"Hitler's domestic policies between 1933 and 1939 enjoyed widespread popularity among the German people" how far would you agree?

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MOHAMED OMAR

“Hitler’s domestic policies between 1933 and 1939 enjoyed widespread popularity among the German people” how far would you agree?

To say that between 1933 and 1939 Hitler’s domestic policies enjoyed widespread popularity is a disputable statement and to understand to what extent the Nazi government was popular it is necessary to investigate factors regarding domestic policies.

When Nazi came to power in 1933, Hitler did not start his chancellorship in a happy way. In his first seventeen months in power there were plenty of opportunities to see the radical, chaotic and destructive nature of Nazi rule. When he called the election for the role of “confidence” imposing bans on newspapers and public meetings attacking the new state and with thousand of political opponents already rounded up, the Nazis gained only 43.9 per cent of the vote in March 1933 and they failed to acquire the absolute majority they had hoped for. It is obvious from statistics that they lost voters although they still had more votes than the other parties. These “more” voters compared to other parties was a results of promises to be maintained by Hitler in his “superb” speeches telling people what they wanted to hear.

Economy was a big issue in the Nazi popularity. One academic joked once: “What was Hitler’s economic policy?” was easy to answer, “he hadn’t got one”. It can’t be denied though that he always had economic aims. He promised to rid Germany of unemployment and rearmament for Germany. Hitler gave this “homework” to Hjalmar Schacht (President of the Reichsbank). Surprisingly in short terms Hitler’s delegation of the economy to Schacht seemed to work. Schacht pursued a policy of reflection financed on credit and introduced a work-creation programme based on compulsory work for unemployed. For average citizens, unless they were among the regime’s racial or political enemies, life began to improve. They knew little of the economy theories and they did not even suspect Hitler of laziness when it came to details of domestic policy. Instead they looked around and saw with their own eyes what the regime had done, and most liked what they saw. Unemployment dropped from a high of 6 million in January 1932 to 2.4 million by July 1934.The programme of public worked, particularly the high-profile building of the autobahns was seen as proof of Germany’s new dynamism regarding this prosperous “momentum” a hindsight said: “everybody was now happy”. This was not the case for the “enemies of state” such as the Jews.

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The segregation of Jews and the announcement of the Nuremberg Laws in the autumn of 1935 codified the extent of Jewish exclusion from normal German life like taking from them their Reich citizenship and banning them from marrying “Aryans”, many Jews thought the regime had finally controlled its hatred. A combination of pressure from Hjalmar Schacht (Minister of economics and president of the Reichsbank) over the economic consequences of persecuting Jews and the necessity of presenting Germany in a good light for the Olympic games of 1936 meant that 1936 and 1937 were relatively quite years for German Jews. ...

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