The Nazi government used a mixture of force, and rewards to try to win workers support. They banned trade unions in 1933, in case they tried to organise opposition against Hitler. But Hitler also created a lot of jobs. The number of unemployment’s dropped spectacularly from 6 million to 300,000! Some of these jobs were in factories that were making war goods such as planes and bombs, the rest were in the armed forces. There was an organisation called KDF, meaning “strength through joy”. KDF was an establishment designed to make sure German people were busy in their leisure time, and did not spend it plotting to overthrow the Nazis. They organised holidays, and entertainment for adult’s aswell as children. The holidays were very cheap, designed for the working family to be able to afford. For instance, a week’s holiday in Bavaria only cost 28 marks! Exclusive Nazis, who had done something that had pleased Hitler, got put on the list for the luxury holidays, such as a 2-week cruise in the Caribbean, for only 62 marks! They also organised sports matches, opera and theatre trips and evening classes for the adults, the KDF even had its own symphony orchestra! One thing that every German worker longed for was a car. The KDF set up a Völkswagen scheme. The idea was that every German working family saved up 5 marks a week, after a period of about a year they would have saved up enough to buy a Völkswagen. However, hundreds of thousands of Germans lost money through this scheme as they all gave the 5 marks a week to KDF, but they never got the car. The rumour was that the Völkswagen factory had been changed into a gun factory. This joke was told in Germany at the time.
“A car worker at the Völkswagen factory cannot afford his own car. He steals all the pieces needs to build a car himself. When he gets home he puts them all together, only to be dismayed. He has just built a machine gun carrier!”
This kind of joke was exactly what Hitler did not want going on in his country. Anything that criticised what he was doing and accused him of not carrying out what he had said he was going to do was highly illegal.
As Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbles gained control over the press, radio, theatre, films, books and paintings. It was impossible for anything to have even the slightest hint of Nazi opposition. However, it was very good for getting Nazi propaganda across. The Nazi government could control everything that people saw or heard. Vast, dramatic rallies at Nuremberg used music, marching, colour and bright light to persuade people that it was important, and exiting to be a Nazi. The posters showed Hitler as a wonderful man, a father figure to the nation, and he always was n his smart military uniform, which appealed to many young men. The Nazis had quite a large amount of control over the German citizens. There was a system of officials designed to keep control of the German people.
ADOLF HTLER, LEADER OF PARTY
GIVES ORDERS TO
42 GAULEITERS (DISTRICT LEADERS)
GIVES ORDERS TO
760 KREISLEITERS (AREA LEADERS)
GIVES ORDERS TO
21,354 ORTSGRUPPEFUEHRER (LOCAL GROUP LEADERS)
70,000 ZELLENLEITERS (BLOCK LEADERS)
There was also a police system. The Nazis needed a large police system to control the German citizens from trying to overthrow Hitler. The Gestapo were Hitler’s secret police; they were there to kill anyone who offended Hitler, or anyone who was on the ‘Enemies of State’ list. People likely to end up on this list were; members of other political parties, anyone who had turned down a job, Jews, bibelforscher- religious sects, homosexuals and professional criminals. The largest percentage was the Jews, and the smallest percentage was the professional criminals! If you were on the enemies of state list, you would have Gestapo police knocking on your door around 2am in the morning, they would take you into custody and then force you to sign form D11, the form for protective custody. By signing this you were agreeing to go to jail. Then you would be kept in the police station for any time up to a month before being moved to a concentration camp. These concentration camps were run by another section of the Nazi police called Death Head Units. The conditions were awful, and occupants were often worked to death before their sentence was up. In a democracy, the purpose of a police force is to serve the country, whereas in a dictatorship the purpose of the police force is to serve the dictator. In a democracy, the police reinforce law and order, and keep peace. There are rules and limits as to what the police are allowed to do. In a dictatorship there are no limits, and the police can kill and torture who they please.
Kinder, kücher, kirche. Children, kitchen, church. The Nazi policy towards women. Hitler felt that this was the place of women Germany. To look after their husbands and children would be a great honour to the country. When a woman married, her and her new husband would be given 1000 marks. If they had one child they got to keep 250 marks, if they had two then 500 marks, three children meant you could keep 750 marks and 4 meant that you could keep it all. This was called the Law for Encouragement of Marriage. It was designed to make women want to marry and have lots of children, and Hitler benefited by having more German children to brainwash. Women were soon prejudiced against though. They were starting to get kicked out of their professional jobs, and soon, women were banned from all professional jobs such as teaching and medicine. However in 1939 as the war started, the women were allowed back into professional jobs as the men were at war. They were not allowed to wear short skirts, shoes with high heels or make up, and hair perming, nail varnish and slimming were strongly discouraged. Hitler believed that the perfect woman was the traditional German peasant woman, from about 1850. The hair should be in two plaits; one over each shoulder, and no make up should be worn. The women were to dress in typical German dresses that reached the floor and had long sleeves. If a women wasn’t married, she could always go to a lebensborn. These were maternity homes for single mothers, or a place where single women could go to get pregnant, usually by pure, Aryan, Nazi men. These men used the homes as brothels. Hitler saw women as feeble, weak baby machines, nothing more.
Jews were persecuted horribly. They suffered discrimination, prejudice, humiliation, cruelty and finally, mass murder. Hitler, for some reason, hated the Jewish race. There are many theories as to why Hitler hated the Jews, but most of them are just excuses. They were just a scapegoat for all Germany’s problems in 1933, so Hitler turned on them. They were made to wear a Star of David on their clothing every time they went out of their homes, so they could be recognised. If a Jew was caught not wearing his/her star, then they would be sent to a concentration camp. Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat German patients, or even touch them in any way. The stupid thing was, Jewish people in Germany were no more or less German than the rest of the population, they were just a different religion. Hitler wanted to remove all the Jews from Germany. He started this plan by telling all his Gestapo to bully Jewish people, in the hope that they would leave. They were beaten up in the streets and they could not report the crimes as nobody responded. Jews were banned from employing German servants, and Jewish schools could only have Jewish teachers. They even had to pay higher tax than ordinary German people. It was frowned upon to act friendly toward a Jew, and talking to them in the street was prohibited. They were not allowed to perform the German greeting ‘heil Hitler’ and could not have German flags or anything like that in their houses. German children were taught how to recognise a Jew, and they were not allowed to play with Jewish children. Jewish shops and businesses went bust as it was forbidden to shop in them unless you were Jewish. But it got worse. 10th November 1938, Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Jewish shop windows were smashed up and all the contents stolen by Gestapo police. Jewish houses were terrorised and several hundred Jewish people died. But Hitler still thought that it wasn’t enough. He moved thousands of Jewish people to designated small areas of towns, called ghettos. These ghettos were horrible; there would be only one or two bathrooms for over 10,000 Jews, and only about five toilets. The water supply often got contaminated, so people were dying all the time. The ghettos soon became disease filled and in some extreme cases nearly all the occupants of the ghetto were killed. Then the holocaust began. Jews were shipped into death camps in the hundreds of thousands. Other, fitter Jews were sent to work camps first. But they all died eventually. Over 6 million Jews died because of one man’s hatred. Some survived, a few managed to hide throughout the holocaust and WWII, but not many.
I think Hitler thought he had control over everyone and everything, but only because he did not look at the whole picture. He controlled most of the youth, but that was easy, and even some of them rebelled. He controlled the workers, but not to the extent I think he would have liked. He made sure they didn’t strike or rebel against him, but there were still jokes and murmurs going round about Hitler. He controlled entirely what propaganda was let out into the public eye, and the police were under his thumb. He did control women for a little while, but when the war started, there was nothing he could do about them going back into their old jobs. The Jews were under his control, there were very few that rebelled, and those that did were just killed instantly. But they were the only group who he had complete control of, and he was picking on them because they were powerless. Put Hitler in a room with all the German Jews and they could overpower him in an instant. I think Hitler had a bit of control over Germany, but only because people were scared of him, not because they respected him like they did when he first came to power.