how had the Nazi state been established from 1933-38?

• First law for the coordination of federal states - 31st march 1933

• second law for the coordination of federal states- 7th april 1933

• The law for the reconstruction of the Reich - 30th january 1934

• 1933-45 1000 feature films were made in Germany 14% were overtly political

• 6th may q933 nazi students and SS troops burned 20,000 books

• law against the formation of new parties- 14th july 1933

• night of the long knives- 30th june 1934

• Economic autarky: Mefo bills, ‘The battle for work’

• education indoctrination

3 phases of development in the Nazi regime.

• the legal reduction 1933-34

power is limited and dependent on allies

→ army

→ Hindenburg

→ conservative right nationalist

• creating the new germany 1934-37

  → still needs approval , especially from abroad

  → Not ready for war yet

• the radicalisation of the state 1938-39

  → economically the country is ready for war

  → all internal rivals are silenced

  → economically recovered from the depression

Nazi racial ideology

• hatred and fear of Jewish people

• the dehumanization of political and racial ‘rivals’

• outlines a hierarchy of races, placing Jews at the lowest level

• ‘Jews are removed from our midst’ - Hitler at a Nazi meeting in 1920

• Hate is constantly being justified

Social Darwinism and race theory

• this justified any hate towards groups outside the Volk

• applied Charles Darwin’s scientific principles of natural selection to human society rather than animal evolution

• this was not based on the scientific research and was used to justify ideas of racial superiority and eugenics

• the key arguments : ‘ advanced Europeans had rights and responsibilities to rule over ‘inferior’ or ‘backwards’ colonial people - this argument which emerged in the 19th century was then taken into Nazi ideology

• Hitler saw humanity as a biological struggle

• the ‘stronger’ races needed to be protected by not mixing with those that were ‘inferior’

• marriage between aryans and ‘degenerate’ races ‘threatened to poison the purity of the master race’

• no compromises was a principle that was applied to other groups.

Volksgemeinshaft

• those excluded: Jews, slavs, ethnic minorities, southern europeans, homosexuals, disabled , travelers communists, asocials

• this links to social Darwinismand race theory as it practically embodies it, the people inside the volk are the ‘fittest’ the volk puts race theory into practice

Labenstraum

• implies that germany should have more territory at the expense of other countries

• it was popular before the Nazi’s as it contrasts ToV and the land ‘stolen’ in it

• German empire

• Germany actually needed the physical space for work and raw materials

• fits in with the Nazi ideology to show their force by taking land from slavs and communists to the east

• wanted to use new land to build concentration camps

Policies towards those excluded from the volk

the mentally ill and disabled

• sterilisation law to apply to certain ‘inferiors’ in 1933, this extended to include abortion, administered by hereditary healthcare courts, 400.000 were sterilised, people who hadn’t been sterilised could have abortions

• euthanasia , T4 programme [1939] ran by Bouhler targeted at the disabled, it was initially stopped in 1941 due to pressure from the catholics

Asocials

• steptember 1933 mass round up of all ‘tramps and beggars’, this was also renewed before the 1936 olympics as propaganda

• an ‘asocial colony ‘ was established in northern germany in 1936

• the biggest round up was in 1938 resulting in most going to buchenwald concentration camp

The difference

the key difference in approach to disabled people and asocials was that nazis wanted to permanently ‘end’ disability but possibly reform asocials to ingrate them into the volk

Homosexuals

• 1933- purge of organisations and literature

• may 1933- attack on the institute of sex research

• 1934- Gestapo begin to compile list of gays

• 1935- law of homosexuality amended to widen the definition

• 1936- Reich office for the combating of homosexuality and abortion set up #

• 1936 to 38- over 22,000 men arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality

• it was the Nazi’s first priority and was dealt with extensively in 1933-34

Religious sects

• sects were initially banned but reinstated if they showed they could cooperate with the regime

• the seventh day Adventists seen the Nazi’s as the beginning of the rebirth of Germany

• Jehovah’s witnesses were the only group to be openly hostile against the Nazi state , they refused to give the Hitler salute and by 1945 around 10,000 had been imprisoned and many died but the resistance continued

Roma and Sinti

• 30,000 were persecuted

• the 1935 Nuremburg laws were made to apply to the roma and the sinti

• Reich central office for the fight against the gypsy nuisance set up in 1936 which aimed to prevent the mixing of races

• 1938- decree for the struggle against the gypsy plague

• 1939- Roma and the Sinti deported from Germany into Poland