3. The Nazi regime (b) What was it like to live in Nazi Germany?

How were young people affected by the Nazi regime?

• Nazi schools

• Hitler Youth

• Teenage rebels

Nazi schools

• Schools placed under control of the Ministry of Education in Berlin

• Ensured uniformity across Germany

• Teachers required to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler and join the Nazi Teachers’ League

• Jewish teachers were sacked

• Curriculum was changed to take account Nazi ideas

• Biology and history books rewritten to reflect Nazi race theories

• Religious education was scrapped and more emphasis was placed on physical education

The Hitler Youth

• Many young people were encouraged to join

• Boy scouts and other German youth groups were banned

• 1936- membership was virtually compulsory

• 1940- almost 1 million young people still had not joined

Female Hitler Youth

• 10-14: League of Young Girls

• 14-18: League of German Maidens

• Prepared for motherhood along with an emphasis on fitness

• Taught domestic skills like sewing, cooking and managing household budgets

Male Hitler Youth

• 10-14: German Young People

• 14-18: Hitler Youth

• Designed to make boys into good soldiers

• Provided with militarytraining

• Activities such as athletics, cross country enhanced fitness

• Political indoctrination- taught about evils of Jewry, biography of Hitler’s life

How successful were Nazi policies towards women and the family?

• Reversing progress made by women during 1920s

• Encouraging marriage and childbearing

• Child bearing outside marriage

Reversing progress made by women during 1920s

• Women deprived of the vote and prevented from sitting in the Reichstag

• Forced out of professions or numbers substantially reduced

• Requested to stick to the three Ks ‘Kinder, Kirche and Künde (Children, Church and Kitchen’

Encouraging marriage and childbearing

• Marriage loans, worth around 6 months wages were offered to newly-wed couples; loan reduced as children were born

• 1938 divorce laws- husbands could legally divorce wives for having abortions or not wanting more children

• Fertility medals awared to women: bronze for 5 children, silver for 6 children, gold for 8 or more

• Family allowances- weekly welfare payment for each child; maternity benefits increased

• Classes in home-craft and parenting skills provided by the German Women’s Enterprise (Nazi organisation)

Child bearing outside marriage

• Under Lebensborn programme, selected unmarried women were encouraged to be impregnated by ’racially pure’ SS men

• The child would then be donated to the Führer to be reared in a state institution

Did these birth policies work?

• Birth rate increased by 30% between 1933 and 1936

• Number of marriages increased from 500,000 in 1932 to 750,000 in 1934

• Family size remained similar as most couples had 2 children

Why did the Nazis want to influence young people?

• The Nazis wanted their ideology to last. Children could ensure achievements continued in the long term

• Loyal young men and women needed to become fit soldiers and fertile mothers for carrying out Nazi aims

• Children were the most impressionable and easiest to in fluence through propaganda

why did the Nazi change their policies towards women after 1937?

• Increasing labour demands of the German industry could no longer be met by the pool of unemployed men

• Marriage loan system was cancelled

• Women required to perform a ‘duty year’- e.g. working on a farm or family home in return for lodging

why did Nazi policies towards women fail after 1937?

• 1939- fewer women employed than had ever been the case 10 years before

• Labour shortage wasn’t resolved through female employment

• Resistance from women- many resented low wages and poor working conditions

• Nazi contradictory policies led to decreased support- childbearing at home vs work in factories

People that benefitted from the Nazi regime

• Working class

• Farmers

• Businessmen and industrialists

Working class

• STRENGTHS

• 1933- 1939- unemployment fell from 6million to 300,000

• Achieved by public work schemes, e.g. autobahn-building project, enlisting 18-25 year olds in the National Labour Service for 6 months

• Rearmament- men were conscripted into the army- industries e.g chemicals and engineering expanded

• Support of working class retained through benefits provided by Strength Through Joy (KDF)

• WEAKNESSES

• Trade unions banned, no one could fight for fair pay or against increasing workloads

Farmers

• STRENGTHS

• Believed in ‘Blood and soil’, that Aryans had farming ancestry and valued their work

• Reich Food Estate regulated the market with fixed prices

• Reich Entailed Farm Law gave farmers more protection, preventing banks from repossessing property if they fell into debt

• WEAKNESSES

• Nazis increased control over what produce which angered farmers.

• Communities continued to be poor

• Banks were reluctant to lend money to farmers

Businessmen and industrialists

• STRENGTHS

• Small operators gained from removal of Jewish businesses and restriction of the number of department stores

• Large firms gained contracts due to rearmament

• Elimination of the Communist threat

• Banning of trade union and strikes=more productive work force

• WEAKNESSES

• Nazis never fulfilled promises about department store reductions

• Nazis increased control over them- during rearmament less consumer goods made

Autarky

• Hitler wanted to make German as self-sufficient during the 1930s- reduce imports of raw materials and food

• Would save money and reduce effectiveness of an Allied wartime blockade

• Production of steel, oil, and rubber was increased

• Ersatz= substitutes

• Schemes devised where products could be produced by substitutes, e.g. petrol from coal, coffee from acorns

• Had limited success- 1939, Germany still depended on imports for many essentials (20% of food)

How did the coming of war change life in Nazi Germany?

• Shortages

• Bombing

• Total War

• The Final Solution

Shortages

• Food and clothes rationing introduced in 1939

• 1945- Conditions so acute that Germans had to scavenge for food from rubbish tips and ate meat from dead horses

• There was a black market for those with money

• Labour shortages became more serious- as more men called up to war front, they were replaced by women and prisoners of war

Bombing

• 3.6 million homes destroyed

• 2.5 million children evacuated to rural areas

• Berlin, Cologne, Hambrug heavily damaged

• Dresden- 150,000 people lost their lives across 2 days of bombing in February

Total War

• Emergency measures introduced by Goebbels to direct resources of Germany to war-effort

• Included reduction of rail and postal services, closing of places of entertainment (e.g. cinema), raising age limit for compulsory female labour to 50

The Final Solution

• 1941- Killing of Jews began

• Executioners were a branch of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen

• 800,000 Jews killed, mainly by shooting

• 1942- Wannsee Conference, decision was made to eliminate all European Jews

• This was to be achieved by evacuating all Jews to remote extermination camps (e.g. Auschwitz)

• Death camps equipped with cremetoria and gas chambers

• Overall, Nazis killed around 6 million Jews

• Work was kept secret, Nazis tried to cover up murderous actions by ripping up railway tracks leading to the camps

Strength Through Joy

• 1933 

• The KdF aimed to make work seem more enjoyable and prevent unrest

• By 1936, there were 35 million members of the KdF

• It provided out-of-work leisure activities, trips and holidays to workers

Strength Through Joy Schemes

• The Volkswagen - ‘people’s car’ - was an affordable and fuel-efficient car 

• Workers in the KdF gave five marks per week from their wages so they could eventually receive one

• However, car factories switched to producing armaments after 1938 and workers never received their Volkswagens

Beauty of Labour

• 1934

• SdA— aimed to provide better facilities for workers to improve their working environment

• E.g. toilets, changing rooms, showers and canteens

• By 1938, around 34,000 companies had improved their facilities

• The Nazis expected the workers to build and decorate the new facilities themselves:

  • For no extra pay

  • Outside of their typical working hours

Strengths vs Weaknesses

• STRENGTHS

• Provided trips which made many Germans happier

• Introduced Volkswagen car, only costing 999 Reichsmark so was accessible to all

• Most workers earned higher wages, especially

• WEAKNESSES

• Increased working load left people unhappy

• No one recieved the Volkswagen car..

• Higher wages not as impactful due to high food prices- 1939 food prices increased by 20%

The New Plan

• Dr Schacht- Minister of the Economy

• Helped solve Hyperinflation crisis in 1923

• 1934- Aimed to reduce unemployment

• The plan consisted of:

  • Cutting welfare spending

  • Investing in industry

  • Creating trade deals with other countries.

Invisible Unemployment

• Nazi Germany didn’t include everyone in the statistics

• WOMEN- those forced to leave work and stay at home weren’t seen as unemployed

• JEWISH- not counted

• PRISONERS- not counted

What was the Four Year Plan?

• 1936

• Prepare the country for war within four years.

• Aim- autarky

• Rapidly rearm Germany, shifting the economy towards war production. 

Why was Nazi economy struggling?

• Autarky

• Shortages

• Reliance on enslaved labour in ghettos and concentration camps

• 1944- ¼ of Germany's workforce was enslaved

Who didn’t support the Four Year Plan?

• Business leaders

• Excessive rearmament decreased Germany’s standard of living

• This is called a ‘guns, not butter’ economic approach#

• Many believed Goering wasn’t right for the job-no experience in economics

Hermann Goering Works

• Industrial centre for heavy industry

• Extracted iron ores

Volkssturm

• Home Guard of conscripted young and elderly men

• Failed in battle

• During Operation Barbarossa against USSR in 1941

• Germany did not have enough supplies due to struggling economy.

• This meant that they could not use blitzkrieg tactics properly against the USSR