Life in Nazi Germany Flashcards
What was the Nazi attitude towards how women should look?
Should look ‘natural’
Long skirts
Tied back hair or plaits
Healthy and sporty
What was the Nazi attitude towards women and employment?
- Wanted women to stay at home
- Men wear the main earners
- Disapproved of women in professions such as medicine and law
What was the Nazi attitude towards to women and family?
- Birth rates should increase
- Women should marry and have as many kids as possible
- Life should be devoted to raising family
- Stressed importance of housecraft, needlework and cookery
Who was the Reich Women’s Leader?
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink
What Nazi organisation were all women’s organisations forced to merge with?
German Women’s Enterprise / DFW
How many members did the DFW have?
6 million
What did the DFW do?
Conduct activities which spread Nazi ideologies
ie. Nazi courses on childcare, cooking and sewing
How many women had attended Nazi courses by 1937?
1.7 million
When was the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage introduced?
1933
What was the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage?
- Provide 1,000 mark loans to newly married couples
- Only available if women stopped work and stayed at home
- For each child born by the couple, 250 marks of the loan was written off
When were the divorce laws changed?
1938
What did the change to the divorce laws mean?
If a woman could not or would not have children or had an abortion, this was grounds for divorce by the husband
What was the Mother’s Cross?
An award given to women dependent on the number of children they had:
Bronze - 4
Silver - 6
Gold - 8
What honour did mothers who wore a gold cross get?
A Hitler Youth salute
What was the fountain of life program called?
Lebensborn
When were the lebensborn camps introduced?
1935
What happened at the lebensborn camps?
- provided nurseries and financial aid of women who had children with SS men
- encouraged single women to breed with SS men for gentic purity
How many mothers gave birth due to one lebens born home?
540
Aside from marriage loans, what else did women with children recieve?
Monthly payments
What were the three ‘ks’ that women were told to focus on?
Kinder, Kuche, Kirche
What professions were women banned from in 1933?
Professional posts such as teachers, doctors and civil servants
How many women had given up work by the end of 1934?
360,000
From 1936, what professions were women forbidden to become?
Lawyers, Judges or members of the jury
When were grammar schools for girls banned?
1937
How many less females were in higher education in 1939 compared to 1932?
11,000
How did the Nazis enforce their attitudes towards how women should look?
Through propaganda
How many women were in work in 1933? 1939?
1933 - 5 million
1939 - 7 million
How many marriages were there in 1932? 1934?
1932 - 516,000
1934 - 740,000
Did the birth rate increase between 1932 and 1939?
YES
What were set up and given to women after childbirth?
Recouperation homes
Food parcels and groceries and baby items were given to them
When was it made compulsory for all young germans to join Nazi youth groups?
March 1939
When did Hitler ban almost all non-Nazi youth groups?
1933
What happened to sport facilities in 1936?
They were taken over by the Hitler Youth
What was the Nazi Youth group for boys aged 6-10?
Little Fellows
What was the Nazi Youth group for boys aged 10-14?
German Young People
What was the Nazi Youth group for boys aged 14-18?
Hitler Youth
How did the Hitler Youth indoctrinate the young?
- Members had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler
- Had to attend residential courses were they were told about Nazi ideas
- Members received lessons about things such as ‘German Heroes’, ‘The Evil of the Jews’
- Members had to report anyone disloyal to th Nazis
What physical training did the Hitler Youth receive?
- Regular camping and hiking expeditions
- Sports clubs were run by Hitler Youth
- Hitler Youth ran regional and national sport competitions
How were Hitler Youth members trained to be in the armed forces?
- Pactised skills useful to troops, such as map reading and signalling
- By 1938, 1.2 million boys were being trained in small arms shooting
- separate military divisions for specialist training were set up
What were the specialist divisions in the Hitler Youth?
- Naval Hitler Youth
- Motor Hitler Youth
- Gliding Hitler Youth
- Flying Hitler Youth
What were the Hitler youth groups for girls?
10-14 Young Maidens
14-21 League of German Maidens (BDM)
What were the similarities between the BDM and Hitler Youth?
- Political activities, e.g. lessons, oaths, rallies
- Physical and character building activities, e.g. camping and marching
What training did the BDM receive that was different to the Hitler Youth?
- Cooking, ironing, sewing and other general housewife activities
- importance of racial hygeine; marrying Aryan men and having pure children
What objections did parents have with the Youth groups?
- Time children spent with them
- The trachings of loyalty to the stae and not with the family
Which Nazi was made education minister in 1934?
Bernhard Rust
What law did Rust pass in April 1933?
The ability for the Nazis to sack teachers and headteachers they didn’t approve of
How many Prussian headteachers were sacked by Rust?
180
What organisation was set up for teachers?
Nazi Teachers’ League
How many teachers had attended the Nazi Teachers’ League courses by 1939?
200,000
What were teachers forced to do?
- swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler
- join the Nazi Teachers’ League
How was school life nazified?
- Teachers taught students the Nazi salute
- Children started and ended each lesson saying ‘Heil Hitler’
- Nazi posters and flags decorated classrooms
How much more time was given to PE and sport in the curriculum?
Double the time
From when did all textbooks have to be approved by the Nazis?
1935
What new subject was introduced to the school curriculum?
Race Studies
How were traditional subjects changed in the curriculum?
- Adapted to be more relevant to a Nazi society or vehicles for Nazi ideas
- History was adapted to describe the Weimar Republic as a failure
- Mein Kampf was made a compulsory text
What new parts of the curriculum were introduced for the girls?
Domestic science (e.g.cookery and needlework)
When was the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service passed?
April 1933
What did the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service state?
Civil servants will be dismissed if they are not aryan, qualified or disloyal supporters of the Nazi party
How many people were unemployed when Hitler came to power?
5 million
How many people were unemployed in 1939?
0.3 million
When was RAD set up?
1933
What does RAD stand for?
National Labour Service
When was RAD made compulsory for 6 moths?
1935
How many people were in the National Labour Service in 1935?
422,000
What work did the RAD do?
- provided workers for public works
- e.g. repaired roads, planted trees and drained marshes
Why was the RAD unpopular?
- Organised like an army
- workers wore uniforms, lived in camps
- military drills and parades were conducted
- poor food and conditions
- very low pay
How many men were employed by 1935 with the Autobahn project?
125,000
How much money was spent on public works in 1933? 1938?
- 18 billion marks
- 38 billion marks
What public work schemes were there other than the autobahn project?
Public buildings, bridges, coastal walls and sports facilities
How did the public works projects reduce unemployment?
- Created many jobs in the construction industry
- Better roads and bridges meant quicker and cheaper transport
- Industry and agriculture boosted which created more jobs
What was the government spending on arms in 1933? 1939?
1933 - 3.5 billion marks
1939 - 26 million marks
How many people were employed in the aircraft construction industry by 1935?
72,000
When was military conscription introduced?
1935
How many men were in the armed forces by 1939?
1,360,000
How did the Nazi’s hide unemployment?
- Women and Jews did not show up in figures
- People in RAD did not show up either
- SA, SS and Gestapo were ‘employed’
- 1.3 million armed forces who would need a job in peace time
- Many people were put in prison
- Public Works as too expensive for a long time to maintain
- Changed statistics so those in part time jobs counted as employed
What was affecting unemployment globally?
Wall Street Crash and Great Depression
How much had wages risen by in 1939 from 1933?
20%
How much did the sale of goods rise by in 1939 from 1933?
45%
How much did food prices rise between 1933 and 1939?
20%
How did the length of the workung week change between 1933 and 1939?
Went from 43 hours to 49 hours
What replaced all the banned trade unions in 1933?
The Labour Front (DAF)
What did the DAF set out?
- the rights of workers in the workplace
- maximum length of the working week
- minimum pay levels
Why were workers worse off under the DAF?
- Workers lost the right to negotiate improvements in pay and conditions with their employers
- Working week went up by 6 hours
- DAF could punish workers who disrupted production
What division of the DAF was designed to improve the standard of living of workers?
Strength through Joy (KdF)
How many members did the KdF have by 1936?
35 million
What did the KdF do?
Provided leisure activities for the workers:
- sports events, films, theatre shows
- outings and foreign travel
How many people in the Berlin area took part in the holidays by the KdF?
700,000
How many theatre performance events took place in the Berlin area through the KdF?
21,000
What was the Volkswagen scheme?
Where members of KdF were encouraged to give five marks per week of their wages which would entitle them to a Volkswagen car
Did the Volkswagen scheme work?
- Factories were set up but switched to armaments
- So no one got the car but the government got the money
What was the division of the KdF whoch strove to improve working facilities?
Beauty of Labour (SdA)
What did the SdA do?
- Campaigned to get employers to privde better facilities for workers
- SdA gave employers tax breaks to help with building and decorating costs
How many companies did the Nazi party claim to have improved their facilities?
34,000
What were the disdavantages with the SdA?
Employers expected the workers to do the building and decorating themselves, after work hours at no extra pay. Some were even threatened dismissal if not
What were the main two Nazi racist beliefs?
- Eugenics
- Racial Hygeine
What was the heirachy of races Hitler sent out in Mein Kampf?
- Aryan race is superior - Herrenvolk
- other races were untermenschen
- Gypsies and Jews were the worst untermenschen, later called Lebensunwertes
How were Slavs treated by the Nazis?
- School lessons taught of their inferiority and need to be treated differently
- Nazi propaganda taught they were Untermenschen
- Nazis threatened to invade Slavic coutries for Lebensraum
How were the Gypsies treated by the Nazis?
- After 1933, they were arrested as social nuisances and sent to concentration camps
- From 1936, they were forced to live in special camps
- In 1938, they were banned from travelling in groups
- they were put on a register and tested for racial characteristics, if they failed they would lose citizenship and social benefits
- In 1939, orders given to prepare them for deportation
How many homosexuals were imprisoned in 1934? 1938?
1934 - 766
1938 - 8,000
Homosexuals were often sent to concentration camps, how many died there?
5,000
How were homosexuals medically treated?
Encouraged to be castrated
What law was passed to stop ‘diseased offspring’ in 1933?
The Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring
What did the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring make compulsory?
Serilisation for mentally ill, alcoholic, deformed, epileptic, deaf or blind people
How many people were sterilised in 1939?
4,000
What was the T4 programme?
A programme introduced to kill babies with severe physical or mental disabilities by starvation or lethal overdose
What were Jews banned from in April 1933?
Government jobs and existing civil servants and teachers were sacked
What were Jews banned from in September 1933?
Inheriting Land
What were Jews banned from in May 1935?
the army
What regulations did some local governments put in place against Jews?
- From 1934, Jews were banned from parks and swimming pools
- Separate yellow park benches were set up for Jews
When did the official boycott of Jewish businesses, doctors and lawyers begin?
1st April 1933
When were the Nuremburg laws passed?
September 1935
What were the two Nuremburg laws against Jews?
- Reich Law of Citizenship
- Reich Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour
What was the Reich Law of Citizenship?
- Only those of German blood could be German citizens
- Jews became German ‘subjects’, not citizens
- Jews lost rights of citizenship, rights to vote and the right to hold government office or German passports
What was the Reich Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour?
- Forbade Jews from marrying German citizens
- Forbade sexual relations between Jews and German citizens
From when did Jews have to carry identity cards?
July 1938
When did Jews have to register all their possessions, making it easier to confiscate them?
March 1938
What happened on the 7th November 1938?
Polish Jew from Hanover, Herschel Grynszpan, shot a German in the German embassy in Paris
What did Goebbel’s order in response to the shooting of Ernst vom Rath?
- the local papers of Hanover to print articles condemning the Paris shooting
- SA, SS and Gestapo attack local synagogues and houses of local Jew
How did Hitler and Goebbels respond to Rath’s death on the 9th November 1938?
- Decided to turn the events in Hannover nationwide
- Nazi leaders were encouraged to arrange attacks on Jews
- Police were told not to prevent any violence towards Jews
- SS were instructed to arrest as many Jews as possible
How many homes, shops and synagogues were destroyed during Kristallnacht according to offical reports?
814 shops
171 homes
191 synagogues
How many jews were killed in Kristallnacht?
100
What were the consequences for the Jews after Kristallnacht?
- Blamed for events
- Fined 1 billion marks to pay for damage
- By 12th November, 20,000 Jews had been sent to concentration camps
What was set up in January 1939 to prepare Jews for deportation?
The Reich Office for Jewish Emmigration
How many gypsies and Jews had been killed by the end of WW2?
6 million Jews
200,000 Gypsies
