Nazi Germany FINAL EXAM

Final exam key words kill me pls

Hitler Myth

Propaganda image portraying Hitler as heroic, infallible, hard-working “man of the people,” reinforced by rallies, films, and state messaging. Created unity, justified dictatorship, and separated Hitler from regime failures

Night of Long Knives (1934)

Purge in which Hitler ordered executions of SA leaders (including Röhm) and political rivals. Secured army loyalty and eliminated internal threats, consolidating Hitler’s power

Ernst Röhm

SA leader pushing for a ‘second revolution’ and greater SA power. His ambitions threatened Hitler, leading to his execution and weakening radical factions

1934 Nuremberg Party Rally

Massive choreographed Nazi rally filmed by Reifenstahl. Demonstrated mass support and visually solidified Hitler’s cult

Leni Reifenstahl

Filmmaker who created visually powerful Nazi propaganda films. Helped craft the aesthetic of Nazi power and unity

Triumph of the Will

1935 film documenting the 1934 rally; portrayed Nazi Germany as disciplined and unified. One of the most influential propaganda films in history

Dual State Theory

Concept that Nazi Germany operated with both a legal “normative state” and an arbitrary “prerogative state”. Explains how legality and terror coexisted under Nazism

Nazi Party Liaison Office

Office coordinating between the Nazi Party and the state administration. Enabled party penetration of government functions

Rudolf Hess

Deputy Führer and party administrator until 1941. Shaped party bureaucracy; his 1941 flight to Scotland removed him from power. 

Martin Bormann

Head of party chancellery after Hess; controlled access to hitler. Became one of the most powerful figures in the regime

Wilhelm Frick

Minister of the interior who designed discriminatory and authoritarian laws. Helped legalize Nazi racial and political repression

Gestapo

Secret state police relied on denunciations and had power to detain without trial. Instrument of terror maintaining compliance and crushing opposition.

Sicherheitsdient (SD)

SS intelligence service gathering ideological security information. Influenced policy and facilitated persecution through surveillance

Heinrich Himmler

Head of SS and German police; oversaw camps and racial policy. Key architect of genocide and internal terror

Reinhard Heydrich

Head of RSHA, overseer of Einsatzgruppen, and organizer of Wannsee Conference. Central planner of the Holocaust

Herman Goering

Head of Luftwaffe and early Nazi leader; initiated Jewish economic exclusion. Shaped early antisemitic policy and war planning

SS (Schutzstaffel)

Elite racial order controlling police, camps, and security apparatus. Primary institution implementing mass murder

Reich Security Head Office (RSHA)

Combined gestapo, SD, and criminal police into one agency. Central coordination hub for genocide

Franz Gürtner

Justice Minister who legitimized Nazi repression through legal reforms. Judicial complicity enabled dictatorship

Volksgerichtshof

Political court with show trials and extreme sentences (esp. after 1944). Eliminated legal fairness and targeted dissent. 

Otto Georg Thierack

Justice Minister who transferred prisoners to SS for “extermination through work.”. Linked judicial system directly to holocaust

Concentration camps pre-1939

Early camps (Dachau, etc.) holding political opponents and “asocials”. Established model for mass detention before genocide escalated.

Battle for Work

Employment campaign using public works and rearmament. Reeduced unemployment and boosted Nazi popularity

Autobahn

Highway network promoted as a symbol of economic revival. Propaganda success, though limited practical impact before the war

Reich Labour Service (RAD)

Compulsory labour program for youth. Militarized society and supplied cheap labour. 

German Labour Front (DAF)

Nazi-controlled labor organization replacing unions. Eliminated worker autonomy and enforced state labour policy.

Hjalmar Schacht

Economic Minister who stabilized currency and expanded rearmament. Enabled early Nazi economic recovery.

Beauty of Labour (SdA)

Program improving workplace conditions. Used to win worker royalty despite loss of rights

Strength Through Joy (KdF)

Leisure program offering trips, events, and entertainment. Promoted social unity and loyalty through state-controlled leisure.

People’s Products (Volksprodukte)

Affordable consumer goods like the Volkswagen and Volksempfänger radio. Reinforced the image of a unified, modern Nazi society.

De-Jewification of Economy

Systematic removal of Jews from businesses, professions, and markets. Major step toward isolating Jews before genocide. 

Regulation Eliminating Jews from Economic Life (1938)

Law banning Jewish business ownership and participation. Accelerated Aryanization and economic destruction of Jewish life. 

Goering (Economic Role)

Leader of the Four-Year plan, oversaw forced Aryanization. Connected economic planning directly to racial policy.

Four Year Plan

Program to prepare Germany for war within four years through autarky and rearmament. Militarized economy and increased state control.

Gertrud Scholz-Klink

National leader of Nazi women’s group. Spread Nazi gender ideology emphasizing motherhood.

Nazi Women’s League (NS Frauenschaft)

Women’s wing of the party organizing education and welfare. Mobilized women into ideological and social work. 

Deutsches Frauenwerk

Umbrella women’s welfare organization. Promoted domesticity, charity, and racial policy.

National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV)

Welfare agency providing aid only to “racially valuable” Germans. Reinforced exclusion and controlled social support.

Winter Relief (WHW)

Annual winter charity drive collecting donations and distributing supplies. Symbolized the Volksgemeinschaft and masked social inequality.

Ahnenpass

Document proving Aryan ancestry for employment, marriage, and Party work. Institutionalized racial selection. 

Marriage Loans Program

Loans to Aryan couples, reduced with each child. Increased birthrate and promoted racial family ideas.

Mother’s Cross

Award given to mothers of many children. Rewarded large Aryan families and reinforced women’s role. 

Paragraph 175

Law criminalizing homosexuality, strengthened under Nazis. Basis for arrests and camp imprisonment of gay men.

Reich Office for Combatting Homosexuality and Abortion

Office policing sexual behaviours deemed harmful to racial health. Enforced strict racial and reproductive control. 

Law for Protection of Hereditary Health

Forced sterilization of people with hereditary conditions. First large-scale eugenic program. 

Marriage Health Law

Required medical/racial fitness certificates before marriage. Regulated reproduction along eugenic lines.

National Socialist Teacher’s League

Mandatory teacher organization enforcing ideological conformity. Ensured education aligned with Nazi goals

Hitler Youth

Mandatory youth organization training boys in militarism and ideology. Prepared future soldiers and loyal citizens. — relates to Ancient Spartan Agoge

League of German Girls (BDM)

Female youth branch focusing on physical fitness and motherhood. Socialized girls into Nazi gender roles.

Napolas

Elite training schools emphasizing discipline, leadership, Nazi ideology. Produced future Nazi administrators and officers.

Degenerate art/Music Exhibitions

Shows condemning modernist, Jewish, and non-traditional art. Promoted cultural conformity and racial aesthetics.

Combat League for the Commercial Middle Class

Group pushing ant-Jewish boycotts and protecting Aryan businesses. Supported economic antisemitism. 

Reich Representation of German Jews

Jewish organization negotiating with state and managing community affairs. Struggled to protect Jews under worsening policy.

Leo Baeck

Leader of German Jewry; headed Reich representation. Symbol of Jewish leadership under persecution. 

Nuremberg Laws (1935)

Core racial laws defining Jewishness and restricting rights. Legal foundation for all later anti-Jewish relationships.

a. blood and honour: Banned Aryan–Jewish relationships.

b. Citizenship law: Jews lost citizenship

Kristallnacht (Nov 9th, 1938)

Pogrom destroying synagogues, businesses; arrests of 30,000 Jews. Marked shift to state-sponsored violent persecution.

Hereditary Health Courts

Courts deciding sterilization cases. Institutionalized racial eugenics.

T4 Program

Secret killing program targeting disabled people via gas chambers. Precursor to extermination methods used in the Holocaust

Ethnocrats

Nazi racial planners in charge of population restructuring. Shaped ethnic cleansing and settlement policy.

Walter Gross & Office of Racial Policy

Office producing racial propaganda and education. Spread ideology legitimizing exclusion and genocide.

Leonardo Conti

Chief of Public Health involved in medical racial policy. Helped integrate medicine into racial governance.

Bishop von Galen

Catholic bishop who publicly condemned T4 killings. Forced temporary haly of the euthanasia program.

Treaty of Versailles

Harsh post-WWI treaty imposing reparations and limits. Fuelled resentment Nazis exploited.

League of Nations

International peace organization. Germany’s withdrawal signalled rejection of diplomacy.

German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact (1934)

An agreement normalizing relations for 10 years. Strategic move allowing Hitler to rearm. 

1934 Austria Coup Attempt

Failed Nazi attempt to overthrow Austrian gov’t; Dolfuss murdered. Early signal of desire for Anschluss.

Konstantin von Neurath

Foreign minister enabling diplomatic cover for expansion. Helped disguise aggressive goals.

February 3, 1933 Generals’ Meeting

Hitler promised rearmament and territorial expansion. Secured military cooperation for dictatorship. 

German-British Naval Agreement

Allowed German navy to expand to 35% of British fleet. Appeasement that undermined Versailles.

Italian Invasion of Ethiopia

Mussolini’s expansionist war. Brought Italy closer to Nazi Germany

Rhineland Remilitarization

1936 reoccupation of demilitarized zone. Major victory for Hitler due to Allied inaction.

Spanish Civil War

Germany supported Franco with air power (e.g. Guernica). Testing ground for Blitzkrieg tactics. 

Hossbach Memorandum

1937 document outlining Hitler’s expansion plans. Shows war was deliberate policy.

Anschluss (1938)

Annexation of Austria with broad public support. Major territorial gain achieved without conflict

Sudentenland Crisis

Hitler demanded German-speaking Czechoslovak territory. Step toward dismantling Czechoslovakia. 

Munich Conference (1938)

Britain/France ceded Sudentenland to Germany. High point of appeasement. 

Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939)

Non-aggression pact with secret division of Eastern Europe. Cleared the way for Hitler to invade Poland.

Invasion of Poland (Sept 1, 1939)

German Blitzkrieg attack triggering WWII. Introduced racial occupation of mass murder policies.

Lebensraum

Ideological goal to acquire eastern “living space” for Germans. Motivated war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

European Imperialism and Nazi Ideology

Nazis inverted European colonialism by applying imperial domination inside Europe, especially in Poland and the Soviet Union. Justified genocide, resource extraction, and the deaths of millions in the East.

Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht

Postwar claim that the regular army was not involved in Nazi crimes. Wehrmacht carried out crimes themselves and worked with SS and killing squads. Long-standing myth that distorted memory until the 1960s

General government

Central Polish region run as a German colony after 1939. Run by Hans Frank; used for exploitation and future invasion routes. Became site of ghettos, mass shootings, and Operation Reinhard camps. 

Hans Frank

Governor-General of occupied Poland (1939-45). Oversaw the colony, implemented racial administration. Responsible for millions of deaths by starvation, executions, and deportations. 

Blitzkrieg

“Lightning war” strategy used fast-moving tanks, infantry, and airpower. In Poland, 60 divisions, 5 armoured divisions, massive bombing. Enabled rapid conquest in Poland, France, and the Low Countries

Einsatzgruppen

SS killing squads following the army to eliminate Jews, elites, priests. Pre-invasion lists of 60,000 Poles to kill; mobile execution units. Early phase of genocide before death camps. 

Reinhard Heydrich

Head of RSHA; chief planner of mass murder. Oversaw Einsatzgruppen and later the Wannsee Conference. One of the principal architects of the Holocaust

Wartheland, Danzig-West Prussia

Polish regions annexed directly into the Reich. Annexed parts of Poland, transformed into the Greater German Reich. Centres of extreme Germanization and mass expulsions.

Vidkun Quisling

Norwegian fascist who collaborated with Hitler during the invasion. His name became synonymous with “traitor”

Vichy, France

Collaborationist state established after France’s 1940 defeat. Creation of the Free zone and occupied zone, new state known as Vichy France. Cooperated in deportations and antisemitic policies

Battle of Dunkirk

Evacuation of trapped British-French troops in June 1940. May 28, Belgium capitulates, May 30 Navy crosses channel. Saved allied forces, allowing Britain to remain in the war. 

Germanization

Forcible cultural and racial transformation of occupied territories. Mass expulsions of Poles, settlement of “ethnic Germans.” Core part of Lebensraum and ethnic cleansing. 

Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV)

Office directing population transfers and settlement. Oversaw resettlement into annexed Polish territories. Engineered demographic restructuring of Eastern Europe.

Generalplan Ost (General Plan East)

Long-term plan to Germanize Eastern Europe through mass death, deportation, and colonization. Eastern Europe is a place to test theories and spread ideologies. Blueprint for the largest demographic reordering in European history. 

Arthur Greiser

Nazi leader of Wartheland. Oversaw expulsions, forced labor, and ghettoization. Implemented some of the harshest German policies.

Deutsche Volksliste

Racial classification system categorizing Poles/Germans by “Germanness".” Used to determine who could stay or be expelled. Facilitated selective assimilation and elimination. 

Litzmannstadt (Lódz)

Nazi name for Łódź, converted into major ghetto centre. Litzmannstadt tied to early ghettoization and forced labor. First major ghetto, site of intense exploitation and derportations to Chelmo.

Warsaw Ghetto

Largest Jewish ghetto, sealed in 1940. Massive population, starvation, disease. Symbol of Nazi brutality; precursor to mass deportations.

Lodz Ghetto

Highly controlled, industrial ghetto in Litzmannstadt. Run by Rumkowksi; major forced-labor centre. Last ghetto liquidated because of economic usefulness. 

Chaim Rumkowski

Jewish Leader of the Lodz ghetto. Oversaw forced labor, controversial “give me your children” speech. Represents impossible moral dilemmas under Nazi rule. 

Adam Czerniakow

Head of Warsaw Judent. Committed suicide rather than sign deportation orders. Symbol of moral resistance against impossible demands.