Economic Changes Under the Nazis Flashcards
All 19 cards in this deck
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.
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.
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.