Hitler Domestic Policy

Schools Teachers had to swear an oath of loyalty

Hitler and join the Nazi Teachers League. Textbooks were re-written to fit the Nazi

view of history and racial purity. PE classes were increased, religious

education was abandoned.

School leavers Expected to work. Technical and vocational

training available for the majority who left school at 16.

About 15% went into higher education. Under Nazi rule the number of girls in higher education fell.

Overall educational standards dropped.

The Hitler Youth Movement

1 936, membership of the Hitler Youth Movement was made compulsory. Other youth organizations were banned.

Membership rose from over 2 million in 1933, to over 7 million by 1939.

Aimed to teach Nazi ideas. Emphasis on the importance of the group rather than of the individual.

Hitler Youth Movement

Teenage rebels Although the Nazis wanted a disciplined

population, juvenile crime, smoking, and drinking increased.

Although the Hitler Youth was compulsory, about one million young people did not join. Some defied authority by forming their own groups such as the Edelweiss Pirates.

Religion Nazi attitudes The Nazi Party claimed to approve of

Christianity and to offer freedom of religious belief.

In fact the Nazis attacked the Christian Churches and suppressed all religious sects.

The Catholic Church

1933, Hitler signed a Concordat with the Pope agreeing to allow the Catholic Church to run its churches, schools and newspapers. In return, bishops took an oath of loyalty to Hider.

1937, the Pope issued an Encyclical (Papal Letter) condemning Hitler and the Nazis because of a their closure of many Catholic churches and organizations, their racist ideas and the persecution of the Jews

Catholic priests were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

The Protestant Churches

German Protestants were divided between over 20 different Church groups.

In 1933, Hitler attempted to gain control of them by setting up a single ‘Reich Church’ under a Nazi bishop.

The Reich Church was anti-Christian and promoted Nazi values.

Over three-quarters of Protestant pastors, led by Niemoller, formed a rival ‘Confessional Church’ and opposed the persecution of the Jews.

Niemoller and others were sent to concentration camps.

The Army Until 1938 the army was the most powerful

institution which was not fully under Hitler’s control.

One of the main reasons for the Night of the Long Knives was his fear that the activities of Röhm and the SA would provoke an army coup.

By removing Röhm and other SA leaders, Hitler earned the goodwill of the army. A few weeks later, in August 1934, when Hindenburg died and Hitler took the title of Führer, all members of the army were required to take an oath of personal allegiance to him

Military ideas of personal honor made it difficult for army officers to oppose Hitler after this.

Between 1934 and 1938 the army was gradually brought under Nazi control. The swastika was adopted as a badge on army uniforms.

Officers were given instruction in Nazi ideology. The adoption of a policy of large-scale rearmament naturally won army support.

But the general staff became increasingly worried by the trend of Hitler’s foreign policy. They regarded the remilitarization of the Rhineland as risky.

Hossbach memorandum,

In November 1937, as recorded in the Hossbach memorandum, Hitler announced to his chief military advisers his plans for the expansion of Germany, which would involve attacking Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Horrified by the risk of war with Britain and France, the generals protested. Hitler’s response was to reorganize the command structure of the army. The War Minister, Blomberg, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Fritsch, were both dismissed in 1 938 on charges of personal misconduct. Hitler put the army under his direct command through the OKW. (High Command of the Armed Forces)

The Economy Nazi economic policies had two main aims: to reduce

unemployment and to revive Germany’s military and industrial might. To achieve these ends economic activity was state-controlled.

Wages, food prices, rents, investment and foreign exchange were all controlled.

Trade unions were abolished and strikes made illegal Farm prices were fixed so that farmers made a

reasonable profit. Public works were started, financed by the state;

the most famous example is the building of autobahns.

Under Dr Schacht an elaborate system of exchange controls was developed, which exploited the dependence of much of Eastern Europe upon Germany as a market for food exports.

Bilateral trade agreements were made with Eastern European and South American countries to boost German exports and secure essential raw materials. As a result, by 1935 exports exceeded imports.

In 1936 a Four-Year Plan was introduced with the explicit aim, stated in a memorandum from Hitler, of making Germany ready for war within four years.

The basic purpose was to achieve self-sufficiency (autarky) by boosting domestic production and developing synthetic substitutes for oil and other imports.

At the same time a program of large-scale rearmament was undertaken. Under state direction industrialists produced what the Nazis thought Germany needed and, where necessary, labor was directed where it was needed.

How successful were Nazi economic

policies? The Nazis were successful in reducing

unemployment to two million by 1935 and to virtually nil in 1939.

Unemployment had already begun to fall before Hitler came to power and the upturn in world trade from 1934 helped to reduce it further.

The public works schemes and rearmament provided the sort of stimulus advocated by Keynesian economics.

Rearmament also took half a million men out of the labor market by conscription into the army. But the reduction in unemployment also owed something to more questionable aspects of the Nazi regime.

The expansion of the civil service and the party organization created jobs but both were overstaffed.

The removal of political opponents and ‘undesirables’ to concentration camps reduced unemployment because they were not counted. Neither were Jews who had been forced out of their jobs, since they were no longer citizens after 1935.

In other respects, too, the success of Nazi economic policy may be doubted.

Despite massive investment, synthetic substitutes for oil and rubber only produced a small proportion of Germany’s needs. Agriculture failed to meet its targets and Germany continued to depend on food imports.

Although there was some economic growth, it was not fast enough to pay for the massive cost of rearmament.

By 1 939 Schacht, as President of the Reichsbank, was warning of the danger of runaway inflation.

The Jews The Jews were singled out for special

persecution as the scapegoats for all Germany’s ills. They were blamed especially for the ‘stab in the back’, a myth which Goebbels’ propaganda machine made great play with.

In 1933 there was a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. Jews were dismissed from the civil service and excluded from universities and in due course from most of the professions.

In 1 935 the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and forbade them to marry “Aryans”.

Persecution intensified in 1938. Jews were banned from commerce. In November, attacks on synagogues and Jewish houses and businesses took place all over Germany (Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass). This was allegedly a spontaneous outburst in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a Jew, but was largely the work of the SA.

Many Jews went into exile; others ended up in concentration camps.

The ‘final solution’ began in 1941 with mass deportations of Jews to concentration camps. Between 1942 and 1945 some 3-4 million Jews died in the gas chambers.