The Nazi Government (1934-39) Flashcards

1
Q

What were 2 ways that Hitler dealt with the existing bureaucracy?

A
  • He purged his opponents and Jews from it in 1933
  • Hitler kept some ministers who weren’t Nazis, since they gave the people a sense of continuity
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2
Q

List 5 defining aspects of the Nazi government.

A
  • Führerprinzip
  • ‘Working towards the Führer’
  • Polyarchy
  • Personal rivalries
  • Terror
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3
Q

What was Führerprinzip? Give 3 details.

A
  • The ‘leadership principle’
  • The idea of a strict hierarchical order
  • It meant that Hitler had absolute power
  • It also meant that leaders gave orders which were instantly followed (contrary to a democracy, where there would be discussion and consultation)
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4
Q

What other idea did the Nazis use to support Führerprinzip?

A
  • The idea of Volksgemeinschaft; that the whole nation would work together for the common good rather than for their own good
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5
Q

What was ‘working towards the Führer’, and why did it exist?

A
  • The Nazis implemented policies that they thought would please Hitler, as they did not have their own party programme, but rather were aware of what Hitler roughly wanted
  • This would then give them more responsibility and power
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6
Q

How was ‘working towards the Führer’ justified by the Nazis?

A
  • Through the idea that Hitler perfectly represented the will of all Germans
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7
Q

What was the issue that Nazi officials faced with ‘working towards the Führer’? Give 3 details.

A
  • Hitler rarely set out his views clearly, but tended to say them in long monologues about various other topics
  • Therefore, access to Hitler was the way to gain power
  • However, access to Hitler was controlled by the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers and later Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary
  • This made Bormann more powerful than his own superior, Rudolf Hess, who was deputy Führer
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8
Q

What 3 types of bodies existed within the government by 1936? Give one or two examples of each.

A
  • Ministries: Hitler kept many of the traditional ones from Weimar, and created new ones such as the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
  • Nazi Party departments: the party itself had departments that were intended to develop policies in certain areas, such as a department of economics
  • Supreme Reich authorities: special agencies created by Hitler that came from neither the party nor the state, such as the Office of the Four Year Plan and the DAF
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9
Q

What was the problem with the existence of these different bodies? Give an example.

A
  • They overlapped, which made the regime polycratic (it had many centres of power)
  • The economy; before 1933, the ministries of economics, agriculture and labour all played a role in economic policy
  • In 1936, Hitler created the Office of the 4 Year Plan for the purpose of creating a new economic policy
  • It had the power to organise labour, industrial production and even transport, which therefore interfered with the work of several other industries
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10
Q

What were 4 reasons why Hitler ultimately created a polycratic regime, although it was chaotic?

A
  • To create competition, which would cause ministers to want to please him and remember that they were dependent on him
  • He even stopped groups from working on policies to prevent the formation of opposition
  • He believed that this competition would lead to the creation of a better government (social Darwinism)
  • Officials would ultimately have to come to him to solve disputes
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11
Q

Describe 4 aspects of a personal rivalry that affected the Nazi government.

A
  • Himmler and Göring fought over control of the political (/secret) police after they purged Röhm
  • From mid-1934, Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich (head of the SD) wanted to remove Göring’s influence from the Gestapo
  • The dispute was taken to Hitler in 1936, and Göring no longer had control over the Gestapo
  • Himmler’s power base grew as a result, and he expanded the Gestapo to monitor the whole of Germany
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12
Q

What happened to political opposition under the Nazis?

A
  • The Gestapo found any opposition
  • Political prisoners were sent to concentration camps ran by the Gestapo
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13
Q

What was Hitler’s lifestyle like as Führer?

A
  • He spent a lot of time away from central government at his villa, the Berghof
  • He was rarely awake before lunch, had irregular sleep patterns and spent most of his time doing leisure activities
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14
Q

In what 7 ways did Hitler play an important role in the government?

A
  • His will was the basis of the regime instead of the law
  • He allowed the Nazi Party to play a bigger role in government
  • He created new agencies
  • He disliked being involved in the day-to-day affairs of government, unless it was foreign policy
  • He used his authority to end disputes between senior Nazis
  • His style of government caused the regime to be increasingly radical as Nazis came up with more extreme ideas to please him
  • His presence actually made the regime more organised
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15
Q

What proof is there that Hitler did not want to take part in the government’s daily affairs?

A
  • While the cabinet had met 72 times in 1933, it only met 4 times in 1936
  • It met for the final time in 1938
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16
Q

When did Hitler tend to intervene in issues? Give an example.

A
  • When it became a crisis
  • The Night of the Long Knives; Hitler had previously refused to deal with Röhm
17
Q

What bit of legislation that was meant to be a temporary measure was never lifted by the Nazis? What were 2 powers it gave the Nazis?

A
  • The Reichstag Fire Decree from February 1933
  • It suspended individual rights and the freedom of the press
  • The government could now imprison people without charging them with a specific crime
18
Q

In what 3 ways was Hitler presented to people, and why?

A
  • Germany’s Messiah after the loss of WW1 and Versailles
  • As representing the whole nation
  • As being above politics
  • Most people weren’t interested in Nazi ideology, so the Nazis created the ‘Führer myth’ to win themselves support
19
Q

What were 6 reasons why people supported the Nazis?

A
  • Due to their economic achievements
  • They rewarded conformity, such as mothers who had many children
  • They were popular with people who shared the same prejudices as them
  • They had the support of people who benefitted from them being in power, such as wealthy industrialists
  • They had the support of people who wanted Versailles overturned and for Germany to be a dominant power within Europe again
  • Their use of propaganda
20
Q

Give an example of the Nazis using propaganda to present their policies as correct.

A
  • After 1939, the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos where there was a lack of food, electricity and water
  • Images of this were then used to justify antisemitic propaganda
21
Q

How and when did the Nazis censor German culture?

A
  • They set up the Reich Chamber of Culture under Joseph Goebbels in 1933
  • This then had 7 other chambers that were responsible for an aspect of culture
22
Q

How did the Nazis present the culture of the Weimar Republic?

A
  • They claimed it was over-intellectual and Jewish-led, which was a disruption of German values
  • They therefore called certain aspects of culture ‘degenerate’
23
Q

List 6 ways the Nazis controlled the German press.

A
  • All journalists had to be members of the Reich Chamber of the Press in order to write for newspapers/ magazines
  • ‘Unpatriotic’ journalists could be expelled from the chamber, which meant they lost the right to publish
  • Goebbels created the German News Agency, which merged various news agencies and put them under the control of the government, so they became German journalists’ one main source of information
  • The Nazi publishing company (Eher Verlag) bought up existing newspapers (Nazi ownership of papers increased to 82% in 1945)
  • 1933 Editor’s Law: editors became responsible for the content of their newspaper/ magazine
  • Specific newspapers were banned, such as the KPD newspaper, Red Flag, at the end of January 1933 (Göring also banned most SPD newspapers in Prussia in February 1933)
24
Q

How did the popularity of newspapers change under the Nazis, and why?

A
  • There was a 10% drop in newspaper sales between 1933 and 1939
  • The points of view available to Germans were extremely limited, and newspapers were dull
25
Q

Other than the press, what 3 other forms of culture were heavily censored?

A
  • Radio
  • Films (they banned some foreign films)
  • Literature
26
Q

List 4 ways that the Nazis controlled the radio.

A
  • The Reich Radio Company (RRG) had already been regulating radio
  • In 1933 they put Reich governors in charge of the RRG
  • Mass production of the ‘people’s receiver’, which was subsidised, and only had 1 station and limited range
  • It was compulsory to listen to key speeches (radio wardens reported on attendance)
27
Q

Give 2 figures on the people’s receiver.

A
  • 1939: 70% of households owned one
  • 1943: one-third of all radios were people’s receivers
28
Q

What proportion of the film industry was owned by the government?

A
  • In 1933 the 4 major film companies were allowed to remain private so that they could continue to generate money through exports
  • However, their shares were slowly bought up by the government
  • In 1942 all film companies were nationalised
29
Q

What proportion of films made under the Nazis were clearly meant to be propaganda?

A
  • 1/6 of over 1000 films had a clear propaganda message
30
Q

What films were released in 1940, and why? Describe one of them.

A
  • 3 anti-Semitic films, with the purpose of stressing the Nazi view of Jews
  • ‘The Eternal Jew’ presented Jews as parasitic
  • It was extremely unpopular, and many even fainted watching it, as Jews were juxtaposed with rats, for example
31
Q

How successful was the use of films as propaganda? Give 2 details.

A
  • Films kept support for the regime, rather than indoctrinating people, as:
  • only more subtle films were successful at delivering a message, as people tended to only see films as a form of entertainment
  • newsreels were compulsory before films, and admission was not allowed after them
32
Q

In what 3 ways was literature censored?

A
  • In May 1933, the Burning of Books ceremony was held in Berlin
  • 20,000 books were burned to ‘cleanse’ the new Germany
  • This was then repeated in other cities
  • Famous novelists either went into exile, were not allowed to publish books, or were imprisoned
  • Authors had to either support the regime, or be neutral at the very least
33
Q

List 4 other ways the Nazis spread propaganda.

A
  • Sport
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Social policy
34
Q

How did the Nazis use sport as a form of propaganda?

A
  • The 1936 Olympics were treated as a way to display the physical superiority of Germans
  • Germany won
35
Q

What did Hitler do in 1937 in regards to art? How popular was this?

A
  • 2 parallel art exhibitions were held to show what German art was meant to be against the art considered to be ‘degenerate art’
  • More than 600,000 people went to the exhibition of Great German Art, while 2 million attended the Exhibition of Degenerate Art
36
Q

What style of architecture did Hitler favour, and what were 2 reasons why? Give an example.

A
  • Neo-classical style that was similar to the Ancient Greek style, but on a grander scale
  • They represented the Thousand Year Reich the Nazis wanted to build
  • It also gave the impression of absolute authority
  • The new Olympic stadium built for the 1936 Olympics
37
Q

Why was social policy used as a form of propaganda, and what did this extend to?

A
  • It gave the idea that the people were working together while protected by the state
  • Festivals and holidays were rearranged around important days in Nazi history
38
Q

List 3 initiatives aimed at supporting the idea of Volksgemeinschaft.

A
  • The people’s car scheme
  • The Winter Relief Campaign (Winterhilfswerk)
  • Eintopf (one-pot meal once a week, and the money saved would go towards the Winter Relief Campaign)
39
Q

Give an example of a festival that the Nazis changed, and 3 details about it.

A
  • Mother’s Day became an official holiday celebrated on Hitler’s mother’s birthday
  • There were parades that usually ended with a propagandist speech
  • From 1935, these parades became more military in some large cities