who controlled the state police forces?
Each individual state controlled their own force.
Who controlled the SS?
Heinrich Himmler
What was the SD?
An intelligence gathering offshoot of the SS.
Who were the Gestapo?
The secret State police force of Prussia which was extended to cover the entire country during 1933.
What did Himmler become and gain control of in 1936?
Chief of the German police, controlling the SS, SD, and the Gestapo.
What police organisation was created in 1939?
Reich Security Department Headquarters (RHSA)
What did the RHSA do?
Placed all party and state police organisations under their control and was supervised by Himmler’s SS.
What did the SS control after 1936?
Concentration camps.
What were the key values of an SS member?
Loyal, obedient, honourable, and racially pure.
When and where was the first concentration camp set up?
Dachau, March 1933
What happened to concentration camps after 1936?
By then the communists and socialists had been crushed, so the focus turned to undesirables.
Who were asocials?
Those who did not conform to the Nazi volksgemeinschaft - beggars, tramps, alcoholics, prostitutes, mentally disabled.
When was the SD established?
1931
Why was the SD established?
To investigate claims that the party had been infiltrated by its political enemies.
Who led the SD?
Reinhard Heydrich
What was the SD’s role after 1933?
Intelligence gathering on the public, monitoring public opinion.
How many officers did the SD have by 1939?
50,000
Who staffed the SD and why?
Amateur Nazi Party members because they were a party organisation, not a state one.
What was the reality of the Gestapo compared to its impression?
People thought they had officers in every workplace, pub, and neighbourhood, but in reality they were a small organisation.
How many officers did the Gestapo have by 1939?
20,000
Who were the officers of the Gestapo?
Professional police officers who saw their role as being to serve the state.
Who were ‘block leaders’?
Nazi Party activists who would spy on their neighbours and report activity to the Gestapo.
Why were lawyers a problem for the Nazis?
They were politically independent, and many prosecutions against stormtroopers were started by lawyers determined to uphold the law.
When was the Front of German Law created?
April 1933
What was the Front of German Law?
The organisation created by the Nazis that merged all associations of judges and lawyers into one they could control.
When were People’s Courts set up?
April 1934
What were People’s Courts?
Courts set up to deal with political crimes.
What was the makeup of the People’s Courts?
3 Nazi judges, 2 professional judges, no juries, defendants could not appeal their sentences.
How many people were tried by the People’s Court between 1934 and 1939?
3400 - many were given the death penalty.
What did the German people tend to think of the new regime?
It was preferable to the final years of the Weimar Republic.
What did the KPD call the SPD?
social-fascists
Who ran the SPD after 1933 and from where?
Ernst Schumacher from exile in Prague.
How did the SPD resist after 1933?
They established small cells of supporters in factories.
There were some city-based groups such as the Berlin Red Patrol, and they smuggled propaganda pamphlets into the country.
What was the priority of the SPD and its members?
Survive until a future collapse of the regime rather than mount a serious challenge.
How much of the KPD membership was killed during 1933?
10%
How many strikes were recorded over the whole of 1937?
250
How long was the strike at the Opel car factory in 1936?
17 minutes
What happened to the leaders of the strike at the Opel car factory in 1936?
7 ringleaders were arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo.
What happened in 1938 in an attempt to clamp down on abesnteeism?
The Gestapo arrested 114 workers at a munitions plant in Gleiwitz for absenteeism and slow working.
Other than strikes, how else could workers resist?
- Absenteeism
- Slow working
- Sabotage
What was the only organisation to retain an alternative ideology to the Nazis?
The Catholic Church
What was the Confessional Church?
A group of Protestant pastors who refused to be co-opted into the Reich Church.
When was the Confessional Church created?
1934
What religion was the Confessional Church?
Protestant
What was the Aryan paragraph?
Under the Law for the Reconstruction of the Professional Civil Service, anyone not of Aryan birth had to be dismissed from their job.
How many pastors had been arrested by the end of 1937?
Over 700
When was ‘With Burning Greif’ issued?
1937
What was ‘With Burning Greif’?
Written by the Pope, it was a document smuggled into Germany and read from the pulpit in March 1937 that condemned Nazi hatred of the church.
What was resistance from the Catholic Church like overall?
It did not move from a narrow defence of its independence and was therefore partial, spasmodic, and ineffective.
When was membership of the Hitler Youth made compulsory?
1936
What did the Nazis want to eliminate?
Individuality
How did the German youth resist?
- Let their membership of the Hitler Youth lapse.
- Not attending weekly parades.
- Humming banned tunes.
- Forming political gangs such as Meuten gangs.
What did Hitler reveal to senior army commanders in November 1937?
That he envisaged a union with Austria and an invasion of Czechoslovakia within a year.
What was Goebbels aiming for through propaganda?
The ‘spiritual mobilisation’ of the German people.
When was the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda established?
March 1933
What did Goebbels say about the aims of propaganda?
‘we want to work on people until they have ceased to resist us’
How many newspapers had the Nazis acquired by the end of 1933 and what was their circulation?
27 daily newspapers; 2.4 million a day.
What happened to socialist and communist newspapers under the Nazis?
They were closed down using the powers granted under the Decree for the Protection of the People and State.
How many broadcasts did Hitler make in 1933?
50
What percentage of German households possessed a radio by 1939?
70% - the highest in the world.
When was the Reich Radio Company created?
April 1934
What was the Reich Radio Company?
The organisation that controlled all Germany radio stations, controlled by the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment…
Who had to approve of every film made in Germany after 1933?
Joseph Goebbels
What was Hitler (not the Fuhrer)?
The man of destiny.
What type of films did Goebbels ban outright?
Pacifist films
What annual event was stage-managed by the party?
Nuremburg rallies in September every year.
How many people attended the 1937 Nuremburg rally?
100,000
