Nazi Germany 1933-1939

Question 1

Explain the events surrounding the Reichstag fire

Answer 1

To achieve dictatorship Hitler still had to deal with the president, the Reichstag and the army. In addition there might be opposition from other parties, Germany’s state governments or trade unions.

Question 2

Nazi consolidation of power

March 1933 - January 1934

Answer 2

To achieve dictatorship Hitler still had to deal with the president, the Reichstag and the army. Possibly also opposition from other parties, Germany’s state governments or trade unions.

1. The Reichstag fire
   To gain an overall majority in the Reichstag Hitler called fresh elections for 5th March 1933. If he wanted to achieve a majority he had to stop people voting for the SPD and KPD therefore:

• in early February a new law forbade people from criticising Hitler and his govt
• In the state of Prussia (66% of Germany), leading Nazi Hermann Göring was minister of the interior. He enrolled the SA into the police and used them to disrupt other parties election campaigns.
• the burning of the Reichstag building on 27 February was blamed on the communists as Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist was captured at the scene.

Although many people were suspicious the Nazis were involved, it gave Hitler the chance to damage the KPDs campaign and to persuade Hindenburg to the decree for the protection of people and state. This law gave the govt the power to suspend many of Weimar’s civil rights. The govt proceeded to intern opponents, disrupt other parties election campaigns and intimidate left-wing voters.

The Nazis one 288 seats in the election - still not an overall majority. The KPD one 81 seats while the SPD one 120. With the support of the 52 nationalist party deputies the Nazis could now count just over 50% of Reichstag votes.

2. Enabling act
   Hitler then moved to amend the constitution to allow the govt to pass laws without the reichstags approval for a period of four years. Such a change required two thirds of the Reichstag members present.

To achieve this majority Hitler simply made sure most opponents weren’t there to vote against the measure. He used the decree for the protection of people and state to ban the KPD. With the KPD unable to vote Hitler just needed the support of the Catholic centre party to achieve the 66 percent of votes needed. This was achieved by an agreement to cancel the decree for the protection of people and state and an agreement to protect the Catholic Churches rights. When it came to the vote it was passed by 441 votes to 94. Only the social democrats opposed the measure.

3. Gleichschaltung
   Within months Hitler had eliminated most of the remaining political opposition in Germany as the govt implemented gleichschaltung - coordination of all aspects of life to fit in with Nazi ideals:
   - in late March all state parliaments were closed down and then reestablished with Nazi majorities
   - in April 1933 Jews and other political enemies were removed from jobs in the legal profession and civil service. At the same time key positions within Germans state govts were taken over by Nazis.
   - in May all trade unions were outlawed and replaced by a Nazi Union, the DAF (German labour front)
   - in July Germany became a one-party state. However by this stage the social democrats had already been outlawed while the centre party had dissolved itself.
   - in December 1933 new Reichstag elections were held. This time the Nazis won 92% of the vote
   - in January 1934 Hitler introduced the law for the reconstruction of the state. This abolished all of Germany’s state govts apart from Prussia’s which was to be run by Herman Göring.

Question 3

Nazi consolidation of power

1934

Answer 3

1. Divisions within
   - Hitler’s position was still under threat; however now the danger came from the 2-million strong SA commanded for the last two years by Ernst Röhm.
   Röhm was one of the more left wing members of the Nazi party. He believed Hitler’s takeover would be followed by a second revolution in which the power of Germany’s economic old guard and the army would be crushed and the SA would become Germany’s new army. Röhm now wanted this second revolution to start.
   Röhm’s plans worried the army. This concerned Hitler as:
   - the army could still stop his achievement of dictatorship
   - he needed the army to implement his foreign policy.

Röhm was also opposed by other leading Nazis such as Heinrich Himmler and Göring. They believed he had become far too big for his boots and tried to convince Hitler that Röhm was disloyal and that aspects of his private life - Röhm was a homosexual - were inappropriate for a leading Nazi.

2. The night of the long knives
   Hitler finally acted on the night of 30 June 1934, an event that became known as the night of the Long knives. Anyone suspected of preventing his achievement of dictatorship was executed. Key SA leaders including Röhm were eliminated. So too were a number of earlier rivals such as Gustav von Kahr and General von Schleicher.
   It is believed around 100 people were killed. The Nazis justified their actions by claiming they had prevented an SA putsch. On 3 June the Reichstag passed a law making the actions taken on the night of the long knives legal.
3. Führer
   Hindenburg was now the only person standing in the way of Hitlers dictatorship but he died on 2 August 1934. A day earlier a new law had been passed which merged together the jobs of president and chancellor and replaced them with the all powerful position of Führer and reich chancellor.
   The army now demonstrated their gratitude for the eradication of the SA threat by swearing an oath of personal loyalty to the Führer, previously soldiers had promised their loyalty to the constitution.
   Shortly after the German people were asked to vote in a plebiscite to indicate their approval for Hitler’s new position. Almost 90% (43 million) of those who voted agreed with the actions taken.

Question 4

Nazi economic policy: unions and unemployment

Answer 4

1. Destroying the unions
   Hitler was afraid the trade unions could interfere with his plans and so in May 1933 they were outlawed and strikes were declared illegal.
   Unions were replaced by the German labour front (DAF) led by dr Robert Ley. Within two years all workers - over 20 million people were members. A branch of the DAF, the beauty of labour was set up to improve working conditions.
   The DAF was meant to represent workers in discussions with employers. However in reality it tended to side with employers and workers found their freedoms restricted e.g ability to move jobs and their working hours increased. On a positive note wages improved a little and prices and rents were strictly controlled by the state.
2. Free time
   The Nazis also wanted workers to be happy outside the workplace. Therefore strength through joy (KDF) was established in November 1933 to improve workers free time. The KDF led by Ley provided cheap holidays and organised a broad range of sporting activities. Workers were also given a chance to pay into a savings scheme to own a car, the Volkswagen (peoples car). However no cars had been distributed when the war started till 1939.
3. Unemployment
   The Nazis vote had increased partly due to their promises to get Germans back to work. At first glance it would seem that they were largely successful with only 300,000 Germans listed as unemployed by 1939. This was achieved in a number of ways:
4. The scale of existing public work schemes was increased with the establishment of the national labour service RAD which brought together similar schemes begun by earlier govts - built schools, hospitals and motorways. Six months membership became compulsory for all men aged 18-25 in 1935
5. Many people especially professional women and Jews were forced from the workplace and their jobs then given to the unemployed. Neither of these groups were counted as unemployed.
6. The introduction of conscription in 1935 helped reduce unemployment levels. In 1933 there were 100,000 in the army. By 1939 there were 1.4 million.
7. As Germany prepared for war, thousands of jobs were created in the armament and associated industries e.g steel and coal. Likewise the drive for autarky led to the creation of new industries focused on creating synthetic replacements for raw materials.

Question 5

Nazi economic policy: stability and autarky

Answer 5

1. New plan
   In May 1933 respected economist dr Hjalmar Schacht became president of the reichsbank. Within a year he became minister of economics. Schacht’s 1934 new plan - introduced to deal with trade deficit - oversaw the revitalisation of the economy by:
   - introducing massive cuts to welfare spending
   - imposing limits in imports
   - implementing a series of trade agreements with countries that ensured that Germany was supplied with vital raw materials in return for goods manufactured in Germany
   - introduced targeted govt spending on key industries.

The German economy recovered within two years; however this was not enough to ensure Schact’s survival. By 1936 Hitler was pressurising him to increase spending on military resources. Schacht was unwilling to do this as he feared it would damage the recovery. As a result he was increasingly ignored by Hitler and a year later he resigned.

2. Four year plan
   Despite his total lack of economic expertise, Herman Göring was appointed to create an economy that was ready for war. In 1936 he introduced the four year plan. It’s aim was to ensure Germany had become an autarky in advance of any future conflict through:
   - constructing new factories
   - placing industries under strict govt control
   - cutting the amount of goods imported
   - setting higher targets for the production of materials such as oil, rubber and steel
   - encouraging industries to develop ersatz - synthetic substitutes for raw materials particularly rubber and oil
   - imposing targets for production of foodstuffs. The Reich food estate, which all farmers had to join, provided strict rules on what and how much should be produced.

However by 1939 Germany was still imported over 1/3 of the natural resources it needed. It had become clear that the only way to make its economy self sufficient would be to conquer other countries to gain access to their natural resources.

Question 6

Hitler in control

Answer 6

To ensure the loyalty of all Germans to the state and the Führer, the Nazis sought the creation of Volksgemeinschaft (peoples community). To support the Führer a control system was established across the country:

• leading Nazis
• provincial leaders
• regional leaders
• local group leaders
• cell leaders
• local leaders

While this system helped ensure the party was aware of the mood, thought and behaviour of the population establishing total control required even greater interference. There was no group of institution within Germany that the Nazi govt did not try to control.

Question 7

Women

Answer 7

For the Nazis, women’s role was summed up by the three K’s, Kinder, kirche und Küche (children, church and cooking). A number of strategies were implemented to achieve this:

• women were encouraged to dress in a traditional German manner and not to wear makeup
• some woman particularly those married or in the professions such as medicine and law were forced from the workplace
• every newly-married couple was given a loan of 1,000 marks and 25% of this was written off for every child born. The law for encouragement of marriage of June 1933 encouraged women to marry and have large families
• an award called the motherhood cross was created to encourage women to have as many children as possible. These women were also to benefit from lower taxation and increased benefits.
• contraception and abortion became much harder to obtain
• dieting and smoking were discouraged in case they interfered with pregnancy and childbirth
• divorce to end childless marriages was made easier to obtain
• unmarried mothers were encouraged to live in homes (lebensborn - spring of life) were Aryan SS men could impregnate them.

At the same time the Nazis were looking for the birth rate to improve only if it resulted in healthy Aryan offspring. The 1935 marriage law demanded evidence of racial purity and health before marriages could go ahead. Women deemed unfit mothers or likely to produce unhealthy children faced sterilisation. By 1939 an estimated 350,000 women had been sterilised.
These policies had mixed results:
- birth rate had increased by 1939 but remained lower than during the golden twenties
- the numbers getting married increased at first but levelled odd by 1935
- many women kept their jobs because of a lack of replacement workers although numbers of professional women did go down.
- the number of women in jobs actually rose in the later 1930s as the drive for rearmament and autarky took off.

Question 8

Youth

Answer 8

1. Inside school
   The Nazis saw indoctrination of the youth with their ideas as the key to their future control of Germany. To this end they set about influencing children inside and outside of school.
   Inside school the Nazis sought to train students to accept that ‘individuals must be willing and ready to sacrifice themselves for nation and Führer’ therefore they:
   - dismissed Jewish teachers and those they regarded as unreliable
   - encouraged teachers to join the national socialist teachers league. Within 6 years all but 3% had joined.
   - nazified curriculum to reflect the Importance of subjects such as history, biology, geography and p.e. (Which was allowed to take up 15% of their timetable)
   - prepared boys for life in the military and girls for their role as mothers
   - established special schools - Adolf Hitler schools - to teach Germany’s future leaders. High flying boys went to castles of order.
2. Free time
   The Hitler youth movement controlled the activities of young people outside the classroom. Led by Baldur von Schirach, membership became compulsory for certain ages in 1936 and for most others by 1939. By that stage there was more than 7 million members. E.g Hitlers youth for boys and league of German girls.

The Nazi youth policies had mixed results. Most young people did not oppose them and would have been influenced by the Nazi policies both inside and outside the classroom. However the quality and breadth of education suffered badly with traditional subjects losing out.
A significant minority ( approx 1 million) avoided joining the Nazi youth movements. Some of these even established rival youth groups. The two most notable were the edelweiss pirates and the swing youth.

Question 9

Religion

Answer 9

1. Catholicism
   In July 1933 a concordat was signed with the Catholic Church. The church agreed not to involve itself in politics and in return it was permitted to continue to run its own schools and youth activities. By 1936 some of the terms - particularly those relating to youth groups - were being ignored. In 1937 Pope Pius XI responded by condemning the Nazi regime and later some German church leaders such as Bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster spoke out strongly and successfully against Nazi policies such as euthanasia of the mentally ill.
2. Lutheranism
   The Lutheran church was divided in its attitude to nazism. Pro-Nazi Lutherans were known as German Christians. They symbol was a cross with the swastika at its centre while their version of the bible was altered to ensure many references to the Jews was omitted. They were led by Ludwig Müller who became the first Reich bishop in July 1933. In 1934 those Lutherans who disagreed with nazism set up the confessional church. One of their leaders was pastor Martin Niemöller who was arrested by Nazis in 1937 and sent to Dachau concentration camp.
3. The Nazi church
   The Nazis created their own church, the German faith movement. It’s beliefs owed much more to pagan values (such as sun worship) than to the ideas of Christianity and attracted few members.
   Overall the Nazis were unsuccessful in their aims of undermining the power of Germany’s churches; however they were able to reduce their influence. Although a number of individual clerics spoke out against aspects of the regime, by and large the churches remained more concerned about ensuring their survival.

Question 10

The police state

Answer 10

1. Protective custody 
The decree for the protection of people and state allowed for opponents to be arrested and placed in 'protective custody' in concentration camps, the first of which was established at Dachau in March 1933. By mid-1934 these camps were being run the the SS's death head units. While most early inmates tended to be political prisoners before long other groups suffered internment including;
- criminals 
- gypsies 
- tramps
- the work shy 
- the anti social 
- homosexuals 
- Jews 
All of these prisoners had to endure extremely harsh conditions in the concentration camps 

2. Security forces
   Following the night of the long knives, Himmler’s SS took over responsibility for party security from the SA. Along with the gestapo and SD - both branches of the SS, the SS removed any real or potential opponents of the state. Historians argue the SS became so powerful that it became ‘a state within a state’.
   The Gestapo - the secret police state, also led by Himmler, arrested opponents known as ‘enemies of state’. Much of the information it worked on came from ordinary Germans denouncing their fellow countrymen. The SD was the intelligence arm of the SS; headed by Himmler’s protégé Reinhard Heydrich, it monitored the security of the Reich.
3. Judiciary
   The judicial system came under state control. The aim was to ensure that the legal system did not protect those that the state wanted to punish. Special People’s courts were established in 1934 to judge those accused of crimes against the state. It is estimated that up to 1939 the judicial system sentenced nearly a quarter of a million Germans found guilty of political crimes to more than 600,000 years in prison.
   Overall the police state was very successful although individuals might have grumbled about aspects of the Nazi state, in general there was no organised opposition until the Second World War.

Question 11

Propaganda

Answer 11

1. Propaganda was led by Dr Joseph Goebbels the Minster for popular enlightenment and propaganda. To help him in this task, Goebbels established the Reich chamber of culture. This was subdivided into six sections, one for each major propaganda method. One of the most impressive propaganda methods the Nazis used were the annual Nuremberg rallies attended by as many as 500,000 people. Light, sound and costume were used to create mesmeric atmosphere. Other smaller scale rallies were held in other parts of Germany throughout the year. The high point of Nazi propaganda efforts probably came with the spectacle of the 1936 Berlin olympics.
2. Controlling the media
   This was a key aim achieved in a variety of ways:
   - most newspapers were bought up by Eher Verlag, the Nazi publishers. By 1939 the Nazis owned 69% of newspaper titles in circulation.
   - the editors law held editors responsible for the content of their newspapers
   - only journalists approved by the govt could work in the media
   - newspapers that printed stories the regime disapproved of were shut down
   - editors went to a daily propaganda ministry briefing to be told what to print
   - the Nazis took control of all radio stations
   - people were encouraged to buy cheap radio stations made by the reich radio company. These ‘people’s receivers’ could only pick up Nazi broadcasts. By 1939 70% of households owned one, the highest percentage of radio ownership for any country in the world
   - loudspeakers were erected in public places and in workplaces
3. Censorship
   The propaganda ministry also controlled censorship. It censored cinema. Theatre, music and literature
   - 20,000 books were symbolically burned in Berlin in May 1933
   - the 1934 law against malicious gossip outlawed anti-Nazi stories and jokes
   - exhibitions of degenerate art were organised showing people the ‘distorted’ work of modern artists such as George Grosz and Otto Dix. Such art was unfavourably compared to with the realism of Nazi art.
   - unacceptable music such as jazz was condemned
   - the writings of 2500 authors were banned.
   - propaganda films such as the eternal Jew were produced to portray the Jewish race in an unflattering way.
   - listening to foreign radio broadcasts was also made illegal

Nazi propaganda probably helped reinforce existing beliefs but was less successful at getting people to accept new ideas. Censorship ensured that the quality of much of Germany’s culture was damaged. Only in the area of cinema was high-qualify work produced particularly by Leni Riefenstahl.

Question 12

Antisemitism and the persecution of minorities

Answer 12

1.Within Germany there was a belief that the countries relatively small numbers of Jews were more influential than they should have been. Hitler and the Nazis used propaganda to tell Germans that Jews were to blame for many of Germany’s problems.

2. Allied to this were the Nazis master race theories - the belief in the existence of an aryan race, a master race of human beings who were superior to and who would eventually overcome all other races including the Jews.
   It wasn’t only the Jews however that the Nazis saw as untermenschen. They also viewed the groups listed as enemies of state as well as mentally ill and physically disabled, prostitutes, alcoholics, jehovah’s witnesses and other minority groups as lesser beings. They enacted policies designed to prevent them from reproducing, to remove them from society or to eliminate them altogether.

However the Nazis reserved greatest hatred for Jews and so once in power, Hitler waster no time putting his anti-semitism in operation:
- April 1933: boycott of Jewish shops introduced
- September 1933: Jews banned from govt jobs
- October 1933: Jews banned from key media jobs
- September 1935: Nuremberg laws included two main elements; 1. Jews deprived of political and economic rights (reich citizenship law) 2. It was illegal for Jews and aryans to marry or engage in sexual relations outside marriage (law for protection of German blood and German honour)
- May 1935: Jews banned from joining army
- August 1936: persecution of Jews eased of during 1936 Berlin olympics
- January 1937: Jews banned from key professions e.g teaching, accountancy and dentistry
- April 1938: Jews ordered to register all wealth and property
- June 1938: Jews to register all businesses
- July/August 1938: Jews had to carry identity cards
- September 1938: Jews banned from all legal practises
- October 1938: Jews passports stamped with J. Jews forced to use names Israel for men and Sarah for women.
- November 1938: murder of Nazi diplomat by a Jew in Paris on 7 Nov led to massive outbreak of anti-Jewish persecution known as Kristallnacht. More than 400 synagogues and 7500 shops destroyed. 91 Jews killed and over following months 20,000 sent to concentration camps. Nazis fined Jews 1 billion marks for the damage caused on kristallnacht. They also had to clean up the streets in the aftermath of the attacks.
November 1938: remaining Jewish businesses confiscated or closed down
November 1938: Jews not allowed to attend German schools
January 1939: Jews encourage to emigrate from Germany
January 1939: Hitler spoke of future annihilation of Jews
July 1939: Jews forbidden from holding govt jobs