Changing Lives, 1933–1939

• Aryan


  Racial idea that everyone should have blonde hair and blue eyes
• Blood and soil


  Traditional farming or peasant families as the ideal of German society
• Portraits depicting the Nazi ideal family

  • Wolfgang Vilrich portrait
  • Adolf Tischler painting
• When the Nazis came to power, unemployment was high and they promised work and bread
• How the Nazis tackled unemployment


  1. Public Works programs

  2. National Labor Service (RAD)

  3. Rearmament

  4. Invisible unemployment
• Impact of Nazi policies on workers


  • Factories and big businesses benefited
  • Wages decreased and working hours increased
  • Trade unions abolished and replaced by German Labor Front
  • Small businesses struggled to compete
• German Labor Front (DAF)


  Replaced trade unions, ordinary Germans could not easily get work without being a member
• Leisure organizations created by the DAF

  • Strength through Joy
  • Beauty of Labor
• Workers had no rights, were pressured to donate to Nazi charities, and had no choice in jobs
• Nazi aims towards women

  Increase birth rate, decrease women in work, remove women from politics
• Nazi policies towards women

  1. Banned from professional careers

  2. Propaganda to encourage staying home

  3. Marriage loans

  4. Mother's Cross awards
• The number of women in employment actually increased despite Nazi policies
• Nazi changes to education

  • Politically unreliable teachers forced to resign
  • Jewish teachers banned from non-Jewish schools
  • National Socialist Teachers League established
  • Teachers in fear of student spies
• Nazi specialist schools


  • Napola military cadet schools
  • Adolf Hitler schools
• By 1939, only 6,173 students were attending the Nazi specialist schools
• When the Nazis came to power, they changed education to indoctrinate and control young people
• Changes to education under the Nazis

  1. Politically unreliable teachers forced to resign

  2. Jewish teachers not allowed to teach in non-Jewish schools

  3. National Socialist Teachers League established to teach Nazi ideology

  4. Teachers had to follow Nazi policies or risk arrest

  5. Students acted as classroom spies
• Nazi schools to create Future Leaders

  • Napola or military cadet schools run by SS or SA officers
  • Adolf Hitler schools run by Hitler Youth leaders, focused on physical and military education
• By 1939, only 6,173 students were being educated at 16 Napola and 10 Adolf Hitler schools
• In 1933, 20 teachers lost their jobs for refusing to teach Nazi ideas, by 1937 97% of teachers were part of the Nazi Teachers League
• Changes to school curriculum under the Nazis

  1. More PE lessons to keep young healthy

  2. History focused on unfair treatment of Jews, Hitler portrayed as German hero

  3. Biology taught about Aryan racial superiority

  4. Physics focused on explosives and firearms

  5. Geography taught about lands in the East Germany should take

  6. New subjects on Nazi race ideas and Eugenics
• The curriculum had a different focus for boys (physical education) and girls (preparing for motherhood)
• Hitler Youth


  Youth group set up by the Nazis in 1926, membership was voluntary until 1939 when it became compulsory
• Hitler Youth


  • Brainwashed members with Nazi songs, books, parades
  • Boys trained to be strong, fit, fearless and ready for war
  • Girls prepared for roles as mothers in Nazi society
  • Enjoyed social activities, sports, camps
• Membership of the Hitler Youth grew from 5.4 million in 1936 to around 8 million by 1939
• However, 3 million young people never joined the Hitler Youth, and some joined opposition groups
• The Nazis were anti-Semitic and set out to persecute Jewish people when they came to power in 1933
• Aryan


  The master race according to the Nazis
• Unter-menschen


  Racially inferior sub-humans, including Jews, Romani, black people, Slavs
• The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Jews of German citizenship and forbid marriage/sexual relations between Jews and German citizens
• Persecution of Jews 1933-1939


  1. Boycott of Jewish businesses

  2. Jews banned from government jobs, schools, public places

  3. Anti-Semitic propaganda in education and media

  4. Increasing anti-Semitic laws and violence, culminating in Kristallnacht in 1938
• By 1939, Jews were further excluded from society, banned from many professions and activities, and forced to hand over valuables when leaving the country