Life in Nazi Germany 1933-39🇩🇪

• nazi veiws on women and family:

  -womens role was mother and housewife while the man provided for the family

  -they should adopt a natural appearance with simple plaited hair, long skirts and no makeup

  -in 1934 the nazis appointed a Reich Women's leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink who merged all existing women's organisations into the German womens enterprise (DFW)

  -DFW has 6 million members 1939

  -by 1939 1.7 million women had attended DFW courses on childcare, cooking and sewing
• women, marriage and family:

  -nazis wanted reverse the fall in birth rate from 2 million a year in 1900 to 1 million by 1933

  -the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage in 1933 gave loans of 1000 marks to newly married couples if the women gave up her job for each child they had a quarter of the loan was written off

  -in 1938 the divorce laws were changed so the inability to have children was grounds for divorce

  -the mothers cross was awarded to women who had lots of children; bronze for 4, silver for 6 and gold for 8

  -Hitler youth had to salute those with the mothers cross

  -if a family had a 10th child they were encouraged to call it Adolf and Hitler became the godfather
• motherhood:

  -the lebensborn (fountain of life) programme was set up in 1935 providing nursery and financial help for women who had children with SS men but from 1938 it encouraged breeding genetically pure children between Aryan women and SS men -540 babies were born under this programme 1938-1941
• women and employment:

  -nazi propaganda revived the concept of the three K's, Kinder, Kuche, Kirche meaning children, kitchen, church

  -women were banned from professions such as teaching, medicine, and civil service so 360000 had left these jobs by 1934

  -from 1936 women couldn't be judges or lawyers and grammar school was closed to girls from 1937

  -girls attending university falling from 17000 in 1932 to 6000 in 1939
• results of nazi polices towards women:

  -fewer women went to university, birth rate increased and unemployment in men fell

  -not all women were convinced and the Reich women's leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was disliked for her rigid and old fashioned ideas

  -some nazi policies were reversed as rearment and the build up to war led to women returning to work

  -in 1937 women with marriage loans were allowed to work again so by 1939 7 million women were in work compared to 5 million 1933
• nazi policies towards young:

  -should be brought up to be proud Germans

  -should be supporters of the nazi party and look up to Hitler

  -boys should be strong and healthy to fight in German army or work productively for German economy

  -girls should be strong and healthy to be fertile mothers

  -in 1933 all youth groups other than Hitler youth for boys and BDM for girls were banned

  -in 1936 sporting activities could only be accessed through the Hitler youth

  -from 1939 the Hitler youth was compulsory between ages of 10 and 18
• Hitler youth:

  -boys separated into Pimpfen 6-10, Deutsche Jung Volk 10-14 and Hitler Jugend 14-18

  -boys were given political training including residential courses and scheduled lessons on German heroes and evil Jews

  -they were expected to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler and report on anyone disloyal to Hitler

  -there was physical and military training

  -at 14 they could start specialising in naval, flying or motor sections

  -there was also character training to toughen boys up including being plunged into ice cold water
• league of German maidens (BDM):

  -Jungmadel 10-14 and Bund Deutscher Madel 14-21

  -they had political lectures and camping and marching

  -there was no military training

  -they had domestic training, cooking, ironing, sewing

  -they had lessons on racial hygiene and how to keep racial purity by marrying Aryan men
• nazi control through education:

  -in April 1933 the nazis passed a law allowing the sacking of any teachers not conforming to their educational methods

  -in the state of prussia alone, 180 teachers were dismissed

  -all teachers had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler and be members of the Nazi teachers league which ran political education courses

  -all classrooms had nazi symbols and flags and a portrait of Hitler

  -each lesson would begin and end with the nazi salute and heil hitler
• school curriculum:

  -maths questions changed to be vehicles for nazi ideas promiting the military, racial purity or hatred of minorities

  -new subjects like race studies were introduced

  -big focus on physical health, and amount of pe doubled, one sixth of the timetable was sport by 1939

  -girls curriculum included domestic science for motherhood

  -from 1935, all textbooks had to be approved by the nazis

  mein kampf became a compulsory text and history books focused on the treaty of versailles being a stab in the back

  -elite boarding schools called napolas were set up to train future army and ss

  -they were taught by SA and SS members

  -there were 16 napolas by 1939
• nazi policies to reduce employment:

  -in 1933 the labour service (RAD) was set up to provide work for the unemployed

  -they repaired roads, planted trees, drained marshes but also did military parades and drill in uniform

  -pay was low but the RAD was compulsory by 1935 with 422000 members

  -another measure was public work schemes, building autobahns, bridges and buildings

  -by 1935 125000 workers were building autbahns and by 1938 3500 of the planned 7000 km had been completed
• unemployment:

  -Hitler reintroduced military conscription and by 1939 there were 1.36 million men in the armed forces including 900,000 in the army -spending on the armaments industry rose from 3.5 billion marks in 1933 to 26 billion by 1939 -by 1935 72,000 worked in aircraft construction compared to 4000 two years earlier -unemployment was reduced artificially by 'invisible unemployment' meaning women, Jews, and those in concentration camps or RAD were not counted -these measures took 1.5 million out of unemployment figures
• success of reducing unemployment:

  -unemployment fell from over 5 million in 1933 to 302,000 in 1939

  -falling everywhere in the 1930's as the world recovered from great depression

  -figures manipulated with invisible unemployment

  -many jobs created involved very high levels of government spending that could not be maintained long term
• standard of living:

  -increased employment meant more workers had better and regular incomes bit this did not benefit minority groups

  -work in the Labour Service was often harsh and poorly paid

  -wages rose by 20% from 1933-39 but the price of food rose by the same level so real wages weren't rising

  -skilled workers in the armaments industry had higher wage rises and could afford more luxury goods

  -car ownership trebled in the 1930's while the sale of goods in shops increased by 45% 1933-1939

  -average working week went up from 43 hrs to 49 hrs 1933-1939
• nazi organisations for the standard of living:

  -the labour front (DAF)

  -DAF replaced the trade unions which nazis had banned

  -the DAF ensured minimum levels of pay and maximum length of the working week

  -workers lost their right to negotiate pay and conditions

  -max working week went up by 6 hours 1933-39

  -the DAF would punish workers who disrupted production

  -it was a way for the state to control employers and employees
• strength through joy:

  -the KDF was a division of the DAF that intended to offer rewards to workers to make work more enjoyable and productive

  -thousands of sporting events, films, theatres and foreign holidays were provided as prizes

  -by 1936 35 million workers had joined the KDF

  -they set up another scheme to provide affordable family cars for workers

  Porsche designed the Volkswagen which around 400,000 workers contributed 5 marks a week to have their cars built

  -although the money allowed the factories to be set up, in 1938 they were switched to producing arms, meaning only a handful of cars were produced
• Beauty of labour:

  -the SDA

  -separate division of the KDF which provided better working facilities like changing rooms and toilets

  -by 1938 the nazi party claimed 34,000 companies had improved their facilities taking advantage if tax breaks to help with building and decorating costs

  -many workers ended up doing the work themselves for no extra pay and employers even threatened those who didn't volunteer
• nazi racial beleifs:

  -based on ideas of eugenics and racial hygiene

  -eugenics is mistaken theory of selective breeding of humans

  -nazis sterilised those unsuitable to be parents

  -racial hygiene was taught in schools

  -mixed race marriages were banned in the nuremburg laws of 1935

  -Hitler said that the Slavs of eatern Europe were sub human (untermenschen) and gypsies and Jewish were unworthy of life (lebensunwertes)
• treatment if slavic peope:

  -same from Eastern Europe

  -they were untermenschen and German people deserved to take their land for living space (lebensraum)
• treatment of sinti and roma communities:

  -known as gypsies

  -travelling lifestyle and seen as a threat to racial purity who didn't pay taxes

  -there were 26,000 gypsies in Germany in 1933 and many were sent to concentration camps

  -from 1938 they were put on a register and tested for racial purity

  -from 1939 orders were given for their removal from Germany by deportation
• treatment of homosexuals:

  -believed gay people lowered moral standards and racial purity

  -laws strengthened in 1935 with those imprisoned for homosexuality rising from 766 in 1935 to 8000 in 1938

  -5000 died in concentration camps
• people with disabilities:

  -saw them as a burden on society who weekend the racial purity

  -in 1933 the Law for the prevention of hereditary diseased offspring led to the sterilisation of 400,000 people who were ill, alcoholic, blind or deaf

  -in 1939 the nazis ordered the T4 programme to euthanize children with disabilities that led to over 5000 deaths
• Jewish people:

  -from 1933 a flood of propaganda described Jews as vermin who were against Germany despite there only being 437,000 of them in Germany, 0.6% of population

  -on 1 April 1933 there was a 1 day boycott of all Jewish businesses where SA men stopped people entering

  -jews banned from government jobs, civil service and teaching April 1934

  -in 1934 Jews banned from parks and swimming pools

  -may 1935 Jews banned from army

  -September 1935 nuremburg laws denied Jews German citizenship and they were forbidden to marry or have sexual relations with non Jews, and they had to wear a yellow star
• Jewish people:

  -lull in persecution due to 1936 Berlin Olympics

  -March 1938 Jews had to register all possessions

  -July 1938 Jews forced to carry seperate identity cards

  -9/10 November 1938 wave of violence across Germany called Kristallnacht

  -hundreds of synagogues homes and businesses destroyed, over 100 Jews killed and 20,000 sent to concentration camps

  -by 1939 nazis decided to remove all Jews from Germany so in April they were evicted and sent to ghettos awaiting deportation