Key Question 4: Life during WW2

• Changing conditions on the Home Front

  When Poland was invaded in 1939, special action squads (Einsatzgruppen) made up of SS and police units murdered senior Polish officers, Polish clergy as well as Polish Jews in newly captured areas. Thousands were executed in a matter of weeks

  • Rations of food, soap and texiles began in Germany in August

  1939. By the summer of 1940, 50 per cent of German workers were involved in war production and the proportion of women workers increased dramatically, reversing key Nazi policies of the 1930s.
• In the last stage of the war British and American bombers reduced most German cities to rubble in

  'round the clock' carpet bombing.

  By the end of the war at least 500,000 German civilians had been killed by bombing and most German cities had been ruined, with millions made homeless.
• The treatment of Jews

  • Nazi policies towards the Jews underwent a dramatic change in

  1941-2. Mass killings of Jews, irrespective of age and sex, took place in the wake of the advancing German armies. The details of the 'Final Solution' were worked out by leading Nazis in 1942:

  Purpose-built extermination camps were built in Eastern Europe to kill Jews from all over Europe. In all it has been estimated that 6 million European Jews were murdered. This horrific genocide is known as 'the Holocaust'.
• Opposition to the Nazis

  Martin Niemöller: His leadership of the Confessional Church as a rival to the 'German Christians' had led to his arrest.

  He spent nearly eight years in concentration camps and was lucky to survive.
• Opposition to Nazis

  The White Rose Group: This was organisation at Munich University which was very critical of the loss of freedom by ordinary Germans. Its most famous members were Sophie and Hans Scholl were executed for distributing anti-Nazi and anti-war leaflets.
• Opposition to Nazis

  Edelweiss Pirates

  July Bomb Plot (1944): A group of army officers plotted to kill Hitler as Germany's defeat looked inevitable. The bomb plot only injured Hitler rather than killing him.
• Impact of defeat

  • Hitler committed suicide on 30th April 1945 due to Germany S defeat. In May 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies. It has been estimated that the average daily calories for all Germans went down from 2,000 in 1944 to 1,412 in 1945-6. To the misery of this life was added the huge problems of inflation and shortage of most products.
• Impact of defeat

  • The major Nazi war criminals were put on trial at Nuremberg in 1946: twelve (including Hermann Goering) were sentenced to death, seven (including Albert Speer) were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Trials of other Nazis prison camp guards and army officers continued for many years.