The Nazi Party

Volksgemeinschaft – a national community

For Hitler and the Nazis, Nazi rule involved the re-making of German society into a Volksgemeinschaft – a 'people's community' based on race, proper behaviour and Nazi principles. If not embraced willingly, this society would be imposed by force. It would be ordered around an Aryan Herrenklasse ('master race'), and would exclude anyone considered racially, biologically, politically, or socially unacceptable:

'There will be a Herrenklasse', he said, 'an historical class tempered by battle, and welded from the most varied elements.

There will be a great hierarchy of party members; they will be the new middle class.

And there will he the great mass of the anonymous, the serving collective. Nor will their financial or previous social position be of the slightest importance. These preposterous differences will have been liquidated in a single revolutionary process.

But beneath them there will still be the class of subject alien races; we need not hesitate to call them the modern slave class.

And over all of these will stand the new high aristocracy, the most deserving and the most responsible Fuhrer-personalities.'

Hermannn Rauschning (1939), decribing 'table-talk'comments by Hitler

You need to be careful with this source. Originally a Nazi supporter, Rauschning fell out of favour and fled to America,
where he attacked Hitler's dictatorship, so there may be an element of revenge; however, these comment are in line with ther things Hitler said.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Simple overview

Simple pages from my KS3 series

Dr Dennis's model answers on a number of issues - really good

Podcasts

- BBC debate-podcast on Life in Nazi Germany

- Scott Allsop's podcast on Life in Nazi Germany

- Giles Hill on Nazi Germany

YouTube

Pete Jackson on how lives changed under the Nazis

How did Nazi rule affect Germans? [NOW YOU]

The key here is to understand that the Nazi state affected different people in different ways.

For the majority of people, in fact, life was good – that is why they turned a blind eye to the fact that – for groups which were not accepted by the Nazi state – life was horrific.

1. Nazi Party members

were especially happy – they got all the best houses, preferential treatment, good jobs in the government and power over other people; businessmen who joined the Nazi Party got government orders.

Source A

From 1933 onwards, the German people clearly conformed with the Nazi regime and became devoted to Hitler. Hundreds of thousands of Germans from different classes joined the Nazi Party. In fact, so many people tried to join in 1933 that the Party struggled to cope with the numbers. In the years 1933–39, the Nazi Party gained four million new members. A flood of people also joined other Nazi organisations.

The increase in support for the Nazis suggests that the majority of the German people found it easy to support the Nazi dictatorship.

From Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany by R Gellately, published in 2001.

Source B

We all felt the same, the same happiness and joy. Things were looking up. I believe no statesman has ever been as loved as Adolf Hitler was then. It’s all come flooding back to me. Those were happy times.

A German farmer, Luise Essig, remembering life in Nazi Germany.

Prora holiday camp

2. Ordinary people

For ordinary people, life was good, and many Germans even today look back and remember the years before 1939 as happy years:

Nazi economic policies gave full employment (work programmes/ Strength through Joy), prosperity and financial security - many observers stated that there seemed to be no poverty in Germany,
the Strength through Joy programme (KdF) gave some people trips away and cheap holidays.
the 'Beauty of Work' movement (SdA) gave people pride in what they were doing.
law and order (few people locked their doors),
autobahns improved transport,
frequent ceremonies, rallies, colour and excitement,
Nazi propaganda gave people hope,
Nazi racial philosophy gave people self-belief
Trust in Adolf Hitler gave a sense of security (one German woman told the American reporter Nora Wall: 'He is my mother and my father. He keeps me safe from all harm.')

There were some drawbacks:

Wages fell, and strikers could be shot – the Nazis worked closely with the businessmen to make sure that the workforce were as controlled as possible.
Loss of personal freedoms (eg freedom of speech).
All culture had to be German - eg music had to be Beethoven or Wagner or German folk songs – or Nazi – eg all actors had to be members of the Nazi party/ only books by approved authors could be read.

3. Women

Source C

Hitler was very clear that women should bring up children at home while their husbands worked. Schools taught girls from a young age that all good German women should get married and have children. 800,000 couples accepted loans offered as part of the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage.

Women were not expected to work in Nazi Germany. Within months of Hitler coming to power, many female doctors and civil servants were sacked, followed by female teachers and lawyers.

By 1939, very few women were in full-time work.

From The History Learning Site, a history website.

The Nazis were very male-dominated and anti-feminist. Nazi philosophy idealised the role of women as child-bearer and creator of the family:

The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage gave newly-wed couples a loan of 1000 marks, and allowed them to keep 250 marks for each child they had.
Mothers who had more than 8 children were given a gold medal.

But not all women were happy with the Nazi regime:

Job-discrimination against women was encouraged. Women doctors, teachers and civil servants were forced to give up their careers.
Women were never allowed to serve in the armed forces – even during the war.

BBC Bitesize on Nazi policies towards women

The perfect Nazi family.

4. Youth

Most German young people were happy:

Nazi culture was very youth-oriented.
The HJ provided exciting activities for young boys.
The HJ and the BDM treated young men and women as though they were special, and told then they had knew more then their parents.
Many parents were frightened that their children would report them to the Gestapo, which gave young people a power that they enjoyed.

But not all young people were happy with the Nazi regime:

SOME girls were unhappy with the emphasis on the three Cs (Church, children, cooker).
Girls who were regarded as true Aryan girls were sent off to special camps where they were bred (like farm animals) with selected 'Aryan' boys.
In Germany, you could leave school at 14, and did not go for national service until you were 17, with the result that large numbers of rebellious 14-17-year-olds who rejected the HJ and Nazi propaganda and youth culture formed counterculture groups such as the Swingjugend (Swing Youth), the Edelweißpiraten (Edelweiss Pirates) and the Leipzig Meuten (Leipzig Packs).
Until the War, the Swingjugend and Edelweißpiraten were regarded as scandalous rather than dangerous; the Leipzig Meuten, by contrast, were arrested in 1938-39, with many sent to youth prisons or reformatories.

BBC Bitesize on Nazi policies towards the young

More sources on Nazi youth

The perfect Nazi boy ... and Aryan girl.

Edelweiss Pirate Barthel Schink, 17, wearing his edelweiss flower badge.

5. Opponents

The Nazis used 'fear and horror' against anyone who disapproved of their regime:

Hitler banned all Trade Unions on 2 May 1933. Their offices were closed, their money confiscated, and their leaders put in prison.
Communists were put into concentration camps or killed.
The Catholic and Protestant Churches were persecuted, and the clergy imprisoned.
Each block of flats had a 'staircase ruler' who reported grumblers to the police – they were arrested and either murdered, or sent to concentration camps.
Children were encouraged to report their parents to the Gestapo if they criticized Hitler or the Nazi party.

But remember that:

Many Germans welcomed this because it brought political stability after the Weimar years.

BBC Bitesize on Opposition and resistance

Nazi concentration camp badges

8. Untermensch

The Nazi regime despised many groups which it thought were racially or socially inferior (Untermensch = subhuman) – people they called the 'germs of destruction'.

Many Germans approved of this racism, or turned a 'blind eye'.

The Nazi regime was from the start based on anti-semitism:

The Racial Purity Law (15 September 1935) took away German citizenship from the Jews, and forbade sex between Germans and Jews.
Other key actions included the boycott of Jewish shops, Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938).
Forced emigration was introduced in 1938 under the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, and until 1941, German Jews with resources could emigrate voluntarily – half of Germany’s Jewish population left before the War.
During the War the persecution intensified: the Jews were forced into walled ghettos, put into concentration camps, and used for medical experiments. At the Wansee Conference (January 1942) the Nazis devised the Final Solution of genocide – the Holocaust.

Other groups which were persecuted and killed included:

Gypsies were treated almost as badly as the Jews – 85% of Germany's gypsies were killed.
Black Germans were sterilized and killed.
Some 6,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were convicted and sent to concentration camps, where about 1,000 died or were murdered.
Beggars, homosexuals, prostitutes, alcoholics, pacifists, hooligans and criminals were also regarded as anti-social, and they were put in concentration camps.

The Nazis believed in 'eugenics' – that it was possible to eliminate certain disabilities by preventing those people from having children:

Physically disabled people and families with hereditary illnesses were sterilized; 300,000 men and women were sterilized 1934-45.
5000 mentally disabled babies were killed 1939-45.
72,000 mentally ill patients were killed 1939-41.
Some deaf people were sterilised or put to death.

AQA-style Questions

Edexcel-style Questions

OCR-style Questions

BBC Bitesize on the persecution of minorities

The persecution of the Jews - essential link

Nazi eugenics - BBC Witness History

YouTube

Pete Jackson on Society under the Nazis, focussing on Nazi racial policies

A Nazi race-hatred poster: "The Jew - the inciter of war, the prolonger of war".

Using negative images and stereotypes - such as this illustration from The Poisonous Mushroom - Nazi propaganda pilloried Jews as dirty, deceitful, dangerous people of whom Germany should be free.

Children in concentration camps who had been used for medical experiments.