Hitler: Propaganda and Laws

Question 1

Propaganda

Answer 1

• Radios in 70% of homes by 1939
• Public loudspeakers, broadcast “national monuments”
• Social ritual ‘Heil Hiter’ and salute
• 14.5k employees under Goebbels

Question 2

Hitler Myth

Answer 2

• Uncompromising political genius, a man of the people, simple life
• Late 30s, 90% admired Hitler(?)
• I. Kershaw “Hitler’s huge platform of popularity made his own power position even more unassailable.”

Question 3

Measures against Jews April 1933

Answer 3

• Boycott of businesses called off due to disapproval
• ‘Law of the Restitution of the Professional Civil Service’, barred Jews from being civil servants
  -Law Against Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities’, burned books and segregated Jews

Question 4

The Nuremberg Laws 1935

Answer 4

• ‘Reich CItizenship Law’, reduced to 2nd class citizens, lost civil and political rights, excluded from jobs, schools and public society
• ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’, can’t marry Aryans, ‘race defilement and ‘Slave to the Jews’, women given middle name Sarah, men Isreal, kids banned from schools, they could still run shops

Question 5

Kristallnacht

Answer 5

• November 1938
• Largest outburst of violence against the Jews
• Destroyed 7k businesses and 267 synagogues
• Many emigrate, high taxes and some countries won’t take them.
• Many opposed but didn’t resist
• “the war offered the opportunity and created the context of brutalization in which (Hitler’s key ideological issues) could… take genocidal shape” I. Kershaw

Question 6

Economic Aims (4 year plan)

Answer 6

1. Armed forces must be operational in 4yrs
2. Economy must be fit for war within 4yrs… development of our resources cannot be too large, nor its pace too swift

Question 7

3 Aims

Answer 7

1. Reduce unemployment
2. Economy for Lebensraum
3. Autarky/Self-sufficiency for war

Question 8

Schacht (economic minister)

Answer 8

• Respected internationally
• Reassured things would be OK under Hitler
• Deficit financing adopted to boost economy

Question 9

Public Works

Answer 9

• ‘Battle for work’
• Increased expenditure and investments and work schemes
• Dramatic increase in jobs
• 1936 Reich Labour Service
• Men forced to 6 months of labour in farming or construction
• Rearmament is also happening