Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Hitler's Domestic Policies
- Overall Aims
- Volksgemeinschaft
- build classless society by
replacing individual liberty
with securing greater good
of the nation
- remove non-Nazi influence
- shaping attitudes of the population to support Hitler's aims
- focus on foreign policy and military
- Women
- Policies/actions
- • Legislation – women gradually removed
from work and higher education
- • 1934- all married women forced out of careers in
medicine, law, civil service
- • Encouraged married women to have many children and be a house wife – the more
children, the more soldiers for their army
- • Boys and girls could not go to same schools
and taught separate things – girls about
motherhood; boys about war etc
- Successes
- • Managed to reduce number of women working
- Rise in childbirth
- • More women leaving workplace as getting married
- • No female politicians in party
- Failures
- • Conscription of men brought women back into
workplace
- • 1939 – compulsory for under 25s made to work in agriculture (females)
- • 1943 – January - all women conscripted to work
- Comments
- Was successful while it
lasted
- • Woman were reduced from the workplace and
there was an increase in childbirth,
- however, woman were brought back into the workforce during the war when
men were conscripted – needed workers to build ammunition etc.
- Youth
- Policies/actions
- • 1936 – member of Hitler Youth compulsory
- • 1939 –closed down all catholic groups
- • Rewarded discipline and honour and punished weakness or uncommitted people
- 1936 - all other youth organisations banned
- Main aims
- to train boys for war and girls for
Motherhood.
- indoctrinate with Nazi ideology
- create loyalty and
willingless to sacrifice
for nation
- nationalism/anti-individualism
- Successes
- • When war brought out, had many boys willing to fight – large army
- 95% loyal to Hitler
- Rapid membership increase after 1933
- Failures
- • Illegal youth groups set up i.e. The working
class Edelweiss Pirates and the middle/upper
class Swing Movement (danced to American
Jazz)
- Edelweiss pirates boycotted Hitler Youth
activities and during war attacked Hitler Youth
patrols
- Comment
- • Brainwashed boys that
being a soldier was what
they should become and
girls should be mothers
– forced this path of life
- Education
- Policies/actions
- • Introduction of new subjects
- • Encouragement of national consciousness
- • Emphasis on folklore
- • Emphasis on sport for all
- • Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest influenced by
Nazis’ interpretations (Social Darwinism)
- glorification of Aryan race and demonisation of Jews
- • Annexation of RE 1935
- • 1933 Civil Service Law – some teachers and
lecturers dismissed; in 1939 all became Reich civil
servants
- Successes
- • Influence on students towards becoming nationalistic
- Increase in health
- • Willingness of millions of young people to fight – aim achieved
- Failures
- • Quality of education declined and extra
activities left youth lacking energy
- • Evacuation/ dismissal and conscription of teachers = disruption to education
- • Many scientists emigrated from Nazi Germany,
including 20 past or future Nobel Prize winners
- Comments
- • Even though met aim to influence the minds of the youth, loss
of teachers meant that students could not be fully educated in the
new subjects – could not completely achieve target
- Teachers taught philosophy of Nazi Party before teaching students
- • Provisions to emphasise activities left students under pressure
to meet targets – felt they were letting country down
- Religion
- Policies/actions
- Protestant Church
- • 1933 – Reich Church was set up with
Ludwig Miller as Reich Bishop
- • Some saw a chance for religious
removal as well as political
- Catholic Church
- • July 1933 - Signed a
concordat with Nazis. The
Vatican recognised Nazism
and Nazi promised not to
interfere with the CC
- • 1933-39 – Nazis tried to go back on their own policies
- The German Faith Movement
- • Some Nazis encouraged the GFM.
- • It held similar beliefs to Nazism
- Successes
- Protestant Church
- • Ludwig Miller was
anti-Semitic, a
nationalist and a
Nazi supporter so
Nazis had influence
on the Reich church
- Catholic Church
- • Catholic protest against Nazism was limited
- • Nazis closed all catholic schools by 1939,
limited catholic influence on youth
- German Faith Movement
- • Beliefs fitted with Nazism and
they encouraged people to
abandon churches
- Failures
- Protestant Church
- • Not all members
approved of German
Christians
- • September 1933 –
Pastors Emergency
League set up. Some were
arrested – led to mass
demonstrations
- • P.E.L broke from
the Reich Church
and formed the
confessional Church
- • Hitler had to abandon
attempts to control the PC
- Catholic Church
- • The Pope attacked Nazism – led to
Catholic Christians being critical of
Nazism
- Comments
- • Churches as
organisation
supported/surrendered
to Nazism
- • Made the churches
subject to criticism
- • Hitler and Nazis not
success in controlling –
lack of control led to
formation of PEL and the
criticism of Nazism
through the attacked by
the Pope
- Minorities
- Policies/actions
- • Covered
Slaviks, Jews,
gypsies etc
- • Seeked racial purity
- • Removing Jews from society –
workforce, high ranking
positions, teachers, lecturers
- • Jews – star of David/passport
- • 1938 – German people charging
streets beating up Jews, holy
buildings and shops
- • Ghettos – segregation of
minorities, especially Jews
- • Immigration –
signed to leave
country
- • Concentration/death camps
- Successes
- • No opposition to actions
- • Minorities
segregated/immigrated out of
country – moving ever closer
to racial purity
- • Killed 11 million people
- Racial purity
- Failures
- • Killed 11 million
people – was it
determined?
- Comments
- • Successful – no opposition
- • HOWEVER - difficult to determine if
planned to kill them as why immigrate
in aim of racial purity when going to
kill them?
- • Hitler may not have realised
actions until later
- Culture and the arts
- Policies/actions
- • ‘blood and soil’ – peasants casted as representatives of ‘pure’ Aryan blood
- • Anti-feminism – emphasis on
pre-industrial images of women
- • 1933 – Goebbels made minister of propaganda and popular enlightenment
- • May 1933 – Goebbels co-ordinated a ‘burning of the books’ – symbolically and
physically destroyed works associated with Jews, Bolsheviks and ‘Negroes’ as well
as anything ‘un-German’
- • Great German Art exhibition another
propaganda pageant – ensured that arts
‘suitable’ for the masses
- • Many artists expelled or went into voluntary exile
- • Concert halls – Jewish composers Mahler and Mendelssohn were banned.
- • Modernist paintings were removed from art galleries.
- • Nazis tried to prohibit American jazz and foreign dance-band music (Niggermusik))
- • Spread of Volksempfanger – mass-produced radio increased number of
listeners who could enjoy German classical music etc.
- • Wagnerian Bayreuth Festival – encouraged Hitler Youth events
- • Films – propagandist and partly to provide relaxation – Reich Film Chamber
controlled both the content of German films and foreign films that could be
shown
- Successes
- • The use of the media were capable of emphasising the Germans’ shared statehood and race
- • Reich Film Chamber controlled both the content of German films and foreign films that could be shown – only show
what they want the audience to see
- Failures
- • Art forms reduced to fake posturing
- Comments
- • Successful in manipulating the media to
express the aims of the Nazis
- • Art forms were reduced to fake posturing – seen
that artistic expression picked up from where
Weimar Republic had left off as though Nazi era
had never existed