Workers, Farmers, and Businesses

• Hitler and the Nazis came to power because they promised to use radical methods to solve the country’s two main problems:

  • unemployment
  • crisis in German farming
• For the sake of work and other benefits, the majority of the German people gave up their political freedom
• 1933 - the 5 million German people felt that Hitler had made up his promises

  • this was because the worst of the depression was over but they were also committed to solve main problems
• Dr Hjalmar Schacht - an economist that organised Germany’s finances to fund a huge programme of work creation aka National Labour Service
• The National Labour Service - sent men on public work projects and conservation programmes

  • built network of motorways or autobahns
  • railways were extended or built from scratch
  • major house-building programmes and new public building projects such as the Reich Chancellery in Berlin
• 1935 - Hitler reintroduced conscription for the Germany army

  • reduced unemployment
  • need for weapons, equipment and uniforms created jobs in the coal mines, steel and textile mills
  • Engineers and designers gained new opportunities, particularly when Hitler decreed that Germany would have a world-class air force
• 1936 - announced a 4 year plan under the control of Goering to get the Germany economy ready for war

  • one of the very few clear policy documents that Hitler ever wrote
• Economic recovery boosted Hitler’s popularity because they boosted national pride

  • Germans began to feel that their country was finally emerging from the humiliation of the Great War and the TOV, putting itself on equal footing with the other great powers
• Hitler promised and delivered lower unemployment which helped to ensure popularity among industrial workers

  • they were important to the Nazis as Hitler needed goodd workers to create the industries that would help to make Germany great and establish a new German empire in Eastern Europe
• Hitler won industrial workers over through (1):

  • propaganda praising the workers and trying to associate them with Hitler
  • schemes such as Strength Through Joy (KDF) that gave them cheap theatre and cinema tickets, organised courses, trips and sports events, and even cut price cruises on luxury lines
• Hitler won industrial workers over through (2):

  • many thousands of workers saved five marks a week in the state scheme to buy the Volkswagen Beetle, the ‘people’s car’ - designed by Ferdinand Porsche and became a symbol of the prosperous new Germany, even though no workers ever recieved a car because all car production was halted by the war in 1939
  • Beauty of Labour movement - improved conditions in factors, introduced features not seen in workplaces before such as washing facilities and low-cost canteens
• The price of these advances was that the workers lost their main politiical party, the SDP

  • lost trade unions and for many workers this remained a source of bitter resentment
  • workers had to joing the DAF (General Labour Front) run by Dr Robert Ley - kept strict control of workers
  • workers could not strike for better pay and conditions
  • in some area, they were prevented from moving to better-paid jobs
  • wages remained comparatively low, although prices were also strictly controlled
• By the late 1930s, makny workers were grumbling that their standard of living was still lower than it had been before the depression
• September 1933 - Hitler introduced the Reich Food Estate under Richard Darre

  • set up central boards to buy agricultural produce from the farmers and distribute it to markets across Germany
  • gave peasant farmers a guranteed market for their goods at guranteed prices
• Reich Entailed Farm Law - gave peasants state protection for their farms

  • bank could not seize their land if they could not pay loans or mortgages
  • ensured peasants’ farms stayed in their hands
  • had a racial aim as part of their philosophy was ‘blood and soil’ - the belief that the peasant farmers were the basis of Germany’s master race as they would be the backbone of the new German empire in the east
  • their way of life had been protected
• Some peasants were not thrilled with the regime’s measures

  • Reich Food Estate meant that efficient, go-ahead farmers were held back by having to work through the same processes as less efficient farmers
  • Reich Entailedd Farm Law caused banks unwilling to lend money to farmers and meant that only the eldest child inherited the farm
  • many children of farmers left the land to work for better pay in Germany’s industries
  • rural depopulation ran at about 3% per year in the 1930s
• Many middle-class business people were grateful to the Nazis for eliminating the Communist threat to their businesses and properties

  • liked the way Nazis seemed to bring order to Germany
• If you owned a small engineering firm, you were likely to do well from government orders as rearmament spending grew in the 1930s

  • If you produced consumer goods or ran a small shop, you may struggle
  • large department stores which were taking business away from local shops were not closd despite Hitler’s promises
• Hitler wanted all ‘racially pure’ Germans to think of themselves as part of a national community aka Volksgemeinschaft

  • workers, farmers, and so on, would no longer see themselves was primarly workers or farmers but as Germans
  • first loyalty would not be their own social group but Germany and the Führer
  • would be proud to belong to a great nation that was racially and cultureally superior to other nations that they would put the iinterests of Germany before their own
• Hitler’s policies towards each group were designed to help win loyalty to the Nazi state
• Evidence suggests that they never quite succeeded in gaining full loyaylty

  • 1930s - Germans did not lose self-interest or embrace the nationial community wholeheartedly
• However, they did not totally fail in getting loyalty

  • 1930s - Germans did have a strong sense of national pride and loyalty towards Hitler
  • for the majority of Germans, the beenfits of Nazi rule made them willing to accept some central control in the interests of making Germany great again
• 1933 - 6 million Germans out of work
• 1939 - 500,000 Germans out of work
• Compulsory national labour service (RAD) - for young men (18-25) to work on public works projects for 6 months
• 1935 - conscription reintroduced

  • luftwffe creation (air force)
• They increased iron, oil, and explosives production

  • industries changed from producing consumer goods → synthetic materials
• They tightened prices, controlled wages, and forced labour

  • economy did grow and unemployment did drop
  • 1933-39 - doubled the amount of industrial production
• 1938 - govt investment over 20 billion marks
• The worst of the depression was gone so the recovery wasn’t a miralce

  • forced Jews form professions and confiscated businesses
• 1929 & 1938 - still had the same wage levels
• 1953 to 1959 - debt quadrupled

  • 60% of the budget was spent on rearmament