Nazi Germany

Question 1

When Hitler formed a coalition with Hindenburg what were his 2 limitations ?

Answer 1

Nazis did not hold the majority of seats in the Reichstag and so could not make any legal changes to the Weimar Constitution to dismantle the democratic system. Secondly, as chancellor, Hitler could always simply be dismissed by Hindenburg should he prove to be troublesome.

Question 2

Who did Hitler appoint to control the media coverage for the Nazi campaign ?

Answer 2

Joseph Goebbels

Question 3

How did Hitler use violence to win majority votes in the elections ?

Answer 3

Street violence of the SA against the opposition (69 people were killed during the election) the Nazis managed to gain a significant percentage of the votes.
The party continued to kidnap, harass and murder its main political opposition. When Hitler held a grand
ceremony in which he symbolically allied the Nazi Party with the forces of the old German Empire, enough members of the Reichstag had been won over or bullied in to submission to allow the Nazis to gain the majority

Question 4

What was the Enabling Act ?

Answer 4

It was a Weimar Constitution amendment that gave Chancellor Adolf Hitler the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag on 23rd March 1933.

Question 5

How did Hitler remove political threat towards the Nazi party ?

Answer 5

By forcibly disbanding or assimilating any remaining political forces that had not yet been destroyed or had disbanded themselves.

Question 6

What was the ‘Coordination’ policy ?

Answer 6

Nazi Party took control over almost all aspects of public service such as schools, police forces and
postal services. In this way Hitler was able to ‘Nazify’ Germany, moulding national identity and party loyalty into one feeling of pro-Nazi pro-Germany pride. Any political competition for Hitler could now only come from within the party itself

Question 7

Who composed of the SA ?

Answer 7

They were made up mostly of workingclass men, unemployed or poor, and as such were drawn in by the
socialist aspects of Nazism

Question 8

Why did Hitler and the German army not like the SA anymore ?

Answer 8

• Ernst Röhm, who had been increasingly disobedient
• Hitler was unsure whether a man such as Röhm might prove too much of a power within the party, especially should he take command of the German army
• the army considered them to be unprofessional and ill-disciplined thugs.

When Hitler found out Hindenburg hasn’t got long to live he decided the pick the German army over the SA.

Question 9

How did Hitler remove the SA organisation ?

Answer 9

The Night of the Long Knives - To deal with the threat posed by the SA Hitler hired the SS, another smaller Nazi paramilitary group, to orchestrate the mass execution of Röhm and the leading members of the SA. On the night of the 30th June 1934 over 200 members of the SA were assassinated by the SS, completely wiping them out as a political power within the party.

Question 10

What were the responsibility’s of the SS and who was appointed their leader ?

Answer 10

Henrich Himmler was appointed leader of the SS by Adolf Hitler. From 1934–1939 the SS were responsible for policing and gathering intelligence in Germany and were the primary instruments in the harassment and persecution of Jews in the early years of Nazi rule. SS took on more and more power and responsibility, being granted extreme authority to ensure the security of the Nazi regime, including the horrific extermination of those considered sub-humans such as Jews, Poles and Gypsies, during the war. By 1944, such was the power of the SS that its military wing the Waffen-SS
actually rivalled the might of the regular German army

Question 11

What did the idea of Aryanism mean ?

Answer 11

According to the Nazi government the German, or Nordic, people were the supreme master race of humanity. The preservation of their purity was of primary concern, and propaganda fliers and posters featured the blond-haired, blue eyed, athletic archetype of a pure Aryan male

Question 12

What was the Holocaust ?

Answer 12

From 1941–1945 over six million Jewish people were systematically exterminated by the SS in a mass genocide known as the Holocaust. Jewish people
across occupied Europe were seized and transported to concentration camps, where they were either worked or starved to death or systematically executed in gas chambers. By the time the war was over a staggering two-thirds of all European Jews had been killed.

Question 13

What was the Nazi’s main desire ?

Answer 13

Wartime Expansion - The Nazi government of Germany had at its heart the desire to restore national pride and avenge the embarrassment of the defeat in the First World War. Its continually aggressive foreign policy led it to annex, invade and envelop surrounding European countries, thereby expanding the Nazi state.

Question 14

Which invasion caused the outbreak of WW2 ?

Answer 14

Invasion of Poland

Question 15

What were some of the countries that Germany had occupied during the years 1938-42 ?

Answer 15

(p) = partially occupied

Austria - 1938
Sudetenland - 1938
Czechoslovakia - 1939
Lithuania (p) - 1939
Slovakia - 1939
Poland - 1939
Denmark - 1940
Norway - 1940
Belgium - 1940
Netherlands - 1940
Luxembourg - 1940
France - 1940
Greece - 1941
Yugoslavia - 1941
Soviet Union (p) - 1941
Egypt (p) - 1942

Question 16

How did the use of propaganda gain Hitler support ?

Answer 16

These political advertisements were targeted at the economic and social issues desired by the people, each accordingly tailored towards what different social classes or geographical regions would likely want to hear. At the same time modern technology was used to address the entire nation via radio and film. The government put extensive effort into ensuring that inexpensive radio sets were available to the public and by 1939 a staggering 70% of German homes had a radio, the highest figure in the world.

Question 17

How was Goebbels able to control propaganda threw newspapers when there was around 4,700 different papers and many being privately owned ?

Answer 17

Many of these were bought out (under heavy pressure) by the Nazi Party and were merged into one news conglomerate called the DNB (German News Agency), and this allowed Goebbels to spread propaganda through a large chunk of the German press. The remaining independent newspapers were brought into line by the Editor’s Law of October 1933 which placed ultimate responsibility on the editor of a paper to meet the requirements of the minister of propaganda or face
arrest.

Question 18

Which books did the Nazi’s burn and why ?

Answer 18

Any books by classical, liberal, anarchist, communist, pacifist, socialist, left-wing or Jewish authors were burned, symbolising the rejection of ‘decadence and moral corruption’, favoring instead the ‘decency and morality’ more befitting the Aryan race.

Question 19

Who resisted the Nazi regime and what was the outcome ?

Answer 19

Students - there were yet some students that did not take part in the mass book burning. The ‘White Rose Group’ was made up of a handful of students from the
University of Munich who published and distributed leaflets condemning Hitler and the atrocities that some of the students had seen while serving as medical volunteers in Russia. The campaign ran for a year before the Gestapo (the secret police branch of the SS) arrested and beheaded its main members.

Communists - after the mysterious incident of the Reichstag fire, the Nazis criminalised communism and arrested the majority of known communists. After this, communists remained only in small underground resistance groups, intent on distributing pamphlets and causing dissent.

The army - The army had chosen to support the Nazi Party for their nationalist, authoritarian anti-Weimar agendas. They had tied themselves politically to the party by condoning the Night of the Long Knives. However, the realities of a Nazi government was not
the return to the old empire that the conservative army officers had hoped for and resentment began to grow among the more oldstyled imperialist officers. There had been some very early plots to remove Hitler, but these had been undermined by Britain who had refused to support the plots due to their policy of appeasing Hitler’s Germany. It was not until July 1944, after the terrible defeats at Stalingrad, that a bomb plot was agreed upon to attempt to assassinate Hitler. Though planned extensively, the plot failed as the bomb, (disguised within a suitcase) was cleared away from Hitler minutes before it exploded. As a result Hitler
emerged practically unhurt from the wreckage of the destroyed meeting room and the men responsible
were soon rounded up and shot by the SS.