Germany 4: Nazi Germany

Question 1

Reichstag Fire

Answer 1

• 27th February 1933
• Marianus Van der Lubbe charged
• 4,000 communists arrested
• Communists lost 19 seats
• Passed ‘Decree for Protection of People and State’

Question 2

March 1933 Election

Answer 2

• Recruited 50,000 SA members
• Violence led to 70 deaths
• Threats at polling stations to encourage correct voting

Question 2

Enabling Act

Answer 2

• Passed 444 votes to 94
• Applied for 4 years but renewed in 1937
• Hitler could pass laws without the Reichstag
• Reichstag only met 12 more times till 1945

Question 3

Threat of Rohm

Answer 3

• SA had 2 million members
• Rohm had more socialist views
• SA wanted to replace the army

Question 4

Night of the long knives

Answer 4

• 29th June 1934 SS killed SA leaders
• 90 SA leaders killed
• SS became more powerful, SA less powerful

Question 5

Hitler as Fuhrer

Answer 5

• Hindenbrug died, Hitler combined Chancellor and President
• 2nd August 1934 Army swore oath specifically to Hitler
• Named himself Fuhrer, supreme leader

Question 6

Nazi Leadership Schools

Answer 6

• NAPOLAs - Boys aged 10-18 educated in leaderhsip, 39 schools in 1939
• Adolf Hitler Schools - Elite schools for 12-18 year olds for military leadership

Question 7

Nazi Youth Movements

Answer 7

• 1936 all eligible youth must be in the Hitler youth
• 8 million members by 1939

Question 8

Nazi policies on women

Answer 8

• Kinder,Kirche,Kuche
• From 1933 loans available to married couples
• Large focus on women being homemakers and mothers
• Contraception and abortion banned

Question 9

Nazis and Catholic Church

Answer 9

• Concordat - 1933, no cross involvement between church and state, church allowed to run youth groups and schools
• Breaking - Hitler removed catholic newspapers and images, prompting a rebuke by the pope in 1937
• Nazis responded with a huge crackdown on the church (1941 Catholic Press closed)

Question 10

Nazis and protestant church

Answer 10

• Nazis created ReichChurch in 1933
• Confessional church made in 1934 to rival Nazi churches but quickly shut down
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer hung 1945
• By 1939 only 5% of Germans believed in God

Question 11

Economic plans

Answer 11

New plan - Reduce imports and increase exports, spent 1 billion marks on public schemes
Four Year Plan - From 1936, aimed to make Germany self sufficient in raw resources, 1939 Germany still imported 1/3

Question 12

Invisible unemployment

Answer 12

• Nazis manipulated figures to make it seem employment reduced
• Women were not included
• Jews not included
• National Labour Service organised work for unemployed men and they were no longer counted as unemployed

Question 13

Effects of Nazi economic policy

Answer 13

• pre 1936 economy focused on increasing employment
• Four Year plan aimed to prepare for war
• People were not better off
• Germany had to start rationing immediatetly in Sep 1939
• Unemployment down and industry up

Question 14

Groups effects by Nazi economic policy

Answer 14

• Big bussiness benefitted most
• profits went from 1.3 Bil in 1928 to 5 Bil in 1939
• Middle classes, workers and Farmers saw little improvement

Question 15

Propaganda Key messages

Answer 15

1. The supremacy of the Aryan race and the inferiority of the Jews and other races
2. The tremendous work being done by the Nazis to deal with the evils of Communism
3. The different roles of men and women in society and the importance of family
4. The fact that all citizens had a duty to suffer for the good of the nations

Question 16

Radio

Propaganda

Answer 16

• Goebbels “spiritual weapon of the totalitarian state”
• 1939, 70% of Germans had a Radio
• Programmes would inclue Hitlers speeches, Nazi history and German music

Question 17

1936 Olympics

Propaganda

Answer 17

• Germany won the most medals
• Huge stadium to hold 100,000
• Showed Germany and Aryans as a strong people
• However, Jesse Owens a black American won 4 gold medals

Question 18

Decree for Protection of People and State

Answer 18

• The police could ban meetings, search houses and imprison without trial
• The death penalty could be used for certain crimes
• Concentration camps like Dachau were set up

Question 19

Persecution of Jews

Answer 19

• 1935 Nuremberg Laws (Jews no longer citizens, could not marry Germans)
• November 1938 Kristallnacht (91 killed, 191 synagogues destroyed)
• 1941 “Final solution”

Question 20

Gestapo

Answer 20

• 1933 Goerring set up
• Huge numbers of spies among regular people
• Had the power to search houses and arrest with no reason
• 1942, 30,000 officers

Question 21

Concentration camps

Answer 21

• 200,000 imprisoned for opposition
• The Law on Malicious Gossip made it illegal to tell even jokes about Hitler.
• Run by Deaths Head section of SS

Question 22

SS under Himmler

Answer 22

• Himmler appointed leader 1929
• 400k members in 1934
• 240k members in 1939 (due to reductions)
• Members personally vetted by Himmler as “Aryan”
• Most ruthless and loyal Nazis

Question 23

Arts/Music

Censorship

Answer 23

• All artists had to join Reich Chamber of Commerce
• Jazz was banned for being “black”
• Art had to feature Aryans

Question 24

Literature

Censorship

Answer 24

• Ministry of propaganda made a list of banned books
• Gestapo would search for and burn any non-Nazi literature
• Millions of books by Jewish or Communist authors were burned

Question 25

Propaganda

Education

Answer 25

• Geography taught lebensraum (living room)
• Focus on health for strong Volksgemeinschaft
• 1933 textbooks rewritten to enforce Nazi beliefs
• 50% decrease in higher education students