Case Study: Nazi Germany | Unit Assessment 

Impact of Nazi Policies on Women

• The role assigned to women
  • “bear future aryans”
  • ( housewives, community organizers) AWAY FROM WORKFORCE
• impact of nazi Ideology on women
  • Civil service → women were ineligible for jury duty, banned from senior positions of Nazi leadership
  • Education → discriminated against until war efforts brought them back into the workforce (getting into universities so they could work in professions)
• The portrayal of women in propaganda
  • encouraged motherhood (maternity benefits, “bear a child for the Fuherer’
• Programs, laws, awards
  • Lesbenborn (Spring of Life) Project → encouraged unmarried women w/good racial credentials to become pregnant
  • Law for the reduction of Unemployment → women encouraged to leave work on marriage w/ the support of generous loans
  • Honor Cross of German Motherhood “rabbit decoration” → Aug 12 for “prolific mothers”

Nazification of Youth

• What is “nazification”?
  • the act of indoctrinating people w/ nazi ideology and propaganda
• Why did Nazis indoctrinate kids?
  • “those who have the youth on their side control the future”
  • winning over the new generation so they could be more accepting of nazi ideology for the rest of their lives.
• what pathways were used to indoctrinate youth?
  • youth groups/movements (i.e: HJ)
  • oath to Hitler; recitation of nazi dogma; participation in pseudo-war games
  • HIGH competitions and penalized weak/uncommitted
  • for young children → books and games with anti Semitic rhetoric
  • Education
  • Reich Education Ministry → conveying Nazi philosophy
  • teachers became rich civil servants
    • History → “awaken sense of responsibility towards a new generation”
    • Biology → racial differences; nazi interpretation of darwins theory (survival of the fittest)
    • Math → problems posed in the ideological language
    • Folklore → encouraged consciousness on the nation
    • Sport (for boys) and Home Ec (for girls)
• Programs, laws, awards
  • Nazi Teachers League, HJ, BDM
  • Napolas (national political educational institutions)
  • Ogdensburg (nazi controlled colleges)

The Case Study of Isle Totzke

• How did the nazis create a terror state?
  • Gestapo → spy and arrest enemies of the state (running conc. camps)
• what role did individual citizens play within the police state?
  • denunciations (tips from citizens of anyone who was considered to be “unconventional”
  • self coordination (people you knew can report you)
  • the system was manipulated from the bottom to the top for selfish reasons

The Persecution of Minorities in the Nazi State

• what role did nazi ideology play in the persecution of minorities
  • those who failed to fit the nazi criteria of “volksgenossen” (racial comrade) those who were racially pure and considered worthy of german citizenship
  • considered a threat to the future german race
• what groups were targeted?
  • asocials (habitual criminals, “work shy”, tramps and beggars, gay/lesbians, juvenile delinquents)
  • biological outsiders (hereditary defects, racially inferior gypsies, and Jews)
• what was the significance of the language used by Nazis?
  • “racial enemy” “undesirables” “biological outsider”
  • encourage feelings of apathy or contempt; dehumanize
• Significant laws, etc
  • Nuremberg Laws → antisemitic laws ; systemically denied Jews to rights of citizenship
  • Preservation of Blood and Honor Laws → no marriage between Jews and germans
  • Law for the prevention of hereditary diseased offspring → forced sterilizations; euthanasia; (Philipp Bouhler)