1933-1939 LIFE IN NAZI GERMANY

• Nazi ideal woman


  Loyal, supportive, mother, good at traditional skills like sewing, cooking, and folk dancing
• Nazi ideal for women summarised as

  • Kinder, Küche, Kirke (Children, Kitchen and Church)
• Many Germans supported these traditional family values ideas
• Weimar Berlin was seen as corrupt by some people
• Nazi propaganda for women

  • Encouraged simple clothing, no make-up, and traditional hair style
• Marriage Loan


  1. 1,000 marks to encourage marriage

  2. Couple could keep 1/4 of loan for each child
• Awards for mothers


  • Bronze Cross for 4 children
  • Gold Cross for 8 children
• Only 'racially pure' women were encouraged to have children, travellers and disabled people were forcibly sterilised
• Banning of women from jobs

  1. 1933: Banned from civil service jobs

  2. 1936: Banned from jobs such as lawyers
• Number of university places for women reduced to 10%, grammar schools for girls closed down
• Nazis needed more workers from 1936 onwards


  More women went out to work
• Most of the women working were in low status, poorly paid jobs
• Women who opposed the regime would be sent to a concentration camp for women, at Moringen
• Hitler Youth


  Main Nazi youth movement for boys, founded in 1920s, initially included camping, hiking and sports, later became more focused on preparation for war
• Compulsory membership of Hitler Youth

  1. Enforced in 1936, all other youth organisations banned

  2. Parents who refused to let their children join would be investigated
• Other Nazi youth groups

  • German Young Folk (10-14-year-old boys)
  • League of German Maidens (14-18-year-old girls)
• League of German Maidens

  • Girls able to do sport and outdoor activities, but also taught domestic tasks like ironing, cooking, and cleaning
• Changes to education


  1. Teachers made to join Nazi Teachers' league

  2. Nazi-approved textbooks used

  3. History lessons taught Germany 'stabbed in the back' in WWI

  4. Maths lessons included calculating cost of disabled people

  5. Lessons on 'eugenics' and Nazi racial theories
• Living standards had been very bad in Germany during the Great Depression, with high unemployment and business failures
• National Labour Service (RAD)

  1. Employed men aged 18-25 on public works projects

  2. Poorly paid, strict discipline, prepared for military service

  3. Compulsory from 1935
• Rearmament led to more jobs in munition factories, aircraft factories, steel and textiles mills, and coal mines
• Conscription introduced in 1935, army grew to 1.4 million men by 1939
• Nazis manipulated unemployment figures to make them look better than they were
• Changes to workers and trade unions

  1. Trade unions banned, replaced by German Labour Front (DAF)

  2. Workers couldn't ask for higher wages or change jobs without permission

  3. Average working hours increased by 6 hours per week

  4. Big businesses benefitted with large profits
• Prices of groceries, such as bread, went up and there were food shortages, but most workers had enough to eat to survive
• Strength through Joy (KdF)

  • Provided cinema and theatre tickets, sports events, evening classes and holidays, but most people only got to go to the cheaper events
• Beauty of Labour (SdA)


  • Workers could improve their workplaces, but had to do this in their own time
• Workers were promised Volkswagen cars if they paid 5 marks a week, but no one actually got a car
• Untermenschen


  'Subhuman' people, including travellers and Jewish people, according to Nazi racial theory
• Persecution of minorities


  1. Travellers and disabled people forcibly sterilised

  2. Many travellers sent to concentration camps

  3. Children with disabilities murdered (T4 programme)

  4. Gay people faced persecution, books by gay authors banned, many sent to concentration camps
• Persecution of Jewish people

  1. 1933: Banned from civil service and teaching jobs

  2. 1935: Nuremberg Laws took away German citizenship and banned sex/marriage with Germans

  3. 1938: Kristallnacht - Jewish synagogues, businesses, cemeteries attacked, Jewish people fined 1 billion marks

  4. After Kristallnacht: Jewish people banned from state schools, universities, owning businesses