Nazi : social issues

Question 1

How did the Nazis view women?

Answer 1

Nazi adopted Kinder, Küche, Kirche slogan but stressed the idea of women producing the right Aryan children
-said that women were equal to men but physically different and saw family units as too individualistic

Question 2

What was the idea of Eugenics?

Answer 2

Nazis believed ideas about eugenics that could encourage ‘pure’ germans to breed and passed laws to stop the wrong types of breeding
e.g. 31 Dec 1931: SS marriage order states members of SS can only marry Aryan women
-Eugenics= controlling reproduction means healthier population

Question 3

What law in 1935 was put in place to prevent ‘impure breeding’?

Answer 3

18th Oct 1935: Law for the protection of Hereditary Health of German people (certificate required to prove neither couple is genetically or racially impure

Question 4

What benefits were given to married couples?

Answer 4

marriage loans to encourage them to marry

Help with school fees and transport fares

‘Suitable’ poor families were given RM 100 per child

Lebensborn programme: aimed to produce healthy Aryan children as selected SS men were encouraged to mate with as many different ‘racially pure’ women as possible

Question 5

Laws in 1933 that removed so called ‘impure people’ from breeding?

Answer 5

14th July: Law for prevention of Offspring with Hereditary disease
- was possible to sterilise people who had mental and physical disabilities
- extended to women who had several sexual partners and illegitimate children + female alcoholics

Question 6

Impact of Nazi policies on women

Answer 6

large number of women lost their jobs; single women still found work, usually domestic, shop work (excluded from highest levels of work)
–> skilled professionals were expected to work in lower sectors

Women who were considered to be racially suitable and wanted to be wives were given higher level of health care and higher status
- mother of dead soldiers were honoured on occasions like mother day

Question 7

Impact of WW2 on women

Answer 7

Women were urged to join war work + more childcare was provided ( NSV had 31 K kindergardens and creches by end of 1942)
- total no of women in workforce went up by 27% 1933-1939 which was just 2% percent between 1939-1944

Question 8

How did Nazis view children in terms of the future of the empire?

Answer 8

valuable resource to be educated to become good nazis
- state school structures stayed in place but private primary school education was abolished
-free paying secondary and unis stayed
- heavy emphasis on physical education

Question 9

What was the NSLB?

Answer 9

National socialist Teachers league in April 1929
- Jan 1933 6k members + undesirable teachers were purged by law of April 1933
24th sept 1935: decree gave nazis control over appointments
1937: impossible to get job unless not in union (97% joined)

–> ran courses to absorb ideas that they were expected to teach (teaching was not a very popular profession)

Question 10

What was the most important role of teachers and the school system?

Answer 10

to teach loyalty to Hitler and Germany/ physical fitness/ racial purity
- 1935: stream of central directives that covered all uears in education and all subjects
- 15% of curriculum was fitness

Question 11

How were children indoctrinated in school?

Answer 11

• History focused on creating Volksgemeinschaft (sense of nationhood)
  -censored textbooks with some being burnt and other simply mutiliated
• printed booklets that focused on new areas like racial purity, teaching aryans as a superior race
  –> slavs being inferior and Jews being the source of all problems

Question 12

Hitler youth movements outside of school

Answer 12

Boys:
Pimpfen (Little folk) till 6
Jungvolk (Youngsters) at 10
Hitler Jungend (Hitler youth) 14-18

Girls:
Jungmadel (Young girls) at 10
Bund Deutsches Madel ( BDM) aged 14 +)
Glaube und Schöneit (fAITH AND beauty) 17-20

Question 13

Nazi Cultural censoring

Answer 13

1933 May 10th Nazi organised the mass burning of around 25K books that were unsound e.g. Jewish books

Question 14

What was the RKK?

Answer 14

Reichskulturkammer: set up by Joseph gOEBBELS TO CONTROL ALL OF CREATIVE ARTS, STOPPING CULTURE BEING ‘ELITIST’ AND BRINGING IT TO EVERYONE
- Nazis idealised simple rural life and healthy farmers

Question 15

How were people involved in culture through Strength through Joy

Answer 15

trips to theatres, Opera and art galleries/ museums
to educate people on strong, healthy and physically perfect Aryans

Question 16

How was sport used in Nazi culture

Answer 16

to produce healthy nation:
- 1936 olympics where germany won 89 medals 33 gold ones

Question 17

Nazi architecture as culture?

Answer 17

huge building projects ( useful in creating work + impresion of Third Reich being powerful and established
- huge scale public buildings with enormous nazi flags

Question 18

Nazi racial policies

Answer 18

Jan 1st 1934: Compulsory sterilisation programme for anyone who was reported unfit to breed (initially only hereditary but extended to Jewish, Romas and Gypsies
-400K sterilised from 1934-1945

Question 19

How did Nazis make Germany ‘Jew-free’

Answer 19

Programme started anti-semitic and with propaganda, they began o separate Jewish people from the community
- Legal separation: removing Jewish from jobs and separating them from non-Jew public areas
- Bans and Boycotts: 1st April 1933 national boycott of Jewish shops and businesses (SA members stood outside preventing people from entering)

April 1933: series of laws restricted no of Jewish uni students, banned jews from athletic and sporting groups

Question 20

Nuremberg race laws of 1935

Answer 20

-anyone who 3-4 Jewish grandparents was jewish
- many different organisations began to exclude Jewish people from their activities
- Regional govt had their own anti-semitic laws: yellow star placed outside any Jewish owned shops= encouraged random violence
-Idea of separation became worse ( spearate benches, restaurants, concerts and swimming pools)

Question 21

What was Kristallnacht

Answer 21

first large scale organized act of violence against Jews and synagogues
9th Nov 1938: over 260 synagogues burnt and over 20K jews arrested and taken to conc camps
- nazi language revolving around Jewish people became increasingly derogatory (Stüke= factory goods)

Question 22

What was the flight tax on Jewish people?

Answer 22

Nazis first encouraged Jewish peopel to leave and took a ‘flight tax’ of 30-50% of wealth
1933-1945: over 450K emigrated

11March 1938: Austria liberated and germany imposed same restrictions on 185K Austrian Jews (flight tax was every bit of wealth but a suitcase)

Question 23

WW2 and the change on racial policy

Answer 23

Special SS units (einsatzgruppen): aimed to root out polish political and resistance leaders + killed Jews in increasing numbers
By 1941 when Nazi invaded USSR, mass murder was common as they made jews dig their own graves and shot them

2 of 6 million Jews killed were einsatzgruppen victims

Question 24

Nazi racial policy: the ghettos

Answer 24

First ghetto set up in 1939 Oct: deliberately bad & overcrowded + minimum food (water and electricity was only available for a few hours a day)
- Strength through joy’ programme ran bus trips through GHETTOS to see how dirty and depraved of a race the Jewish were

Question 25

Nazis: concentration camps

Answer 25

concentration camps were full of a variety of groups seen as undesirable
- everyone had to wear a patch representing their crime
- appalling conditions and barely any food (death by starvation, dysentery or other mistreatment)

Final solution: decided at conference on 20th Jan 1942 death camps were set up where jewish people would be gassed