The Nazi Dictatorship-Social Policies

Question 1

What were the aims of Nazi education policies?

Answer 1

• No independent organisation between State and the individual- individuals should have no space where they can fix or act independently in order to achieve ‘Volksgemeinschaft’
• Stereotypical gender roles e.g. men need to fight women need to breeding

Question 2

How did the Nazis reform and establish control over schools?

Answer 2

• Under law of Re-establishment of Professional Civil Service (1933) number of teachers dismissed due to being Jewish or political unreliability
• Vetting textbooks undertaken by local Nazi committees after 1933. From 1935, central directives issued by Ministry of Education covering what could be taught and by 1938 rules covered every school year and most subjects
• Changed curriculum and so Biology focused on race and heredity, Geography used to develop awareness of concepts of Lebensraum (living space) and German racial superiority

Question 3

How did the Nazis reform and establish control over universities?

Answer 3

• Access to higher education was strictly rationed; women restricted to 10% of available uni places while Jews restricted to 1.5%
• Under Law for re-establishment of Professional a Civil Service, about 1200 uni staff dismissed on racial or political grounds amounting to 15% of total
• Students also forced to do four months’ labour service and two months in SA camp

Question 4

When were the Hitler Youth created and how did it gain popularity?

Answer 4

It was created in 1926 however when the Nazis came to power in 1933, all other youth organisations were banned apart Catholic youth organisations which led it to flourish

Question 5

How did the Hitler Youth work and why did support for it wane?

Answer 5

It attracted children as the opportunity to participate in sports and camping trips away from home made it attractive to millions of German boys- however by late 1930s attractiveness began to wane as it became more bureaucratic and rigid and there were reports of poor attendance

Question 6

What was the League of German Girls?

Answer 6

It was the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth and was part of a process of preparing girls for their future roles as housewives and mothers and were taught how to take care of babies, cooking etc.

Question 7

To what degree were Nazi Youth Policies successful?

Answer 7

The Nazis were successful in bringing schools and unis under their control. These youth groups were the only movements allowed in Germany and reinforced values that had been in German culture e.g. courage and strength- however attendance at parades were beginning to slip and the Nazis were concerned about the re-emergence of independent youth cliques

Question 8

What was the main priority for the Nazis towards women?

Answer 8

They viewed the declining birth rate in 1920s as alarming and so after 1933 was to raise the birth rate

Question 9

What were policies towards women?

Answer 9

• Marriage loans introduced for women who left work and married an Aryan man; for each child born amount of loan had to be repaid was reduced by quarter
• Women with over eight children received a gold medal whereas with four or five children received a bronze medal
• Abortion severely restricted to point where doctor conducting the abortion would be executed if the woman was an Aryan
• Organisations such as The German Woman’s League set up in 1933 to coordinate all women’s groups under Nazi control- by 1939, had over 7 million members

Question 10

What was the degree of success of Nazi’s policies towards women?

Answer 10

The Nazis’ campaign to increase the birth rate had some success however to what extent it was due to policy however was debatable as the economic situation would have encouraged the families to have more children- also women in workforce increased between 1933-39 due to labour shortages despite Nazi dislikement to married women getting paid employment

Question 11

What were the Nazi policies towards workers?

Answer 11

• The German Labour Front (DAF) was established on 6th May 1933 to coordinate workers into the Nationalist Socialist Regime under Robert Ley
• In 1936, the DAF started to provide vocational training courses to improve workers’ skills
• The DAF ended up becoming a large business empire of its own and by 1939 had 44,500 paid employees
• The ‘Strength Through Joy’ (Kdf) was set up by the DAF to organise workers’ leisure time and the idea was the workers would gain strength for their work by experiencing joy in leisure

Question 12

What did the KdF aim to do?

Answer 12

• Encourage workers to see themselves as part of a volkgemeinschaft and there would be no time for workers to develop private lives due to this so cannot oppose the regime and think for themselves
• Encouraged participation into sport to improve the physical and mental health of the nation- every youth in employment obliged to undertake 2 hours each week of physical education at their workplace

Question 13

The degree of success of Nazi policies towards workers?

Answer 13

Many workers had been influenced by socialist and communist ideas before 1933 and therefore would have been resistant to Nazi ideology- KdF was therefore popular as it offered workers a means of escaping their boring lives and not due to Nazi ideological aims

Question 14

Why was it hard to control churches in Nazi Germany?

Answer 14

• A significant minority of Germans were Roman Catholics so there was a serious divide
• Hitler himself had been raised a Catholic and talked about ‘positive Christianity’ however at other times spoke of eradicating ‘Christianity’ so there was a lack of coherence in Nazi religious policy

Question 15

How was the Protestant church set up as a nucleus for a single national Church?

Answer 15

The main protestant Church in Nazi Germany was the German Evangelical church- Evangelicals were politically very conservative and staunch nationalists- within the church there was a strong tradition of respect for, and cooperation with the state and many portestants were also anti-semitic and anti-communist so there was much convergence between Nazi ideology and the church

Question 16

How was the Evangelical Church set up and changed into a united Reich Church?

Answer 16

In the church elections in July 1933 the German Christians won which led to Ludwig Muller being appointed as Reich Bishop and abolished all bodies within the church. In November 1933 18 pastors who had converted from Christianity to Judaism were also dismissed and by the end of 1933 it seemed the Reich Church was successfully ‘coordinated’ into the Volkgemeinschaft

Question 17

What opposition was there to the Reich Church?

Answer 17

In September 1933 a group of dissident pastors led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer established the Confessional Church. With the help of 5000 pastors, the new church was me to re-establish a theology purely based on the bible

Question 18

What did the Nazi Regime do to attempt to combat the opposition and how did it partially work?

Answer 18

• Switched to a policy of trying to weaken the Confessional Church through repression
• The regime also attempted to marginalise Christianity by trying to reduce the influence of the Churches over young people through the abolition of Church schools in the late 1930s
• By 1939, 5% of the population were listen as ‘god-believers’

Question 19

Why did the Nazis see the Roman Catholic Church as bad?

Answer 19

The Nazis regarded the fact that the Church demanded obedience to the pope from German Catholics as undermining Germany’s unity as a nation

Question 20

Why did the Catholic Church sign a peace treaty with the Nazi Regime?

Answer 20

They opted for cooperation and compromise in the belief this would preserve its autonomy

Question 21

When did the Nazi Regime sign a treaty with the Roman Catholic Church and what was the treaty called?

Answer 21

In July 1933 the regime and the Vatican reached an agreement called a ‘Concordat’

Question 22

What was the concordat?

Answer 22

• The Vatican recognised the Nazi regime and promised that the Catholic Church would not interfere in politics
• The regime promised that it would not interfere in the Catholic Church and that the Church would keep control of its schools, youth organisations and lay groups

Question 23

How did the Nazi regime begin to break the Concordat soon after however?

Answer 23

Nazis began to seize property of Catholic Organisations, Catholic newspapers were ordered to drop the word ‘Catholic’ from their newspapers and from June 1934 a number of leading Catholics were executed by the SS

Question 24

How was their conflict between the regime and the Catholic Church?

Answer 24

• Some Catholics priests began to speak out about the dangers of Nazi religious ideas leading to more pressure on the catholic church e.g.:
• Permission to hold public meetings severely restricted, Catholic newspapers and magazines heavily censored

Question 25

What happened in 1937 and what did it further lead to?

Answer 25

In 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical entitled ‘With Burning Grief’ which in response the regime once again increased pressure:

• Many monasteries closed down, Crucifixes removed from Catholic schools
• By summer of 1939, all Church schools converted into community schools

Question 26

What happened after these measures against Catholic churches?

Answer 26

The concordat was not formally taken back however the Nazis had ceased to honour the agreement, and Catholics ended up being cast by the ‘Hitler myth’ and were careful not to oppose the Nazis however many individual Catholics still went to service

Question 27

To what degree was Nazi policy successful towards the Churches?

Answer 27

The Nazis had failed to establish a single, unifying Protestant Church. It is clear that the Nazis had failed to ‘coordinate’ the Churches into the Volkgemeinschaft and that organised religion remained a powerful force within German society