LUNR topic 3 - changing lives 1933-39

what policies affected workers?

what policies affected workers?

• Deutsche Arbcitsfront (DAF) - There were many different schemes:

  • Strength through Joy (KdF)

  • Beauty of Labour

  • Volkswagen scheme

what was Deutsche Arbcitsfront (DAF)?

• (German labour front)

• after trade unions were abolished, the Nazis wanted something to fill the gap with an organisation to win over the workers.

• It was not voluntary, but those who did not join struggled to find work.

what was Strength through Joy (KdF)?

• created to organise and control workers’ leisure time.

• This included holidays on cruises, cheap theatre tickets, touring orchestras, and gym evenings.

• The Nazis still found a way to deliver ideological content, for example passengers on cruises listened to political speeches and lectures.

• Even those who did not fully agree with the Nazi ideology joined, because who can turn down 50-75 percent discounts on trains and hotels?

what was the beauty of labour scheme?

• aimed to improve workplaces with new toilets, changing rooms and showers.

what was the Volkswagen scheme?

• in 1938, the DAF created a scheme which mean that workers could pay 5 marks per week and eventually earn a car. No one ever earned a car, as WW2 stopped production.

which policies affected women?

• The Nazi female ideal

• Attempts to increase births and marriages

• Attempts to reduce female employment

• Attempts to reduce women in education

what was the Nazi female ideal?

• ‘be beautiful and bring children into the world’.

• Nazis believed women’s lives should revolve around the three 'Ks': Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Children, Kitchen, Church)

how did the Nazis attempt to increase birth and marriage rates?

• Specifically among Aryans, since Hitler wanted more ‘pure’ Aryan Germans.

• The government encouraged women to get married and have children instead of finding employment by offering a loan to couples that meant they could receive goods, if the woman agreed not to return back to work until the loan was paid off.

• To further encourage having more children, the loan was reduced by a quarter each time.

• This meant that if the couple had 4 children, they would not need to pay anything at all.

how did the Nazis attempt to reduce female employment?

• Female employment initially dropped.

• The government encouraged women to get married and have children instead of finding employment by offering a loan to couples that meant they could receive goods, if the woman agreed not to return back to work until the loan was paid off.

• However, by 1939 there was a shortage of workers so more females were encouraged back into employment.

  • This led to 50 per cent more women working in industry, but women in the professions were still rare.

how did the Nazis attempt to reduce females in education?

• Initially, women were discouraged from seeking higher education, causing numbers of women in universities to drop significantly.

• Later, in the late-1930s, they began to regret this decision since at that point Germany needed highly qualified women to take on work caused by the rapid re-armament programme in preparation for war.

  • Women were reluctant to do so, since they had been told not to since 1933.

what is re-armament

when the Nazis decided to pay what they though they should to fund the army. After the treaty of Versailles, they had been told that they were not allowed to fund their military. Rapid rearmament was in violation of this treaty. It expanded after Nazis came to power

how were teachers controlled?

after the Nazis came to power, ‘politically unreliable’ teachers (e.g., Teachers with communist beliefs) were forced to resign. Leaving only those who would follow Nazi orders. Teachers who stepped out of line faced the Nazi terror system. Students became classroom spies, who reported to the Gestapo the names of any teachers who told anti-Nazi jokes or taught anti-Nazi material.

how were schools controlled?

• The Nazification of the school curriculum - Textbooks were rewritten, especially in history and biology, to promote Germany’s 'greatness', Aryan 'supremacy' and anti-Semitism. The curriculum in schools was altered to reflect Nazi ideology and priorities. Fitness was vital so children had at least five one-hour sessions of physical education (PE) every week, often for two hours per day.

• Elite schools - Boys with potential to be future leaders were sent to special Adolf Hitler Schools (Adolf-Hitler-Schulen or AHS in German). These were free boarding schools, run on military lines, for boys aged 12 to 18 years.

• The Hitler Youth movement – At first, joining Hitler Youth was voluntary, but slowly, to access things such as sports facilities and activities, you had to be a member. The aim of the movement was to control young people’s leisure time. After 1936 it was compulsory to join and after 1939 it was compulsory to attend all meetings.

what was the Nazi racial policy?

the idea of the master race and the Uber mensch - The Nazis were obsessed by race. They believed there were distinct races of people and that some were stronger or better than others. At the other extreme, in Nazi minds, were Jewish people, whose supposed inferiority led to their persecution and ultimately to the holocaust

why did the Nazis hate Jewish people?

There were many dangerous myths about Jewish people. These included:

• Jewish people were racially inferior

• Jewish people were cowards and refused to fight for the country

• Jewish people were communists

• Germany was dominated by Jewish people who controlled the government

why were these dangerous myths untrue?

• Jewish people were racially inferior

  • there is no scientific evidence that there are ‘races’ of humans

• Jewish people were cowards and refused to fight for the country

  • many Jewish people fought in the army, some even received the Iron Cross for bravery.

• Jewish people were communists

  • although some leading communists were Jewish, German Jews belonged to the full spectrum of political beliefs

• Germany was dominated by Jewish people who controlled the government

  • in 1933, there were only 505,000 Jewish people out of a population of 67 million. Their influence was very limited.

what was the ‘kristallnacht?

• 9th and 10th November 1938. Translates to the ‘nigh of broken glass’.

• The trigger for the attacks came on the 7th of November when 17-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan assassinated a German embassy officer (Ernst vom Rath). He was acting in protest against the German policy of forcing Polish Jews to emigrate from Germany.

• When the German people found out what had happened, there was widespread hostility towards the Jewish population.

• The Nazi party met and decided not to act against Jewish people, but if the German people were to do so themselves, it would not be stopped.

• These were government organised attacks in all but name.

• From the evening of the 9th into the early hours of the morning, 267 synagogues were destroyed, and 7500 Jewish owned commercial establishments had their windows smashed and were looted.

• At least 91 people were murdered.

• At the same time, the SS and Gestapo arrived and arrested up to 30,000 Jewish men and sent most of them to concentration camps.

• This was the first time that Jewish people had been imprisoned in mass.

• Whether through fear or agreement, the German people did not speak out against it.