b) Explain the reasons for Nazi policies towards women
In the 1920’s women in Germany had several rights and freedoms which most other women in other countries did not have. Thy had the right to vote and women working for the government got the say amount of pay as men. But under Nazi rule, however, they lost all these gains. The Nazi’s forced women back into traditional roles as wives and mothers. Germany was facing problems at the time. There was a declining birth rate and there was a high unemployment rate. Nazi’s believed that they could solve these problems by changing the policies towards women.
The Nazi’s also changed the policies towards women as there was a high unemployment rate in Germany, and they thought that if they took all women out of the working place and put them back into their more traditional role, the men could take the jobs lowering the high unemployment rate.
The Nazi expectation of women revolved around the three K’s. The three K’s stands for children, church and kitchen. These were the main roles the Nazi’s wanted the women to fulfil. The Nazis made these policies towards women as they wanted to increase the number of pure German births and to increase the number of German marriages. This was to help build the Aryan race.
To increase the number of pure German births the Nazis made a number of incentives such as loans and grants to encourage women. Propaganda was used to increase the status of mothers an example of this was the Mother’s Cross which was awarded to women who had a high number of children. However there were a number of penalties for those who did not to have large families. This included higher taxes for people who were married and had no children.
The Nazi’s also banned the use of contraception and banned abortions, as they thought this would help increase the population of Germany. They also banned mixed marriages, this meant that different races and religious people could not marry each other. There was also a ‘Law for the prevention of Hereditarily diseased offspring’ which ordered that women who were unfit to be mothers had to be sterilised so they could not have children.
As a result, the number of marriages rose from half a million in 1932 to three-quarters of a million in 1934. It did not, however, result in women having more children. Most couples continued to have families of two children.
c)‘The most important reason why there was little opposition towards the Nazi regime was the use of propaganda’ Explain how far you agree with this statement.
A lot of Hitler's and the Nazi’s success is because of Dr Josef Goebbles who was in charge of propaganda. Goebbles was an intelligent person using techniques that are still used in politics today and he used every resource available to him. He would organise rallies, marches, torchlight processions, meetings etc. A good example of a rally is the Neuremburg rally, which happened once a year in the summer. There were bands, marches, flying displays and there were speeches by Hitler. These rallies were to show that the Nazis were new and exciting. They emphasised the power of the state and showed order. Another benefit came from these rallies as they showed that "every other German supported the Nazis" and encouraged people to "go with the flow". Although there was some resistance to the Nazis, there was the White Rose Group and the Edelweiss pirates, who opposed actively and passively.
Josef Goebbles controlled the media strictly, if you wanted to publish a book you had to get permission. This was so that you could only read books with pro-Nazi themes and this would make people more loyal to the regime and also so that resistance against the Nazis could not be united.
In 1933 Josef Goebbles organised a high profile "book burning" in which all books with "unacceptable" ideas were burnt. This was so that all the hard work the Nazis had put in to getting ideas in to peoples heads would not be undone.
Newspapers were not allowed to print anti-Nazi ideas and what they were allowed to print was strictly supervised. As a result the newspapers became quite repetitive, only talking about how great Hitler and the regime were. As a result of this less newspapers were sold as people did not want to buy them. Anti-Nazi newspapers were shut down and Jewish editors were sacked. To put it plainly the newspapers had huge censorship. This also happened at the cinemas were all films had to be pro-Nazi. This happened at the beginning of the presentation were now we normally get the trailers. However it is proven that people tried to miss these bits by arriving late. He also censored foreign films coming in to the country. As well as censoring and changing the media that was already around he constantly plastered Germany with pro-Nazi posters and he made cheap radios so that everyone could afford one. He then took control of the radio stations and played pro-Nazi broadcasts all the time. Even if you didn’t have a radio you still had to listen to the broadcasts because loud speakers were placed in the streets and in public bars. In the broadcasts speeches and ideas were repeated over and over again.
Basically in Germany then there was propaganda everywhere and because Hitler had complete power there was no controlling or competing with it. Propaganda was an every day event for ordinary Germans and so the things the propaganda said also became everyday occurrences. Anyone who started to look through the propaganda would be taken away to the concentration camps. The use of all this propaganda would have ‘brain washed’ the country, they would be told what to believe and what to do. The German people couldn’t ignore the propaganda, as it was everywhere. The use of propaganda would have reduced the amount of opposition as everything including radio stations and newspapers was censored and was full of pro-Nazi slogans and articles, so that the people had to believe in the Nazi’s, there was no other choice.
Propaganda was not the only reason why there was no opposition, there was also the fact that the Nazis were in control. The Nazis took over local councils, they terrorised people and used violence to get people afraid of them and do what they say. Making sure that no one would put up any resistance against them. The Nazis also persecuted Jewish people, forcing them to close their businesses and sending them to concentration or death camps. Another reason is that the Nazis tackled unemployment, for example in June 1933 in Northeim there were more than 500 people unemployed but in July 450 of these people had become employed. If the Nazis were helping people no one would go against them.
There was also Police control. The Nazi police was run by the SS. This branch of SA were Hitler’s bodyguards. The SS led by Heinrich Himmler helped Hitler get rid of the SA leaders in the “Night of the Long Knives”. Hitler then made the SS independent to the SA and made Himmler the leader of the entire police network.
Overall I think it was a mixture of the propaganda used by the Nazi’s, the brutality of the Nazi’s, and the way this made people fear them. I think these were the most important reasons for the little opposition towards the regime. As propaganda was everywhere in Germany and if you did not agree with it you would be dealt with by the SS, Hitler’s policemen, and you would most likely be put in jail or tortured.
