4.3 The aims and results of Nazi policies

Hitler’s unemployment policies (1933-1945)

• unemployment at 6 million when Hitler became chancellor (1933)

• building partly due to previous measures (economy based on production for possible war), Four Year Plan

• manipulated employment statistics - incentivizing women to give up employment, compulsory military conscription

• government public works projects, building of autobahns (motorways), industry, job creation programs

Hitler’s economic recovery policies (1933-1945)

• Ministry of Economics - series of ad hoc programs to be carried out by big business

• New Plan (1934) and Mefo Bills

• public works projects under State Labor Service (RAD) (Reichsarbeitsdienst)

• Göring’s Four Year Plan (October 1936)

New Plan (1934)

Hjalmar Schacht aims to turn Germany to achieve economic self-sufficiency, prioritizing unemployment and rearmament (public works as war communications infrastructure)

Mefo Bills

credit notes given to companies, 4% annum interest, Reichsbank’s way of covertly financing arm production through a dummy company, priming heavy industry and production of armaments

State Labor Service (RAD) (Reichsarbeitsdienst) (founded 1935)

organization established by Nazi Germany that used cheap and regimented labor for the recovery of the German economy

• compulsory service began 1945, authoritarian control over recruits, subjected to political indoctrination

Göring’s Four Year Plan (October 1936)

major expansion in war-related industrial production with the goal of operational armed forces and an economy fit for war

• Wehrwirtschaft - defense economy

• impressive increases in aluminum production, explosives, coal, and mineral oil

• blitzkrieg - military tactic used after 1939 to obtain quick victories to gain resources rather than a war of attrition due to failure to produce strong war economy

• consumer product shortage, wages frozen but reduced unemployment

Strength through Joy (KdF) movement

cultural and social policy/recreational organization under German Labor front which increased German labor output and sense of solidarity through organization of cheap cultural events and accommodations

• interpreted social reality, Volkswagen

interpretations of Nazi wartime economy

• intentionalism - argument that Hitler encouraged chaos in National Socialist Party to create competing power centers allowing Hitler to be the final arbiter

• structuralism - stresses nature of NSDAP’s development from opposition party to administration party

• no central wartime administration, competing authorities - difficulty in mobilization of resources and war effort, lowered efficiency

• expanded war effort could not be sustained due to military and economic opposition despite ruthless exploitation of resources in occupied territories

education system

• “cleansing” staff, mandatory membership in National Socialist Teachers’ League (NSLB)

• emphasis on sports, biology (race and eugenics), history, Germanics (language and literature, superiority of Germans)

• education of future leaders

youth groups (1933)

Hitler Youth (HJ) and League of German Maidens (BDM) - organizations for indoctrination of youth into National Socialism, all other youth movements were banned (except Catholic), compulsory mumbership (March 1939)

• Hitler Youth (HJ): access to camping, hiking, sports, music, rally attendance, military training

• League of German Maidens (BDM): physical fitness, domestic science (marriage and childbearing)

Kinder, Küche, Kirche

Hitler’s attempt to restrict women’s participation in German life to children, kitchen, church, partnership in the service of the nation

pro-natalist policies

• section 5 of Law for the Reduction of Unemployment (June 1933) - low interest loans and monetary incentive for marriage, conceiving racially pure children, women giving up employment

• Mother’s Cross award (May 1934) - awards granted to women for birthing many healthy Aryan non-asocial children

asocials

people not conforming to Third Reich’s desired social norms; Gemeinschaftsfremde (community aliens undeserving of inclusion in Volksgemeinschaft)

beggars and homeless

rounded up, monitored, compulsory work, detention and sterilization

homosexuals

illegal in Paragraph 175 of Reich Criminal Code, detention in concentration camps

• Reich Central Office for the Combat of Homosexuality and Abortion - coordinated persecution, as a product of “population policy and national health”

Jehovah’s witnesses

targeted for objection/refusal of military service, refusal to do Hitler greeting, refusal to join compulsory National Socialist Organizations

“biological outsiders” (Sinti and Roma)

considered workshy/vagrants due to nomadic lifestyle, racially inferior, medical experimentation and murder

mentally and physically handicapped

• Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (1933) - justified compulsory sterilization

• T-4 Programme (1939-1941) - euthanasia program of those with incurable and resource-consuming disabilities, more than 72,000 state-sanctioned murders

anti-semitism

belief in Jewish conspiracy to undermine traditional German values, dominating and manipulating international capitalism, promoting Bolshevism, scapegoat for post-war problems

• institutionalist - state-directed measures, propaganda, legislation to persecute Jews

• eliminationist - removal of Jews from German Society, officially sanctioned discrimination and physical elimination

anti-Jewish measures (1933-1945)

• April 1933

  • boycott Jewish businesses, doctors, legal professionals

  • Law for Re-establishment of Civil Service - excluding Jews and undesirables from government employment

• July 1934 - Jews not permitted to take legal examinations

• December 1934 - forbidden to take pharmaceutical examinations

• September 1935 - Nuremberg Laws

• July 1938 - ban on Jewish doctors

• August 1938 - requirement for Jews to add Israel or Sarah to non-Jewish first names

• September 1938 - cancelled qualifications of Jewish doctors, Jewish lawyers banned from practice

• November 1938

  • Kristallnacht

  • Jewish education forbidden

  • compulsory sale of Jewish business

• February 1939 - compulsory surrender of gold, silver, jewelry to state

• October 1939 - Heinrich Himmler and SS are given responsibility for Jewish affairs, relocation to German-occupied Poland

• July 1941 - beginning of “Final Solution”

• September 1941 - required to wear star of David, transport to concentration camps, experimentation

• January 1942 - detailed plans for extermination and Wannsee Conference

• February 1942 - start of mass executions in Poland

• September 1942 - given to Himmler, destruction through labor in camps

Nuremberg Laws (September 1935)

Reich Citizenship Act and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor - depriving Jewish of German citizenship, forbidding intermarriage and sexual contact between Jews and Aryans

Kristallnacht (November 1938)

attacks on synagogues, Jewish people and property; mass arrests, conditional release after murder of German diplomat by Jewish assassin

the Holocaust (1941-1945)

“Final Solution to the Jewish Question” - systematic, state-sanctioned persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi regime and its collaborators

• estimated 150,000+ Jews emigrated between 1933 and November 1938

motives for submission

• belief in aims of Nazis

• fear of consequences for disobedience

• disillusionment with Weimar, fear of the Left

• gratitude for social and economic programs, NSDAP brought employment and social mobility

• pride in Nazi foreign policy