Historical interpretations.

Question 1

How did Aryan racial theory influence Nazi foreign policy?

Answer 1

Aryan racial theory:

• For Hitler, true Germans were Aryan. The Nazi Aryan race was an invention.
• Furthermore, they believed in eugenics. They thought the Aryan race was superior.

How did this affect foreign policy?
- They led the Nazis to favour alliances with racially acceptable countries. However, their racial theory did not stop the Nazis from making alliances with ‘inferior’ countries to gain temporary advantage. What’s more, Nazi theories on race influenced their aim to expand German terrority and their aim to expand eastwards. It also influenced their implementation of Germanisation policies.

Question 2

How did the Third Reich influence Nazi foreign policy?

Answer 2

Hitler’s desire and sense of entitlement can be interpreted as nostalgia. The Nazis focused on the sucesses of two earlier German empires.

Both empires had gained land and kept them. This strategy may have also influenced Hitler’s foreign policy. His foreign policy emphasised his desire for peace.

Question 3

How did WW1 influence Nazi foreign policy?

Answer 3

The Treaty of Versailles affected Nazi foreign policy because opposing it made any political party popular and the Nazis rejected the Treaty. They aimed to overturn the terms of the Treaty. After the signing of Versailles, 6.4 million Germans found themselves outside the new borders. For the Nazis, therefore, uniting German-speaking people included endorsing a policy of expansionism and Germanisation.

Question 4

What also encouraged the Nazis?

Answer 4

The response of the Allies also encouraged the Nazis to expand further and develop militarily. Some perceived the terms of the Treaty as too harsh and consequently turned a blind eye to Germany’s infringement of terms. Britain even signed a Naval Agreement with nazi Germany in 1935. They seemed to accept this reversal of unfair terms hoping that Germany would not pursue expansionist policies and they would not have to fight another war. Instead, Hitler and the Nazis were given the confidence to pursue expansionist policies in their foreign policy.

Question 5

What are some facts about the German war economy?

Answer 5

Sucess:

• By the summer of 1941, 55% of the workforce was involved in war related projects.
• By the second half of 1944, there had been more than a threefold increase in German war production since 1942.
• After Albert Speer was put in charge of the economy in 1942, there was a significant improvement. Ammuntion production increased by 97%.

Failure:

• Despite wholesale mobilisation, the results were disappointingly low.
• Allied bombing reduced the capacity of the German economy to expand further.
• Shortages of raw materials such as coal and oil was a problem: the production of ersatz materials did not fully resolve this and these products were often poor quality.
• The Nazis relied on foreign workers who were poorly treated and often malnourished.

Question 6

How did the Nazi propaganda machine help the Nazi regime survive between 1933 and 1945?

Answer 6

Radio:

• Goebbels informed controllers of German radio that stations served the government and had to follow Nazi guidelines and Nazi ideology.
• The Nazi government produced a cheap radio set.

The Hitler myth:

• Propaganda idolised Hitler as a gifted statesman who brought stability and restored German greatness.
• Germans were expected to conform to new kind of social status such as the Nazi salute.
• The cult of Adolf Hitler was a deliberately cultivated mass phenomenon.

Aims of propaganda:

• To glorify the regime.
• To spread Nazi ideology and values.
• To win over the people, unite the nation and create a Volksgemeinschaft.

Question 7

How did surveillance, repression and the establishment of a terror state?

Answer 7

Heinrich Himmler and the SS:

• Heinrich Himmler was chief of all German police. The SS began in 1925 as Hitler’s bodyguard of 240 men. By 1933, the SS numbered 52,00 and it numbered 250,000 in 1939.
• Carried out the purge of the SA during the Night of the Long Knives. After the event, the SS ran the concentration camps.

The courts:

• Established the people’s courts. Tried people accused of being traitors to the Third Reich.
• Judges had to study Nazi beliefs in 1939.

The Gestapo:

• Secret state police set up by Hermann Goering.
• Their role was to find opponents of the Nazis and arrest them. Relied on informers and blockwardens.
• Small organisation, with 20,000 to 40,000 agents.
• It had a reputation for brutality and could arrest and detain someone without trial.

Concentration camps:

• Prisoms where opponents of the regime were questioned and subjected to torture, hard labour and re-education in Nazi ideals.
• 1933-1945: Established approximately 20,000 camps.
• 1933-1945: over 500,000 non-jewish people were sent to camps for political crimes.

Question 8

How did Germany’s international strength help the Nazi regime survive between 1933 and 1945?

Answer 8

Diplomatic success:
- Support came from those Germaans who saw the Nazis as reversing the losses of the Treaty of Versailles and asserting the power of Germany in Europe.

Question 9

How did economic recovery help the Nazi regime survive between 1933 and 1945?

Answer 9

Revival of the economy:

• Unemployment: Unemployment did fall considerably and wages rose for industrial workers.
• Standards of living improved for many people across Germany.

Social opportunities and rewards:

• Mothers were rewarded with having children.
• Workers were rewarded with free trips with the Strength through Joy programme as well as favourable holiday rates which were subsidised by the government. These were opportunities to push Nazi propaganda messages, although they reinforced the image of the government as caring for workers.

Question 10

What is the historical debate?

Answer 10

In many ways, the causes of the Second World War can seem simple: Hitler’s ideology and aggression led the world to a conflict of appalling destructiveness. However, most historians argue that there were other causes of the Second World war. In order to understand them, it is neccessary to consider:

• the influence of German history on Nazi foreign policy.
• Hitler’s ideas and his role in the shaping of Nazi foreign policy.
• The reasons for the German invasion of Poland in 1939.
• The contribution of other nations to the outbreak of war.

Question 11

What is the influence of German history?

Answer 11

Some historians have argued that Germany’s modern development had followed a special path that caused the country to be more militaristic and aggressive than other developed nations. Historians who hold this view point to the authoritarianism and militarism of German culture, the fact that the Second Reich was created after a series of military conflicts and the influence of the militaristic traditions of the Prussian Army on German culture. According to this argument, these are the long-term causes of the war.

Question 12

In what ways did Nazi foreign policy reflect previous German policy or attitudes?

Answer 12

• The September Program drawn up by the German government at the start of the First world War, set out Germany’s ambition to take over vast areas of Europe.
• In some aspects, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Weltpolik scheme of colonial expansion, prior to 1914, might also be regarded as a kind of forerunner of Hitler’s ambitions. Moreover, Weltpolik was based on racist assumptions.
• The idea that German people needed terroritorial living space to expand into, had grown into popularity in Germany in the late 19th century. Indeed, the desire to conquer terrority in Eastern Europe and Russian was popular prior to 1914.
• Anti-Semitism and other kinds of racism, had a long history in Germany, and in the late nineteenth century, pseudo-scientific ideas about racial purity’ were common.
• The idea that all German peoples should be united in the country was also held by some pre-war Germany and some German-speakers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Question 13

What are the criticisms of this view?

Answer 13

Even though there were similarities between Nazi policies and some earlier policies and ideas, there are many historians who reject the notion that Germany had a Sonderweg. Critics argue that most other major European countries were imperialist and racist in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and yet this did not lead them to prepare for a major European war during the 1930s.

Question 14

What else have historians argued?

Answer 14

Some historians have argued that long-term relations between France and Germany led to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Question 15

What conclusions could be drawn?

Answer 15

Most historians would accept that the ideas of right-wing German and Austrian nationalists, such as the unity of all Germans and Lebensraum did influence Nazi ideas.

Question 16

What else happened during the 1930s in terms of other countries?

Answer 16

• The USA and the USSR largely stayed out of Foreign affairs.
• Britain and France were not in a strong position to try to uphold international order, as they both had economic problems after the Depression, and France was very unstable politically.
• The League of Nations was ineffective: the League was supposed to work for peace, but lacked the unity and power to take decisive action over aggression. For example, it was unable to stop Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1936.
• The events of the Spanish civil war which was won by the Nationalists and fascists, strengthened Germany’s international position. It led to greater unity between Italy and Germany. At the same time, Britain and France maintained a position of neutrality during the civil war, which created the impression that they would not intervene to stop military aggression.

Question 17

What is appeasement?

Answer 17

Appeasement is the name given to the British and French policy towards Germany from 1935 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.

Question 18

What were the causes of appeasement?

Answer 18

• Britain and France wanted to avoid war. In the context of the Depression, the British and French public were keen to avoid another conflict at least until 1939.
• Many in Britain believed that the treaty of Versailles had been excessively harsh, and therefore supported Hitler’s policies to reverse the terms of the Treaty.

Question 19

What were the consequences of appeasement?

Answer 19

• From 1935 to 1938, Britain and France were prepared to allow Germany to breach the terms of the treaty of versailles and follow an ever more aggressive foreign policy.
• In pursuing the policy of appeasement, Britain and France often overlooked or even consented to aggressive acts by the Nazi government. Britain and France took no action to force German forces to withdraw after the militarisation of the Rhineland. Britain and France did not stop Anschluss. Furthermore, when Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia in 1938, Neville Chamberlain preferred to negotiate the Munich Agreement, an international agreement.

Question 20

Was appeasement misguided?

Answer 20

Chamberlain in particular is often criticised for the policy of appeasement. But appeasement gave the British time to rearm and prepare to fight Hitler. Between the signing of the Munich agreement andb the start of the war a year later, Britain developed radar and explanded its rearmament program. Nevertheless, by creating the impression that they would not resist German aggression, appeasement encouraged Hitler to think that his aggression would suceed.

Question 21

Was there a lack of unity?

Answer 21

Concerted action by the USSR, France and Britain might have prevented Hitler’s attack on Poland, and therefore prevented the outbreak of war. However, the three countries did not work together.

Britain was reluctant to work with the USSR. British leaders did not want to share information with a communist country. Suspicion of communism made an alliance impossible.

Question 22

Why did Hitler invade Poland in 1939?

Answer 22

The British, French and Polish guarantee:
- Even though the British government sought to avoid war, they were not prepared to allow Germany to grow too powerful. With this in mind, following the German takeover of Czechoslovakia, the British and French government signed the Polish guarantee in March 1939, in which they pledged to support Polish independence. French and British politicians hoped that this would persuade Hitler to stop German expansion.

Hitler and Poland:
- Hitler aimed to continue German expansion, while avoiding war with Britain and France. Crucially, Hitler did not take the Polish guarantee seriously. He viewed the British and French governments as weak, and failed to realise that, after the Munich agreement, Britain and France were determined to stop further German expansion.

Nazi-Soviet pact:
- In August 1939, the USSR and Germany signed the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Question 23

Was it masterplan or miscalculation?

Answer 23

Historians disagree regarding how far the invasion of Poland was part of Hitler’s masterplan to take Europe to war, or how far it was a miscalculation.

Many historians have argued that Hitler did not seek a large-scale conflict in 1939. From this point of view, either he assumed that Britain and France would back down, or he assumed that any conflict would be short-lived. Either way, many historians claim that Hitler did not want a European war.

Question 24

What else do historians claim?

Answer 24

Some historians claim that the policy of appeasement had convinced Hitler that Britain and France would not act against Germany. In this sense, they argue, Hitler misjudged the situation.

Question 25

When did Britain and France declare war?

Answer 25

On the same day that Germany launched its invasion of Poland, the British and French ambassadors in Berlin issued an ultimatum, stating that if German troops did not withdraw from Poland, Britain and France would declare war against Germany. On the evening of 2 September 1939, Chamberlain told the House of Commons that he had received no response to his ultimatum, and on 3 September, he announced in a radio broadcast to the public that this country is at war with Germany. Within hours, the French government had also declared war.

Ultimately, Britain and France decided to try and prevent further German aggression and expansionism.

Question 26

What did historians claim in terms of the cause of the invasion of Poland?

Answer 26

Some historians claim that the invasion of Poland was brought about by economic and political pressure in Germany.

Question 27

What was the impact of the Four Year plan?

Answer 27

• The need for raw materials to make weapons caused a balance of payments crisis. In 1939, Germany was forced to slow down its rearmament drive. Hitler believed that a solution to this was to gain more terrority and in doing so take hold of more resources. This could have been one of Hitler’s motives for eastern expansion, which in turn led to war.
• Rearmament also had a negative impact on German living standards. Devoting huge amounts of resources to rearmament meant that Germany did not have the resources to improve wages, and it meant that the suplly of consumer goods and food became limited. This economic pressure created discontent.