Hitler's Domestic Policies

Overall Aims
1. Volksgemeinschaft
  1. build classless society by replacing individual liberty with securing greater good of the nation
2. remove non-Nazi influence
3. shaping attitudes of the population to support Hitler's aims
4. focus on foreign policy and military
Women
1. Policies/actions
  1. • Legislation – women gradually removed from work and higher education
  2. • 1934- all married women forced out of careers in medicine, law, civil service
  3. • Encouraged married women to have many children and be a house wife – the more children, the more soldiers for their army
  4. • Boys and girls could not go to same schools and taught separate things – girls about motherhood; boys about war etc
2. Successes
  1. • Managed to reduce number of women working
  2. Rise in childbirth
  3. • More women leaving workplace as getting married
  4. • No female politicians in party
3. Failures
  1. • Conscription of men brought women back into workplace
  2. • 1939 – compulsory for under 25s made to work in agriculture (females)
  3. • 1943 – January - all women conscripted to work
4. Comments
  1. Was successful while it lasted
    1. • Woman were reduced from the workplace and there was an increase in childbirth,
    2. however, woman were brought back into the workforce during the war when men were conscripted – needed workers to build ammunition etc.
Youth
1. Policies/actions
  1. • 1936 – member of Hitler Youth compulsory
  2. • 1939 –closed down all catholic groups
  3. • Rewarded discipline and honour and punished weakness or uncommitted people
  4. 1936 - all other youth organisations banned
2. Main aims
  1. to train boys for war and girls for Motherhood.
  2. indoctrinate with Nazi ideology
  3. create loyalty and willingless to sacrifice for nation
    1. nationalism/anti-individualism
3. Successes
  1. • When war brought out, had many boys willing to fight – large army
  2. 95% loyal to Hitler
  3. Rapid membership increase after 1933
4. Failures
  1. • Illegal youth groups set up i.e. The working class Edelweiss Pirates and the middle/upper class Swing Movement (danced to American Jazz)
    1. Edelweiss pirates boycotted Hitler Youth activities and during war attacked Hitler Youth patrols
5. Comment
  1. • Brainwashed boys that being a soldier was what they should become and girls should be mothers – forced this path of life
Education
1. Policies/actions
  1. • Introduction of new subjects
  2. • Encouragement of national consciousness
  3. • Emphasis on folklore
  4. • Emphasis on sport for all
  5. • Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest influenced by Nazis’ interpretations (Social Darwinism)
    1. glorification of Aryan race and demonisation of Jews
  6. • Annexation of RE 1935
  7. • 1933 Civil Service Law – some teachers and lecturers dismissed; in 1939 all became Reich civil servants
2. Successes
  1. • Influence on students towards becoming nationalistic
  2. Increase in health
  3. • Willingness of millions of young people to fight – aim achieved
3. Failures
  1. • Quality of education declined and extra activities left youth lacking energy
  2. • Evacuation/ dismissal and conscription of teachers = disruption to education
  3. • Many scientists emigrated from Nazi Germany, including 20 past or future Nobel Prize winners
4. Comments
  1. • 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
    1. Teachers taught philosophy of Nazi Party before teaching students
  2. • Provisions to emphasise activities left students under pressure to meet targets – felt they were letting country down
Religion
1. Policies/actions
  1. Protestant Church
    1. • 1933 – Reich Church was set up with Ludwig Miller as Reich Bishop
    2. • Some saw a chance for religious removal as well as political
  2. Catholic Church
    1. • July 1933 - Signed a concordat with Nazis. The Vatican recognised Nazism and Nazi promised not to interfere with the CC
    2. • 1933-39 – Nazis tried to go back on their own policies
  3. The German Faith Movement
    1. • Some Nazis encouraged the GFM.
    2. • It held similar beliefs to Nazism
2. Successes
  1. Protestant Church
    1. • Ludwig Miller was anti-Semitic, a nationalist and a Nazi supporter so Nazis had influence on the Reich church
  2. Catholic Church
    1. • Catholic protest against Nazism was limited
    2. • Nazis closed all catholic schools by 1939, limited catholic influence on youth
  3. German Faith Movement
    1. • Beliefs fitted with Nazism and they encouraged people to abandon churches
3. Failures
  1. Protestant Church
    1. • Not all members approved of German Christians
    2. • September 1933 – Pastors Emergency League set up. Some were arrested – led to mass demonstrations
    3. • P.E.L broke from the Reich Church and formed the confessional Church
    4. • Hitler had to abandon attempts to control the PC
  2. Catholic Church
    1. • The Pope attacked Nazism – led to Catholic Christians being critical of Nazism
4. Comments
  1. • Churches as organisation supported/surrendered to Nazism
  2. • Made the churches subject to criticism
  3. • 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
1. Policies/actions
  1. • Covered Slaviks, Jews, gypsies etc
  2. • Seeked racial purity
  3. • Removing Jews from society – workforce, high ranking positions, teachers, lecturers
  4. • Jews – star of David/passport
  5. • 1938 – German people charging streets beating up Jews, holy buildings and shops
  6. • Ghettos – segregation of minorities, especially Jews
  7. • Immigration – signed to leave country
  8. • Concentration/death camps
2. Successes
  1. • No opposition to actions
  2. • Minorities segregated/immigrated out of country – moving ever closer to racial purity
  3. • Killed 11 million people
    1. Racial purity
3. Failures
  1. • Killed 11 million people – was it determined?
4. Comments
  1. • Successful – no opposition
  2. • HOWEVER - difficult to determine if planned to kill them as why immigrate in aim of racial purity when going to kill them?
  3. • Hitler may not have realised actions until later
Culture and the arts
1. Policies/actions
  1. • ‘blood and soil’ – peasants casted as representatives of ‘pure’ Aryan blood
  2. • Anti-feminism – emphasis on pre-industrial images of women
  3. • 1933 – Goebbels made minister of propaganda and popular enlightenment
  4. • 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’
  5. • Great German Art exhibition another propaganda pageant – ensured that arts ‘suitable’ for the masses
  6. • Many artists expelled or went into voluntary exile
  7. • Concert halls – Jewish composers Mahler and Mendelssohn were banned.
  8. • Modernist paintings were removed from art galleries.
  9. • Nazis tried to prohibit American jazz and foreign dance-band music (Niggermusik))
  10. • Spread of Volksempfanger – mass-produced radio increased number of listeners who could enjoy German classical music etc.
  11. • Wagnerian Bayreuth Festival – encouraged Hitler Youth events
  12. • Films – propagandist and partly to provide relaxation – Reich Film Chamber controlled both the content of German films and foreign films that could be shown
2. Successes
  1. • The use of the media were capable of emphasising the Germans’ shared statehood and race
  2. • 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
3. Failures
  1. • Art forms reduced to fake posturing
4. Comments
  1. • Successful in manipulating the media to express the aims of the Nazis
  2. • 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

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Hitler's Domestic Policies

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