Germans Under the Nazis Flashcards
All 59 cards in this deck
What was the Gestapo and what powers did it have?
The Nazi secret state police; they could search without warrants and detain, torture and imprison suspects without trial.
What was the SS and who led it?
Hitler's elite blackshirt force, led by Heinrich Himmler; it ran the concentration camps and could arrest and imprison people without trial.
What were the concentration camps used for in 1933–39?
SS-run camps, such as Dachau (opened 1933), where political opponents and 'undesirables' were held without trial and forced to do hard labour.
True or false? The Gestapo was a huge force with agents watching every German.
False. It was fairly small and relied heavily on ordinary Germans and block wardens informing on their neighbours.
What was the People's Court, set up in 1934?
A court that tried cases of treason in secret; only limited evidence was needed to bring a case and almost all defendants were found guilty.
Who was Joseph Goebbels and what post did he hold?
One of Hitler's most trusted associates, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda from 1933; he censored and controlled what Germans read, heard and saw.
What was the People's Receiver (Volksempfänger)?
A cheap, heavily subsidised radio; by 1939 most German families owned one, and speeches were also broadcast over loudspeakers in streets and workplaces.
What were the Nuremberg Rallies?
Huge annual Nazi rallies that highlighted Nazi ideals and showed the strength and unity of the regime; they were filmed for cinema newsreels.
What did the Nazis do to impress the world at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
Built a huge new 100,000-seat stadium, ran the Games on an extravagant scale and made a film about them; Germany won the most medals.
What kinds of art and architecture did the Nazis approve of?
Art showing heroic Aryans, family life and the countryside, and huge buildings in a classical Greek or Roman style; modern art was condemned as 'degenerate'.
How were films controlled in Nazi Germany?
All scripts had to be approved by Goebbels, and every showing began with a Nazi newsreel.
What was the Concordat of July 1933?
An agreement between Hitler and the Pope: the Nazis would not interfere with the Catholic Church, and the Church would stay out of politics.
What was the Reich Church?
A Nazified Protestant Church set up in 1933 under Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, uniting Protestant churches under Nazi control.
Give two ways ordinary Germans showed they did not conform to Nazi rule.
Refusing the 'Heil Hitler' greeting and salute, telling jokes about the Führer, listening to foreign radio stations, or complaining about the regime.
Who was Pastor Martin Niemöller?
A Protestant pastor who led the Pastors' Emergency League and the Confessional Church against the Reich Church; he was arrested in 1937 and sent to a concentration camp.
Who were the Edelweiss Pirates?
Groups of mainly working-class young people who wore an edelweiss badge, went hiking and camping, sang anti-Nazi songs and taunted or attacked Hitler Youth patrols.
Who were the Swing Youth?
Mostly middle-class young people who listened and danced to banned American and British jazz and swing music, grew their hair long and mixed with Jewish students.
What were the 'three Ks' in Nazi policy towards women?
Kinder, Küche, Kirche – children, kitchen, church: the roles the Nazis said women should focus on.
Why did the Nazis make motherhood the primary role for women?
They were worried about the falling birth rate, and believed mothers were responsible for the future of the nation.
What was the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage (1933)?
Newly-wed couples were given a loan of 1,000 marks; a quarter of it was cancelled for each child born, so four children cleared the loan.
What was the Hitler Youth?
The Nazi youth organisation for boys (14–18), run by Baldur von Schirach, which used drill, camping and military-style training to prepare them to be soldiers and loyal Nazis.
What was the League of German Maidens (BDM)?
The Nazi youth organisation for girls (14–18), which taught physical fitness and domestic skills to prepare them for their role as mothers.
How did the Nazis control teachers?
Teachers had to join the Nazi Teachers' League and swear loyalty to Hitler; Jewish teachers were dismissed and others sent on Nazi training courses.
How did the Nazis change the school curriculum from 1933?
Physical training time was greatly increased, Race Studies and Eugenics were added, and history and biology were rewritten to teach Nazi racial ideas.
What was the National Labour Service (RAD)?
A scheme making young unemployed men do six months' manual work on public projects such as tree planting, living in camps for low pay; compulsory for men aged 18–25 from 1935.
How did building the autobahns help reduce unemployment?
The new motorways were a public works scheme that employed around 100,000 men at a time by the mid-1930s.
How did rearmament reduce unemployment after 1933?
Businesses took on more workers to make planes, weapons and uniforms; from 1935 conscription also took men aged 18–25 into military service.
What is meant by 'invisible unemployment' in Nazi Germany?
People left out of the official jobless figures – such as women, Jews (who lost citizenship in 1935) and men in the labour service – so unemployment looked lower than it was.
What was the German Labour Front (DAF)?
The Nazi organisation led by Robert Ley that replaced trade unions in 1933; it set wages and hours, and workers could not strike.
What was Strength Through Joy (KdF)?
A Labour Front scheme offering workers cheap leisure – holidays, cruises, concerts, sport and theatre trips – plus a savings scheme for a 'people's car'.
What was Beauty of Labour (SdA)?
A Labour Front scheme to improve workplaces – better lighting, safety, washrooms and canteens – though workers often had to make the improvements in their own time.
True or false? German workers worked fewer hours in 1939 than in 1933.
False. Average working hours rose, from about 43 hours a week in 1933 to around 49 by 1939.
What did the Nazis mean by the 'master race'?
The Aryans – supposedly tall, blond, blue-eyed Germans – whom they believed were racially superior; other groups were labelled Untermenschen (subhumans).
How were Roma and Sinti people treated by the Nazis?
Classed as racially inferior and 'workshy', banned from marrying Germans under the Nuremberg Laws, and from 1936 forced into special camps.
How did the Nazis treat people with disabilities?
The 1933 Sterilisation Law allowed the compulsory sterilisation of people with hereditary conditions; around 350,000 people were sterilised.
What happened in the boycott of Jewish shops and businesses in April 1933?
SA members stood outside Jewish shops, businesses and offices with signs telling Germans not to buy from Jews; the official boycott lasted one day.
What were the Nuremberg Laws (1935)?
The Reich Citizenship Law took German citizenship from Jews, and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour banned marriage and relationships between Jews and non-Jews.
What was 'Kristallnacht'?
The 'Night of Broken Glass', 9–10 November 1938, when synagogues, Jewish shops and homes were attacked across Germany; around 100 Jews were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps.
What was the Reich Chamber of Culture (1933)?
A body overseen by Goebbels that controlled the arts. Writers, artists, musicians and film-makers had to belong to it in order to work, so anyone whose work clashed with Nazi ideas could be shut out.
Why did rising wages in Nazi Germany (1933–39) not leave most workers much better off?
Average wages rose by about a fifth, but food prices rose by a similar amount, cancelling out most of the gain.
What was the Four Year Plan (1936) and who ran it?
Hermann Goering's plan to make Germany ready for war within four years, by boosting arms production and making Germany self-sufficient (autarky) in food and raw materials.
True or false? Food rationing in Germany only began after the defeat at Stalingrad in 1943.
False. Food rationing began in late August 1939, just before the war, and clothing was rationed from November 1939, as supplies were sent to the troops.
How did the Nazis deal with labour shortages in Germany during the Second World War?
German women were drafted into factories and foreign workers were brought in as slave labour — about seven million by 1944.
What effects did Allied bombing of German cities have on civilians from 1942?
It killed and injured many Germans and destroyed homes, creating refugees; water, electricity, transport and food supplies were cut and hospitals were overwhelmed.
When did membership of the Hitler Youth become compulsory?
In 1939. Most other youth groups had been closed or taken over from 1933, and a 1936 law made the Hitler Youth the official state youth organisation.
What was the Final Solution?
The Nazi plan to murder all the Jews of Europe, co-ordinated at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942; it was carried out in death camps such as Auschwitz.
What was the book burning of May 1933?
Nazi students and stormtroopers publicly burned books by Jewish, communist and other 'un-German' writers, to stamp out ideas the Nazis disapproved of.
Who were the White Rose group?
Students at Munich University, led by Hans and Sophie Scholl, who wrote and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets from 1942; they were arrested and executed in 1943.
What was the July 1944 bomb plot?
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg left a bomb at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters on 20 July 1944; Hitler survived and thousands of suspected plotters were executed.
True or false? Workers who paid into the KdF savings scheme for a 'people's car' never actually received one.
True. The scheme was used as an incentive to work hard, but the money went into armaments and no worker got a Volkswagen.
True or false? Hitler's drive for self-sufficiency (autarky) made Germany fully independent of foreign imports by 1939.
False. Despite the Four Year Plan and substitute materials, Germany still had to import much of its oil, rubber and other raw materials.
How far did official unemployment fall in Germany between 1933 and 1939?
From about 6 million in early 1933 to only a few hundred thousand by 1939.
Who was Hjalmar Schacht?
A banker who was Hitler's Minister of Economics from 1934; he made trade deals to import raw materials for rearmament, but was sidelined by Goering's Four Year Plan and resigned in 1937.
Give one example of an ersatz (substitute) product developed for Nazi self-sufficiency.
Any one: synthetic fuel made from coal; 'Buna' synthetic rubber; artificial fibres made from wood to replace imported cotton and wool.
Who was Albert Speer?
Hitler's architect, made Minister of Armaments in 1942; he reorganised industry for total war and greatly increased weapons production.
What were the Einsatzgruppen?
SS mobile killing squads. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, they followed the German army east and shot more than a million Jews, as well as others.
What were the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe?
Sealed-off districts of cities such as Warsaw and Łódź where Jews were forced to live in overcrowded, starving conditions from 1939, before being deported to the death camps.
What was the Nazis' 'euthanasia' (T4) programme?
A secret programme, begun in 1939, to kill disabled people the Nazis judged 'unworthy of life'. Victims were gassed in killing centres or killed by injection or starvation; at least 200,000 died by 1945.
Who was Clemens von Galen?
The Catholic Bishop of Münster, who in August 1941 preached publicly against the Nazi murder of disabled people; the regime did not dare arrest him, fearing a backlash from Catholics.