hitler part 2 Flashcards
nazi police state
Establishing a system of propaganda and indoctrination
- The Nazis made propaganda and ‘indoctrination’ a top priority.
- In 1933 the Ministry for People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda was set up under the control of dr Joseph goebbels
- The Ministry was responsible for the entire organization of propaganda
- goebbels able to control the whole of Germany’s intellectual life and culture
- Goebbels was also careful to control the press, and the Press Chamber organized regular meetings with journalists to instruct them on what line to take.
- Ministry prevented the spread of ‘undesirable’ ideas.
- Universities and schools were told what to teach and there were long lists of censored books; these included most of the authors of the Weimar Republic.
- All academic freedom was brought to an end, an essential step in the creation of a new master race
The use of terror through the SS and Gestapo
- SS was set up in 1925 as part of the SA. It was, however, more carefully disciplined than the SA
- under leadership of Heinrich himmler
- in charge of concentration camps, spying, army regiments
- Gestapo: employed army of spies who would inform on people
- any form of opposition reported e.g. telling anti-hitler jokes, refusing to give hitler a salute, not flying a nazi flag
punishment and concentration camps
- hitler no time for idea of justice being neutral (no democracy)
- set up the people’s court to try people for ‘crimes’ against the state, but judges had uncompromising view of justice
- The People’s Court soon filled up with prosecutions. In 1939 alone there were over
160,000 people under arrest for political offences.
- The SA and SS also ran a number of concentration camps.
- These camps were filled with all types of ‘undesirables’, including intellectuals, Communists, homosexuals and, Jews.
- prisoners used as slave labourers
nazi racist state
- racial policies central focus of the nazi revolution
- aim: create an aryan master race within Germany and destroy jewish influences (inferior race should be slaves of superior race)
purification of German people
- hitler felt that germans needed to be purified by a programme of selective breeding
- The programme was entrusted to the SS, It recruited its members only from men with the correct Aryan physical appearance. They allowed to marry only after the racial pedigree of their future wives had been checked
- The SS also had a network of race farms throughout Germany. Women who had been approved by the authorities were brought to these farms. Their purpose was to breed children fathered by SS officers. Through programmes like this, the Nazis believed, the Aryan race would be purified.
- The Nazi regime brought race into everything. Race studies and eugenics were taught in schools and universities.
- Scientists were ordered to promote racial studies not only in Biology but also in Physics and Chemistry. Those who protested that this destroyed the whole purpose of scientific investigation were forced to stop practising.
nazi racist state- persecution of jews
Stage 1 - The denial of civil rights (1933-8)
- For the first five years the Nazis gradually deprived the Jews of their rights as German citizens.
- they refused them the protection of the police
- 1 April 1933, SA men organized a boycott of jewish shops
- Jewish civil servants were dismissed
- jews were banned from inheriting land, could not own farms
- jewish authors could not publish their works
nuremberg laws
- The year 1935 produced a rush of laws, probably because the restraining hand of President Hindenburg was no longer there.
- made illegal any marriage or sexual intercourse between Germans and Jews.
Stage 2 - The acceleration of persecution 1938-41
From 1938 onwards the position of the Jews in Germany deteriorated rapidly because:
- the Nazi regime was much more in control than it had been in the early 1930s.
- indoctrination and terror were removing possible opposition.
- Kristallnacht (‘Crystal Night’): turning point
- throughout Germany, Jewish shops and synagogues were ransacked or destroyed and many people were killed or injured.
- It was probably organized in advance by the SA, acting under orders from Goebbels.
- After 1938 the Jews lost their last remaining liberties. They were no longer allowed to trade and they were even deprived of the right to choose their children’s names: they now had to keep to an approved list.
Stage 3 - The Holocaust 1941-5
- This was introduced during the Second World War
- German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.
- In its entirety, the “Final Solution” called for the murder of all European Jews by gassing, shooting, and other means.
- Six million Jewish men, women, and children were killed during the Holocaust —two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe before World
nazi control of youth
Education
- young people were constantly exposed to Hitler’s ideas through the school system.
- The whole purpose of education was turned upside down. Instead of opening minds, it was designed to close them.
- The content of the school curriculum was slanted very much to what the Nazis saw as the main needs: military skills for boys and domestic skills for girls.
- All subjects were used as a vehicle for Nazi ideas.
bio: racial differences
history: designed to ‘awaken in the younger generation the sense of responsibility towards ancestors’
- differentiation between the curriculum for males and females, with the latter emphasising home economics.
- Many pupils would have preferred it to the previous system of more academic studies. They would also have been attracted by the emphasis given
to sport.
- But the large numbers of young people who would have thrived on academic courses felt frustrated intellectually, and resentful at having to spend so much of their time on outside activities.
- Girls felt that their education was being downgraded and that they were being forced into a domestic role.
- Many may have wanted this, but some would have been profoundly unhappy about it.
The Hitler Youth
- Membership of the Hitler Youth was made compulsory in 1936.
- Boys from 6 to 10 joined the Little Fellows) and were involved in activities such as hiking and camping.
At 10, they took a test to enable them to move into the German Young People where they learned more about Nazi ideology and military matters.
- Between the ages of 14 and 18 they were enrolled in the Hitler Youth which had a much stronger emphasis on military discipline and training.
- Girls, meanwhile, joined the Young Maidens to the age of 14 and were taught
how to care for their health and prepare for motherhood.
- From 14 to 18, girls belonged to the League of German Maidens
nazi treatment of women
- played an important role in providing the foundations of the racially pure community that hitler hoped to create
- The Nazis had definite ideas about the role of women in society: their place was in the home, as child- bearers and supporters of their husbands.
- Women had a role, which was entirely separate from that of men, and there was therefore no question of equality: they were different.
- nazi wanted them to return to their traditional role as ‘modern women’ were a degenerate threat to racial purity
- According to Nazi propaganda, the duties of women were as mothers, housewives
supporting their husbands, and community organizers. - As a result of these views, women were squeezed out of a large number of jobs shortly after Hitler came to power. T
- the first to go were women doctors and civil servants. The number of
women teachers declined - From 1936, no woman could be a judge or prosecutor and they were even removed from jury service, on the grounds that they would be unable to think logically and without emotion.
Family Life under Nazi rule
- it was the basic social unit in which Nazi ideas would be put into practice.
- the means by which Hitler would achieve one of his main objectives - the rapid expansion of the German population.
- The Nazis banned birth control clinics, contraception and abortion. They encouraged large families through financial inducements like marriage loans, family allowances and child subsidies.
- The Nazis also used propaganda to increase the birth rate.
- The word ‘family’ was only given to households with four or more children, and women were encouraged to be ‘blessed with children’
- an award was provided for mothers who had had many children: the
“Honour Cross of the German Mother”, with a gold cross for those with more than eight.
- to preserve the purity of theracial stock, anyone suffering a hereditary defect such as mental illness, epilepsy or blindness, was sterilized.
- The pressures put upon couples to have children might also have been psychologically damaging.
The treatment of women in the Third Reich, post-1936
- When labour shortage began to affect rearmament plans in 1936, women were once more drawn back into factories.
- Compulsory agricultural labour service was introduced for women under twenty-five
- women aged 16-45 could be conscripted for the war effort.
- Nazi policies toward women were contradictory.
- While they claimed to promote the importance of family values, they encouraged an independent youth that placed Party above the family.
- While they told women to stay in the home, from 1936 women were
encouraged to return to the factories.
- While female education was initially discouraged, by the war years women were encouraged to enter universities and train for professional roles.
Conclusion to Social and Political Spheres of Nazi control
- social policies aimed to persuade the German people to put aside their sectional interests in favour of an overarching loyalty to a greater national cause.
- a society in which there would be social harmony based on a shared racial purity.
- No independent organisations or alternative ideologies would be allowed to divide German society
- Much of what the Nazis wanted to achieve in social change was expressed in symbols, rituals and propaganda.
- there was very little real substance to Nazi social policy, certainly in terms of building lasting social structures.
