UNIT 3: CHANGING LIFE IN GERMANY, 1933-1939
ECONOMIC POLICY
Hitler wanted Germany to regain the land lost in 1919 and to dominate Europe. To do
this he knew that Germany had to recover its economic strength.
The aims of Hitler’s economic policy
1. To reduce unemployment which had risen to 6 million by 1933.
2. To build up the German armaments industry and to rearm and enlarge the German
army, navy and airforce.
3. To make Germany economically self-sufficient so that it could not be blockaded
in times of war.
Economic policies 1933-39
When Hitler came to power he appointed Hjalmar Schacht to control the economy.
Schacht devised what he called the New Plan.

He reduced unemployment by creating jobs (see below).

He made trade treaties with less developed Eastern European countries (eg.
Hungary) whereby they supplied Germany with raw materials in exchange for
manufactured goods. With these cheap raw materials and new export markets,
German industry was able to recover from the Depression.
The New Plan solved Germany’s economic problems and enabled Hitler to rearm his
forces. Although the New Plan was successful Hitler wanted to rearm much faster.
He put Herman Goering in charge of the economy in 1936 and Schacht lost his
power. Goering introduced the Four Year Plan. The aim of the plan was to prepare
Germany for war within four years.

Massive orders were given to German industry for guns, tanks and planes, all of
which meant huge contracts for industry.

The Four Year plan also aimed to make Germany self-sufficient in materials
essential to war such as oil, rubber and steel. This policy was known as autarchy.
Hitler remembered the effect of the British naval blockade in World War I. If the
raw materials were not available in Germany, German scientists were encouraged
to find synthetic (ersatz) substitutes eg. synthetic rubber and synthetic oil were
made from coal.
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Hitler never achieved his aim of making Germany completely self-sufficient by the
time war broke out in 1939, but perhaps Germany would have been defeated more
quickly if autarky hadn’t been introduced.
The reduction in unemployment
In his election campaigns Hitler had promised to provide ‘bread and work’ for the
German people. This was a promise he could not afford to break. In 1933 there were
six million Germans unemployed. By 1939 this figure had come down to 300,000.
How did the Nazis do this?
1. The Nazis created jobs through government spending on Public Works Schemes.
Millions of people were ordered to join the Reich Labour Service and sent to
work wherever the government told them to go. They would often work on
building motorways (autobahns), hospitals, schools and improving agriculture.
Huge public buildings were constructed including a new Olympic stadium for the
1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Such buildings not only created jobs but
impressed people.
2. Rearmament also created jobs.
3. More men were recruited into the army. When Hitler came to power in 1933 the
army was limited to 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles. By 1938 the figure
had risen to 900,000 men.
The German Labour Front
In 1933 the Nazis banned trade unions because trade unionists tended to support the
Socialist and Communist Parties, the enemies of the Nazis. In their place the Nazis
developed the idea of everyone working together for the good of the country. So they
set up the German Labour Front. This Nazi organisation controlled all aspects of
workers’ rights and conditions eg. wages, hours etc. Strikes, of course, were illegal.
Workers found that their wages were kept low and that they were working longer
hours. The workers expected some benefits and the German Labour Front set up two
organisations to improve the lives of the workers.
1. The Beauty of Labour organisation tried to improve working conditions by, for
example, improving safety standards, reducing noise levels in factories and
introducing hot midday meals.
2. The Strength through Joy organisation was set up to provide workers with
leisure activities when they were not working. These included film shows,
concerts and excursions. Those who worked hardest could be rewarded with a
cruise on a Strength through Joy ship. Another venture by this organisation was
the development of the Volkswagen, the people’s car. Workers were encouraged
to start saving for one.
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Behind all these improvements was an attempt to control people’s working lives and
leisure time, and to convince the workers of the need to work harder and longer for
less money. They were told that they were helping to build a great and powerful
Germany.
SOCIAL POLICIES: YOUNG PEOPLE
Hitler realised that any opposition to the Third Reich would come from older people,
who were set in their ideas. With children it would be different. They could be
indoctrinated from babyhood with Nazi ideas, and grow up to be good Nazis who
would never question Hitler’s policies.
Education
The man chosen to run German education was Bernard Rust, a teacher who had been
sacked in 1930 for ‘instability of mind’. His first action was to ‘Nazify’ the teachers.
Any teachers known to be anti-Nazi were sacked, and the rest were sent on courses,
and to camps, to be ‘trained’ in Nazi ideas. Rust, like Hitler believed that the whole
purpose of education was to create Nazis. School timetables were changed so that
young people were constantly exposed to Nazi ideas. Education was to produce boys
with military skills and girls with domestic skills.
Children were taught that the German (Aryan) race was superior to any other; that
Hitler was a great leader whose actions and ideas were never to be questioned; and
that Jews were evil and not fit to be German citizens. The school timetable included
new subjects that Hitler considered important eg. Race Studies. Other subjects such
as Maths, History, Geography and Science were to be taught either in a ‘military’ way
or to show how superior the Aryan race was. Physical education was increased so
that boys would be fitter to be better soldiers and girls to be better mothers. History
books were rewritten to show how dreadful the Jews were and how unfair the Treaty
of Versailles was. There was no attempt to teach students to think for themselves.
Hitler went further and set up special schools for boys. These were called Napolas
and were set up to train the future Nazi leaders. They were run by ex-members of the
SS. Athletics and courage were more important than academic ability.
There is no doubt that most children became good Nazis, but educational standards
did go down because teachers and parents were afraid to question what children were
taught.
Youth Movements
The Nazis also believed it was important to control young people’s minds in their
spare time. Children and young people were expected to join the youth movements
which aimed to prepare boys for war and girls for motherhood. Boys joined the
Hitler Youth at the age of 14. They wore uniforms, learned to shoot guns and read
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maps, went to camp and on long marches. In 1936 membership was made
compulsory.
The League of German Maidens was the girls’ version of the Hitler Youth. It also
organised camping and hiking, but to make girls fit enough to be strong mothers.
They were taught about health matters and motherhood in preparation for their future
role in life. The Nazis were very critical of young women who smoked, wore trousers
or put on makeup because they were not concentrating on being ‘good’ mothers.
Youth gangs
However, even in Nazi Germany, there were young people who rebelled. Youth
gangs, such as the Edelweiss Pirates, took pleasure in beating up Hitler Youth
members, while others enjoyed listening to American Negro jazz, and growing their
hair long. But these groups were in a minority and the state took very severe
measures against them, even to the extent of hanging them during the Second World
War.
SOCIAL POLICIES: WOMEN AND THE FAMILY
The Nazis had very clear ideas on the role of women in society. A woman’s duty was
clearly seen as being child bearer of a pure Aryan race, and as a supporter of her
husband. Women had a role which was entirely separate from men. A woman’s
place was in the home, having children and caring for her family. The Nazi slogan
‘Kinde, Kirche, Kuche’ (Children, church and cooking) summed up the Nazis’ view
of women. As a result the lives of many women changed:

Because of Nazi policies, women, who had obtained equal rights under the
Weimar Republic, now found they were being discriminated against, especially in
the workplace. The first to suffer were women who had professional jobs.
Doctors and civil servants were sacked. The number of women teachers declined.
From 1936 women were not allowed to be judges or lawyers, or even to sit on
juries because it was felt that they couldn’t make logical decisions without being
too emotional.

Women had played an active part in politics during the Weimar period. One-tenth
of Weimar MPs had been women but under the Nazis women were not allowed to
take part in politics. Although the Nazi Party had female organisations, women
never had any real political power. They were banned from positions of
leadership in the Party.

The Nazis were worried by the decline in the birth rate and launched a massive
propaganda campaign to promote motherhood and large families. The
government offered marriage loans to women who gave up work in order to get
married. These loans did not have to be repaid if the woman had at least four
children. Women were also awarded medals for having children. The gold
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‘Honour Cross of the German Mother’ was given to those who had eight.
Contraception and abortion were made illegal. To improve women’s fertility they
were encouraged to stop smoking, stop slimming and to do sport.

Propaganda campaigns were launched to persuade women to bring up their
children as loyal Nazis who idolised the Fuhrer and joined the Nazi youth
organisations.

Nazi policies were only aimed at healthy Aryan women. So Jews could not get
marriage loans. Women with hereditary diseases were sterilised.
How successful were Nazi policies aimed at women?

Although professional women lost their jobs, women were still needed in industry
especially when Germany started to recover from the Depression. By the late
1930s there was a shortage of labour in Germany. Women were needed in the
factories. By 1939 there were more women in jobs than there had been in 1933.

The birth rate rose in the period 1933-39.

Although the Nazis said that they were encouraging traditional family life many of
their other policies undermined the family. Children were now so busy and active,
they spent little time with their family. Also, mothers found it increasingly
difficult to discipline young boys who were taught to believe that women were to
serve men.
SOCIAL POLICIES: THE CHURCHES
The ideas of the Nazis were opposed to the beliefs and values of the Christian Church.
The Nazis glorified strength, violence and racial superiority while Christianity taught
love, forgiveness and respect for all people. Germany was a Christian country and the
Nazis could not ignore the Churches. Most Germans, about two thirds, were
Protestants, whereas most of the other third were Roman Catholics.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 the Churches were willing to give him their
support despite the violence associated with Nazism. There were three reasons for
this:
1. The Nazis said that they supported the family and old fashioned values.
2. The Nazis were opposed to communism. The Churches feared the communists
because they wanted to destroy Christianity.
3. Hitler set out to gain the support of the Churches.
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The Roman Catholic Church
In 1933 Hitler signed the Concordat with the Pope. This agreement said that the
Catholic Church would be left alone by the Nazis as long as the Church stayed out of
politics. But Hitler had no intention of keeping his promises to the Pope. After using
the support of the Centre (Catholic) Party to get the Enabling Act through the
Reichstag (see Unit 2), Hitler began to harass and arrest Catholic priests who were
suspected of being anti-Nazi. Catholic schools were brought under the control of the
Nazis so that Catholic children could be indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda.
Catholic youth organisations were banned because many parents preferred to send
their children to the Catholic Youth rather than the Hitler Youth. In 1937 the Pope
attacked the Nazi system in a famous statement (encyclical) called ‘With Burning
Anxiety’. But the Nazi persecution of priests continued and many were put in
concentration camps because of their criticism of the Nazi government.
The Catholic Church rarely openly opposed the Nazi government. Cardinal Galen,
however, publicly attacked Nazi policies as early as 1934 and in 1941 he revealed that
the Nazis were secretly killing mentally and physically handicapped people. His
statement was read from the pulpits of Catholic Churches throughout Germany and he
led a campaign which made Hitler call a halt to the euthanasia programme.
The Protestant Churches
Hitler united all the Protestant Churches together into one church under the leadership
of a pro-Nazi called Muller. He was given the title of Reich Bishop and the Church
he led became known as the German Christian Church. It adopted Nazi-style
uniforms, salutes and marches. Many Germans were quite happy to be German
Christians but some opposed Hitler and formed an alternative ‘Confessional
Church’. Many of the ministers of the Confessional Church were sent to
concentration camps. One of these was Martin Niemoller, a prominent critic of the
Nazis. While in prison he was visited by the prison chaplain who asked him, ‘But
brother! Why are you in prison?’ Niemoller replied, ‘And brother, why are you not in
prison?’
Protestant Church schools and youth clubs suffered the same fate as those of the
Catholic Church.
The German Faith Movement
The Nazis tried to start a new religious movement of their own. It was based on
adulation of Hitler as a new god. It rejected Christian values and included many
pagan ideas. It did not receive much support from the mass of the German people.
The Nazis never destroyed the Churches in Germany. They made it difficult for
Christians to worship but the Churches remained open and services were held. Hitler
did, however, succeed in his aim of weakening the Churches as a source of resistance
to his policies.
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PROPAGANDA AND CENSORSHIP
Governments use propaganda to persuade people to think and behave in a certain
way. The Nazis used propaganda to convince the German people that their policies
were right for Germany.
The Nazis also used censorship. They tried to prevent people hearing, reading or
seeing anything that was critical of the Nazis.
Propaganda and censorship were vital to the Nazis because they helped to make sure
that most Germans supported Nazi ideas. Both were controlled by the Minister of
People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels. He was a
genius at using propaganda to persuade people that Hitler and his ideas were right for
them.
Rallies and campaigns

Rallies were held all over the country to show how popular Hitler and the Nazis
were and to persuade people that Nazi Germany was powerful and great.

An annual rally of the Nazi Party was held each year in Nuremburg. Music,
lighting and banners were used as a backdrop for Hitler’s speeches.

The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were used as a propaganda opportunity to
show the superiority of the Third Reich. German athletes won more medals than
any other country.

Poster campaigns were a way of giving ideas and images an important place in
people’s minds. Images of Hitler as a wise leader appeared in many poster
campaigns.
Radio

Radio was relatively new and Goebbels realised how useful it could be to Nazi
propaganda. Industry was encouraged to produce cheap radios that everyone
could afford and by 1939 Germany had more radios per head of population than
any other country in the world.

All radio programmes were carefully controlled and Hitler’s speeches were
frequently broadcast. The radios on sale in Germany were designed to have a
short range. This meant that they could not pick up foreign stations and listen to
alternative versions of the news.

Radio sets were placed in cafes and factories and loudspeakers placed in the
streets.
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The press

Non-Nazi newspapers and magazines were closed down or taken over.

News was biased in favour of the Nazis and editors were told what they could
print. As a result, newspaper sales went down because people found them
repetitive and boring.
Films

The cinema was very popular in Germany and over 100 films were made each
year.

All film plots had to be shown to Goebbels before production started.

Although some propaganda films were made, Goebbels believed that propaganda
succeeded best if people were entertained. The German cinema, therefore
continued to make comedies, love stories, thrillers and historical epics, which
were all given a pro-Nazi slant.
Books, theatre, art and music

Many writers, composers and artists were persuaded or forced to create works in
praise of Hitler and the Third Reich.

Books written by Jews, Communists and anti-Nazis were banned. Many were
destroyed in public book-burnings in 1933.

Jazz music was banned because it was the music of black people (an inferior race).

Much modern art was declared ‘degenerate’ and art galleries were forced to get rid
of it.
THE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS
Anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews) was an important Nazi belief. As soon as Hitler came
to power in 1933 the persecution of the Jews started.
The first act of the Third Reich against the Jews was to organise a boycott of Jewish
shops and businesses in April 1933, with SA brownshirts standing outside Jewish
shops discouraging people from entering. But it was not as successful as the Nazis
had hoped.
Six days later the Reichstag passed a law which banned all Jews from working for
the civil service (government). But Hitler was forced by President Hindenburg to
allow Jews who had fought, or who had a relative killed, in the First World War, to
keep their jobs.
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When Hindenburg died in 1934, the Nazis were able to increase their persecution of
the Jews. They were banned from public parks, swimming pools, cinemas, theatres
and restaurants.
Things got even worse for the Jews in 1935, when at the massive Nuremberg rally,
Hitler announced what became known as the Nuremberg Laws. There were two of
these laws:
1. The Reich Citizenship Act which said that no Jew could vote or be elected to a
government post. Jews were stripped of the right to be citizens of Germany.
2. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour. Jews were defined
as anyone with a Jewish grandparent, and forbidden to marry or have sexual
relations with German citizens.
The second of these two laws showed an important difference between the Nazis’
anti-Semitism, and how Jews had been persecuted before. The Nazis said that the
Jews inherited their evil from previous generations and the evil was present in Jewish
blood, whereas in the past Jews had been persecuted because of their religion. This
difference was important because it meant the Jews could do nothing to escape
persecution. In the past they had been able to save themselves by becoming
Christians.
In 1936, things became a little easier for the Jews because the Nazis hid all signs of
persecution while the Olympic Games were being held in Berlin. But when the
Games had finished, the Nazis returned to their persecution. In 1937, on secret orders
from Heydrich, Jewish women who had had sexual relations with German citizens
were sent to concentration camps.
But it was the year 1938 when things were made even worse for the Jews. One reason
for this was that the Third Reich was now united with Austria and the Nazis found
they had many more Jews in their population. They were determined to deal with this
‘problem’. All Jewish parents had to add the name ‘Sara’ to their daughter’s name
and ‘Israel’ to their son’s. All Jewish doctors and other professional people could
only do business with other Jews.
In November the persecution reached its height. A German embassy official was
murdered in Paris by a young Jew. Immediately the Nazis organised a massive attack
on Jewish shops, homes and synagogues. About 100 Jews died in SA attacks, and
thousands of Jewish properties were destroyed. This event became known as Crystal
Night because of all the broken glass on the German streets. Over 30,000 Jews were
arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Nazis claimed it was an outburst of
anger by ordinary people. In reality, however, it was organised by Goebbels.
The persecution continued after Crystal Night. Goering confiscated all Jewish
businesses, selling them cheaply to German businessmen. Jewish children were
banned from German schools and universities. Jews were encouraged to emigrate,
but without any of their possessions.
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Why didn’t the Jews do something? This was difficult. Despite what the Nazis said,
the Jews were a small percentage of the population (only 1%). Also, many Jews
thought if they kept quiet then the persecution would, as it always had done in the
past, go away. They were not to know the horrors that awaited them after 1941.
The treatment of other minority groups
The Gypsies were also persecuted by the Nazis. They were targeted because they
were not Aryans and because of their travelling lifestyle. They were made to give up
their travelling and were eventually exterminated like the Jews.
The Nazis also persecuted Aryan Germans. Those who were mentally ill, were
considered a threat to the purity of the Aryan race. The first step was to sterilise such
people. Once the war had begun it was decided that the mentally ill were a drain on
resources and some 30,000 were murdered. Tramps and beggars were rounded up
and put into forced labour. Homosexuality was despised by the Nazis despite the fact
that there were many homosexuals in the SA, including Roehm himself. Those
outside the protection of the SA were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to
concentration camps, where they were made to wear pink badges.
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