Impact of War on the German Home Front

Allied Bombing Campaign

• Casablanca Conference and Point-blank Directive 1943

  • Allied initiatives - massive bombing campaign against Germany

  • Targeting industrial cities and war industries

  • RAF - night time bombing

  • USAF - day time precision bombing

  • Maximising disruption of German military and economic systems

• As a result of constant bombing, over 75% of the Berlin population believed the war was already lost by late 1943​​

Bombing of major cities

• Impact of bombing

  • 600,000 German civilians killed

  • 500,000 injured

  • 20% of all housing stock destroyed

• Firebombing of Hamburg 1943

  • 60% of the cities housing was destroyed

  • 42,000 deaths

  • news spread across Germany caused nationwide panic

  • heavy impact on morale in major cities ​

• Dresden targeted 1945

• Berlin: constant raids

  • destroyed the feeling of safety in the capital

  • causing severe homelessness

  • residents fleeing from 1943

• Cologne

  • First "thousand-bomber raid" May 1942

  • May 1943: roughly 250,000 residents had fled the city

Effectiveness of Allied bombing campaign

• Shared suffering often brought the Nazi party and the people closer together

  • increased resentment against the enemy ​

• SS squads start targeting those they fear are reducing morale

  • often killing innocent civilians​

  • becomes a crime to spread dissent or hopeless talk

  • Trying to rally the people through propaganda ​

• Debate over effectiveness as Germany continued to resist ground assaults from both the East and West

Workers

• War added pressure on the workforce - needed incentivising

  • bonuses and overtime payments re-introduced ​

• Rising taxes

  • beer and tobacco ​

• working hours increasing

  • 52 hours/ week 1940

  • 60 hours by 1944​

• Foreign workers used

  • shortage of skilled workers ​

  • 15 million foreign forced labourers were used at war peak

  • constituting 20% of German workforce​

• 1944 - situation desperate

  • holidays were stopped

  • bonuses ended

  • rewards were limited to an increase in rations ​

• Conscription resulted in shortage of agricultural labour 

Farmers

• Increasing reliance on peasant prisoners from Eastern Europe to work the land

• problems in obtaining farm machinery

• those in countryside did not suffer the same food shortages as those in cities

  • No air raids ​

• Nazi "Blood and Soil" policy aimed to make farmers elite producers

  • Only resulted in heavy state regulation

  • strict price controls

  • increasing production targets quotas

Women

• Beginning of the war

  • number of women in work limited

  • number of female workers decreased​

• Speer wanted to increase productivity (‘Total War’)

  • introducing the conscription of female labour –controversial ​

  • went against Nazi ideology​

  • feared that it would damage morale ​

• Last 3 years of the war

  • Nazi regime forced to use women's labour​

  • Women began to play an auxiliary role in the armed forces​

• 1945 – women made up 60% of the workforce​

  • women took an increased role both in the workforce and in running the home​

• on farms

  • women had to run the farm and the home​

• With the Soviet Army moving West, German women had to face threats – mass rapes, assaults, etc. ​

• ‘Trummerfrauen’ – cleared rubble in the cities ​

Youth Policy

• Suffered educationally

  • number and quality of teaching staff declined​

• Greater emphasis on military training vs. academic skills​

  • Many youth group leaders called up to fight

  • left youth organisations to be run by very young people (little older than their members)​

• Propaganda used to try to counter any demoralisation

  • difficult to do after failure of Barbarossa

• Hitler Youth helped the homeless during Allied bombing ​

• Conscription age goes lower

  • 1943 – 17

  • 1945 - 16​

  • 1945 - boys as young as 12 defending Berlin

Youth counter groups

• Those disinterested in military ideology instead began to seek alternatives

  • attending gatherings of the Swing Youth / Edelweiss Pirates​

• Edelweiss Pirates took part in some acts of resistance

  • successfully killing the head of the Cologne Gestapo (1944)​

• youth opposition achieved very little against the regime ​

  • Priorities changing after 1943

The Upper Classes

• Wehrmacht never completely followed the Nazi regime

  • particularly among the conservative officer classes​

  • Old aristocratic families in the Wehrmacht often served together

  • openly critical of Hitler's disdain for military tradition​

• Military failings of 1942-43 encouraged opposition to turn into action​

  • Kreisau Circle formed from upper classes in the army​

  • Members extremely influential

  • could garner the backing of a whole army – significant threat to Hitler​

  • only military failures would encourage the army to oppose

  • many generals were still loyal to Hitler​

• Conservative opposition planned to form a new government

  • made palatable to the West

  • ceasefire on the Western Front would be signed​

  • Historians uncertain as to whether the Allies would abandon their aim of unconditional surrender even if Hitler were overthrown ​

  • Planned to continue the war in the East due to their hatred of communism​

• Operation Valkyrie (headed by Generals Beck and Von Stauffenberg) failed

  • Hitler used the plot to arrest 7000 opponents of which 5000 were killed​

  • Division within the group – some did not support the assassination of Hitler as a solution​

• Conservative upper-class resistance decreased after the failure of Operation Valkyrie

Churches

• Generally, did not oppose the regime from the start​

  • Select individuals e.g. Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed

  • involved in the 1942 bomb plot

  • placed in a concentration camp then executed as a result​

• Hitler grew more afraid of assassination as the war progressed badly from 1942​

  • Placed all church opposition in camps or personally ordered their executions​

• The church as an institution was not attacked as Hitler recognised their focus on self-preservation ​

  • Had confidence that they would not attack his Jewish policy as a united front​

• The Reich Church was disbanded 1945 and succeeded by the Protestant Church in 1948​

• Post-war period was marked with struggles for control

  • shift to a more nationalistic and radicalised understanding of human rights and morality​