NAZI GERMANY
HITLER AS DICTATOR
Dictatorship
- sought to have complete power
- every aspect of people’s lives controlled
Political
- New Elections in the Reichstag
- Hitler wanted to have overall majority
- Nazi Party gained 51% of votes (majority)
- Nazi Party = only legal party
- dismissed officials who opposed him
- opponents all arrested, killed, imprisoned or sent to concentration camps
- used SA (Brownshirts or Stormtroopers) to beat up opponents
- Blackshirts / Protection Squads – Hitler’s private army
- Gestapo – Secret State Police
- violence against Communists and against Jews (“The Final Solution)
Economic
- trade unions taken over by Nazis
Social
- freedom of press and speech curtailed
- stopped newspapers from writing hostile comments about Nazis
- media as propaganda machine
- press, radio and cinema films were plazed under total Nazi control
- plays, films, art, music fell under strict censorship
- people carefully watched by Gestapo – homes, schools, universities, churches, etc.
Significant Events/Policies
- 17 Feb 1933: Reichstag Fire
- arson attack on Reichstag building Communists blamed
- excuse for Hitler to issue emergency law removing people’s freedom
- incl. freedom of press and fair trial
- March 1933: Enabling Act
- Hitler could govern Germany without Reichstag for 4 years
- could also pass laws able to rule as dictator
- ended democracy in Germany ushered in era of dictatorship
- banned communists from entering Reichstag so they could not exercise votes
- persuaded Center Party to vote for Enabling Act by making vague + empty promises
- using votes of his allies (Nationalists)
- 1934: Night of the Long Knives
- clamped down on SA, murdered Ernst Rohm (leader of SA) + 200 other members
- 1934: Death of President Hindenburg
- Hitler combined posts of Chancellor and President for himself
LEISURE
Strength through Joy (Kraft Durch Freude – KDF)
- had job of organising leisure activities of people
- run by Doctor Robert Ley, leader of German Leader Front
- worked out that there are 8,760 hours per year
- ⅓ spent sleeping
- ¼ spent at work
- ½ (3,740h) free for leisure
- wanted to ensure these leisure hours were not wasted
- happy people with plenty to do in free time more likely to work hard to jobs
- people with nothing to do in free time bored and frustrated bored and frustrated workers
Leisure Programmes
- Dr Ley and KDF drew up massive leisure programmes for working people
- e.g. biggest programme provided workers with cheap holidays
- two 25,000 tonne liners built to take workers on ocean cruises at bargain prices
- cruise to Canary Islands cost 62 marks (equivalent to 2 weeks’ wages)
- most workers could afford this, but it was only loyal and hardworking members of the Nazi Party who were given places on cruise liners
- walking holidays in mountains for 28 marks a week
- skiing holidays in Bavaria in winter
- 28 marks = travel, board and lodging, hire of skis, and lessons from instructor
- foreign travel
- 2 weeks in Switzerland (65 marks)
- tour of Italy (155 marks)
Control of Entertainment
- KDF controlled most forms of entertainment
- ~7mil people took part in KDF sports matches
- KDF arranged mass outings to theatre and opera
- had its own symphony orchestra which toured the country playing music in areas not usually visited by orchestras
- laid on evening classes for adults
Volkswagen
- KDF involved in plan to provide workers with cheap cars
- Hitler ordered that a “People’s Car” (Volkswagen) must be built at price that anyone could afford
- designed by Austrain engineer, Ferdinand Porsche
- “told by Hitler it should look like a beetle”
- 990 marks (equivalent to 35 weeks wages)
- hire-purchase scheme started
- workers paid 5 marks per week until 750 marks were in bank
- given order number entitling them to car as soon as it was made
- HOWEVER: swindle
- no Volkswagen was made for a German customer
- millions of marks paid into hire-purchase scheme
- WW2 1939: Volkswagen factory turned into weapons factory
PROPAGANDA and CENSORSHIP
Propaganda
- Doctor Joseph Gebbels
- Minister of National Enlightenment and Propaganda
- needed to make Germans believe in Nazi ideas and be loyal to Hitler + Party TOTALLY
- winning people over to an idea so sincerely + vitally they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it
- Newspapers
- printed only stories favourable to govt
- every morning the editors of Berlin’s newspapers had to go to the Propaganda Ministry where Goebells told them what news to print and what the headlines shouldbe
- newspapers which printed stories he had not approved were closed down
- Radio
- all Germany’s radio stations were under Goebbels’ control
- used radio to hammer the Nazi message home
- encouraged people to listen to radio by producing cheap radio sets which most people could afford
- VE radio (the “People’s Receiver) = 76 marks
- DKE (“German Mini Receiver”) = 35 marks (a week’s wages)
- ensured people would hear radio when they were not at home
- Goebbels had loudspeaker pillars built in streets
- ordered all cafés to have radios turned on for important programmes
- Mass Rally
- most famous of mass rallies held in August each year at Nuremburd
- Nuremburg rally
- lasted a whole week
- held in 4 specially built areas outside the town
- one area could hold 400,000 people
- watched army parades and gymnastic displays
- listened to massed choirs, brass bands and to speeches
- looked up at air force fly-pasts and firework displays
- every event at a rally was staged to perfection
- 1937 rally: 100,000 men, each exactly 0.75 metres apart marched past hitler carrying 32,000 flags and banners
- above them in night sky, 140 vertical searchlights created a dome of light that could be seen stabbing into the sky from over 100km away
- Censorship
- could not trust propaganda alone to win people over
- usedcensorship to stop other ideas from spreading
- every kind of information and entertainment was censored
- jazz music not allowed at dances had origins among black people of America
- 1933: “Tarzan” film banned Tarzan and Jane were scantily dressed
- war film about German navy not screened showed a sailor drunk
- Goebbels encouraged students to censor books written by Jews or communists by burning them
- 1933: students in Berlin destroyed 20,000 books in a bonfire outside University of Berlin
- Complaining about govt was agains the law
- People could not say things against the Nazis even in private
- Anti-Nazi jokes forbidden
- penalty for anti-Hitler jokes was death
- a priest who told a joke about Hitler to an electrician working in his church was reported to Gestapo taken before court sentenced to death
NAZI POLICE STATE
Nazi Police
- arrested people before they committed crimes
- All local police units had to draw up lists of people who might be “Enemies of the State”
- Lists given to Gestapo (Secret State Police)
- Branch of SS
- had power to do exactly as it liked
“Enemies of State”
- Likely situation:
- Woken at 3 am in morning by violent knocking, told by 2 men in black uniforms to pack bag in 3 minutes
- Afterwards taken to nearest police station and shut in a cell
- Later (could be days, weeks, months) brought up from cells and made to sign Form D-11 (Order for Protective Custory)
- signing form = agreeing to go to prison
- taken to concentration camp without trial, stayed for as long as Gestapo pleased
Concentration Camps
- run by another branch of SS, the “Death’s Head Units”
- wore skull + crossbone badges on uniforms
- 16 working hours per day (weekdays and Sundays alike)
- Forbidden to drink even in hottest weather
- Food was not bad but quite insufficient
- weak coffee at dawn, half litre of soup at midday, bread allowance for the whole day 250 grammes
- Sometimes: work of Jewish prisoners was doubled, rations halved
- Work = moving of heavy stones (often far beyond strength of normal well-fed man)
- Men kept standing to attention for many hours on end
- Floggings were frequent for small offences (e.g. drinking water during working hours)
- usual punishment = 25 strokes given alternatively by 2 guards
- often produced unconsciousness
- Jews were told that the Führer had himself given orders that Jews might receive up to 60 strokes
- A case where one group of 480 men had only one tap at which to was + drink for a quarter of an hour on getting up (later even this was stopped)
- No soap nor toothbrush
- Deaths took place daily
- Relatives informed by call, told they could have ashes on payment of 3 marks
Population of concentration camp
“politicals” / “work-shy” / “Bibelforscher” / homosexuals / professional criminals
e.g. Communist members of Reichstag
- many have been in various concentration camps since 1933
- many innocents accused of having spoken abusively of Führer