Nazi Germany (summarised)

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  • Created by: dh11
  • Created on: 05-01-17 15:48

Kdf (Strength through Joy)

  • Created by Dr. Robert Ley
  • Provided activities for workers leisure
  • Holidays, theatre, music, free adult education and sports.
  • Only German theatre and music was approved to spread the Nazi message.
  • Volkswagen Swindle: the workers would put money in installments for the Volkswagen Beetle, the 'people's car'. When war began, this money disappeared to be put towards war and nobody ever got it back. 
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Car industry

  • Volkswagen Beetle: cheap and good for the Autobahns, the German motorways.
  • Created jobs to get people back to work after the Depression
  • Car production could switch to military vehicles.
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Nazi Terror and Violence

  • Gestapo: 'secret Nazi police'
  • **
  • Einsatzgruppen
  • Death camps and gas chambers
  • Night of the long knives
  • Night of broken glass
  • List of "Enemies of the state" including Jews, gay people, Nazi opposition, communists, jehova's witnesses, pacifists, those 'racially impure' and gypsies. 800,000 were labelled so.
  • Labour camps and being forced to sign D-11 (agreeing to camp)
  • Public humiliation of "Enemies of the state"
  • Sterilization of "Enemies of the state"
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Education

  • Biology: taught how to tell if someone is a Jew and taught teenagers to only reproduce with Aryans and nobody 'racially impure'. Taught that interracial relationships were wrong.
  • Eugenics (race studies): taught how those who weren't Aryan were inferior.
  • History: taught of Jews signing the Treaty of Versailles and how Jewish 'saboteurs' caused the 1923 Hyperinflation crisis.
  • Geography: taught of Lebensraum & Germany's loss of land in 1919
  • Science: had a military slant. Taught principles of shooting and about poison gases.
  • Girls were taught domestic skills and textiles
  • Boys were taught chemistry and P.E. for the army
  • Textbooks had anti Jew propaganda
  • Jewish teachers or teachers that were "Enemies of the state" were struck off.
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Hitler Youth

  • Indoctrinated young people of Germany
  • 8 million joined
  • Boys did sports and games to prepare them for the military
  • Girls did domestic skills e.g. cooking
  • Aryan girls were took to camps with Aryan boys and forced to 'breed' like animals
  • Taught to hail Hitler. Parades were held in his honor.
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Women

  • Taught the phrase "Kitchen, church and children"
  • 1921: Forced out of jobs for men
  • No women in the army
  • June 1933: loan of 1000 mark (German currency) with 250 given back for every child had
  • Abortions were illegal
  • Maiden cross: awarded to women with 4 or more children that gave financial priveleges. Revoked if the woman abused/neglected child
  • 10th child in a family: Hitler as their godfather
  • Banned from wearing makeup or colouring/perming hair
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Church

  • "Reich church": Nazi-dominated church that treated Hitler like God with a "Nazi Bible"
  • Hitler had priests arrested
  • Nazi prayers (especially in Hitler Youth) to worship Hitler like God
  • Hitler closed churches
  • 1933 Concordat: Church wouldn't involve itself in politics, and Hitler wouldn't involve with Church. This was obviously broken. 
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Treatment of Jews

  • Ghettos: 500,000 dead by depriving of hygeine and food. Fed less than 1000 cals. a day. Ghettos had high walls and barbed wire for no escape.
  • Gas chambers and Holocaust: 8million killed 700-800 at a time
  • Anti-Jew films e.g "The Eternal Jew"
  • Anti-Jew childrens books e.g "The Poisionous Mushroom"
  • Red "J" on passport and loss of citizenship
  • Public humiliation: beards cut off, forced to cut grass with their teeth
  • Einsatzgruppen: killed 750,000
  • Pregnant Jewish women shot in stomach
  • Segregated in parks, schools, cafes etc.
  • Jewish businesses forced to close
  • 1934: Night of broken glass 
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R.A.D (National Labour Service)

  • All able-bodied young men aged 18-25 had to join for 6 months
  • Did public works: building hospitals, schools, autobahns, digging ditches, planting forests, farm work etc. 
  • Given weekly 'pocket money'
  • Helped reduce the mass unemployment
  • Lived in camps
  • Counted as their military training
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Nazi Propaganda and Censorship

  • Only Nazi publications in any form e.g film
  • 1933 Reich press law: controlled publications
  • Propaganda posters: portraying Jews badly, showing 'Aryan' family, Hitler promising "Work and bread". Placed on billboards and in popular areas.
  • No phone
  • Nuremburg rallies where Hitler was mobbed like a celebrity
  • Only German culture e.g. only German theatre and music
  • Nazi childrens books to indoctrinate youth
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Re-armament

  • Conscription introduced despite Treaty of Versailles ban
  • 1939: army grew from 100,000 to 1.4 million men
  • Job creation in ammunition factories
  • Popular phrase on propaganda: "guns before butter"
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Getting people back to work

  • Depression: In 1933, 6 million/30% of Germans were unemployed and 17 million were reliant on state benefits
  • 1938: only 250,000 unemployed
  • Nazi promise: "Work and Bread" and "Hitler is hope"
  • Women, those in camps, those in the R.A.D and Jews cut out of unemployment figures
  • Jews and women forced out of work
  • R.A.D counted as work doing public works
  • Jobs in re-armament factories and car factories
  • Workers had the Kdf
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