The Nazi and The German Economy.
Hannah Tawn 28.1.03 History coursework The Nazi and The German Economy, Assignment Two: Objectives 2 and 3. In 1934 unemployment stood at around 2.5 million. The Nazis dealt with unemployment, as shown in source B, by building Autobahns. Hitler used propaganda to encourage employment by posing for photographs like source B, which is a primary source. Men who had lost their jobs however skilled were given a job making motorways. We know this from the photograph because Hitler is digging and he has no skills building motorways. We also know from source B that Jews were not counted because the workers digging are all wearing swastikas on their arms. By Jews not being allowed to work or being counted as unemployed brought the figures down. There are also a lot of uniformed men in the photograph because they are in the army and were not counted as unemployed. Hitler dealt with unemployment in another way by bringing back conscription so unemployed men were put in the army and counted as employed. There are also no women in the picture because Hitler encouraged them to stay at home and educated young girls to do the same. By doing this Hitler was not only dealing with unemployment but also preparing for war.German re-armament helped to solve the country’s unemployment problem. Firstly by the building of weapons, Hitler built weapons and roads not only to employ men but also to prepare Germany for war. By building weapons Germany would be ready to attack other countries and by building roads Germany would be able to transport troops and supplies more efficiently. Re-armament also helped deal with unemployment because unemployed men went into the army so they were counted as employed. This also helped Germany prepare for war because the army would be ready. Hitler used conscription so unemployed men had no choice but to work for little wages. Hitler made Germany self sufficient by hiring scientists to find other resources, so when they announced war on the allies they could survive with out supplies from other countries. Instead of coffee beans they created acorn coffee so the Allies couldn’t starve them with blockades. Source C shows how much Germany spent from its yearly income on weapons. Germanys increase is slow of money spent on weapons because Hitler wanted to make them in secret so the Allies wouldn’t be ready when they launched an attack.The Nazis told women to stay at home and have no careers. The Nazis thought women needed to stay at home, Hitler said they were “Germanys bedrock”. Women’s lives were described as Kinder,
Kirche and Kuche (children, church and cooking). Women were discouraged from wearing make-up, smoking or buying expensive clothes. Their hair should be grown long and be put in plaits or a bun. The Nazis attitude to them was deceitful because Hitler made it seem as though they were important but he was just using them to look after the homes while the men were at war. Source D quotes “shop and office leave alone” Hitler made it seem as though he thought women were important but he didn’t want them to be successful career wise in case of war. Women ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Kirche and Kuche (children, church and cooking). Women were discouraged from wearing make-up, smoking or buying expensive clothes. Their hair should be grown long and be put in plaits or a bun. The Nazis attitude to them was deceitful because Hitler made it seem as though they were important but he was just using them to look after the homes while the men were at war. Source D quotes “shop and office leave alone” Hitler made it seem as though he thought women were important but he didn’t want them to be successful career wise in case of war. Women were sacked from their jobs and if they were married then it would be impossible to get a job because you were expected to be at home. To make sure young girls couldn’t get jobs when they were older they were only taught how to look after children and their home. Most women were happy because they were the centres of the family but young girls had no choice when they were older of what they could do. It also quotes “your true life’s work lies at home” Hitler wanted women to have children so he had new soldiers to fight for him. Hitler gave newly weds loans of money to spend on their new house and to start a family. But Hitler was really doing this so they would have children (and he would have soldiers) because they wouldn’t have to pay £250 back of the £1000 loan every time they had a child. So families would have at least four children, if they did they were given a medal every year on the day of Hitler’s mother’s birthday. This was called “The Mutterkreuz”, the mothers cross. Hitler was egocentric because he deceived women into thinking he thought their roles were important but he was really using them to prepare for war.Source E is not very useful to find out what life was really like in the 1930’s for several reasons. Source E is a working man talking to an illegal opposition because he is getting low pay e.g. “At the beginning of 1933 I was earning good money…” This is not reliable because the man says “I” so this does not mean everyone was earning good money and was employed. But he then goes on to say “now we work ourselves to the bone…” This could be quite a reliable quote because he now says “we” so he is talking about everyone. Altogether we cannot trust this quote because it is anti-nazi. Source F was not very reliable to find out what life was like in the 1930’s either for several reasons. Source F is written by an American writer called Norman Thomas, commenting on German unemployment statistics. The Nazis made the German papers look deceiving by not reporting on anything that would make the Nazis look unpopular. The foreign newspapers though reported everything negative going on in their newspapers about what was going on in Germany under the Nazi’s rule. Norman Thomas quotes “Under the Nazis there has been much ‘invisible unemployment’” This proves the Nazis were not counting a lot of people in their unemployment statistics as unemployed. “The number of Jews is great and increasing, but they are not counted as unemployed” Source A show’s unemployment in Germany, 1933-39 in a graph. Unemployment is decreasing in the graph as the year’s progress. Source D helps explain why unemployment is decreasing. Source D is a rhyme offering advice to women used in the 1930’s. “Your true life’s work lies at home”; the rhyme encourages women to stay at home and not to work. Hitler didn’t include women as unemployed if they stayed at home because they were working as housewives. Due to the women becoming unemployed the unemployed men could take whatever jobs the unemployed women once had. Women weren’t counted in the graph so the number of unemployed went down. Source E is a quotation from a working German man complaining to an illegal newssheet about his situation. “I was earning good money”, this implies he was earning good money “Now we work ourselves to the bone and wages keep going down”, so this implies men with high paid jobs were being fired and made to do manual labour for low wages. We can also back this up with source B, a photograph of Hitler beginning to work on the first autobahns. Due to creating Autobahns and paying more men low wages they could afford to employ more men. So this proves that more men were being employed and so this also counted to unemployment statistics decreasing. Source F is a quotation from Norman Thomas an American writer who comments on the unemployment statistics. Source F quotes “The number of unemployed Jews is great and increasing but they are not counted as unemployed” This gives the impression that Jews were being outcastes and being fired from their jobs. These give German men more job opportunities so more are becoming employed and the number of unemployed is decreasing. Also there was a lot of Jews in Germany at the time so the fact that they weren’t counted as unemployed made the statistics drop rapidly. Source F also quotes “There has been a wholesale discharge of…unmarried men under 25. Also a lot of the population of German men were under 25, so because they were made redundant and not counted it gave more job opportunities for the unemployed and made the statistics decrease in Source A. “Part time workers are counted as fully employed”, because part time workers were counted as fully employed the statistics would decrease and “The re-introduction of conscription…” this meant men were employed in the army and not counted as unemployed so hundreds were taken off the statistics in Source A. All this “Invisible unemployment” (as quoted in source F) meant all the population apart from the ill and old were employed or either a women, Jew, man under 25 or in the army were working for a living bringing the unemployment statistics in the great depression sky rocketing to barely a part of the population, as shown in Source A and backed up is Sources B, D, E & F. I agree that economic success was the main reason for the popularity of the Nazis in Germany before the Second World War. This was due firstly to the great depression, which left Germans homeless, unemployed and starving. These three things gave the Nazis the chance to claim power by finding solutions to win the people over. The Nazis used policies and propaganda to win elections e.g. Hitler promised jobs, food and homes. The Nazis dealt with unemployment by giving jobs to the unemployed men building motorways at low wages so everyone could have a job and afford food. In source E a working man in Germany explains this e.g. “I was earning good money…Now we work ourselves to the bone and wages keep going down…”. Hitler also used propaganda to show this like in source B, which Hitler is shown building the first motorways. Due to reparations people like unemployed miners in the mining area of Upper Silesia in 1932were forced to move into shacks and shantytowns because they had no money to pay for rent. Hitler’s ideas started to make more sense to people, as their situations became more desperate. Hitler became most popular with ideas like kicking out the Treaty of Versailles and by letting the unemployed join the army building Germany’s armaments and using them for public works like building roads. Hitler used propaganda to show him making these great changes like in source B where he is shown starting to build the first autobahns. Also source C shows the percentage of gross National Product spent on weapons 1933-39, Hitler put men to work in factories building weapons, the amount of money spent on weapons slowly increases because Hitler is preparing for war. Hitler became popular to the elderly by offering better pensions, to the middle class who were afraid of communists and the unemployed that needed the wages. Though economic success was a main reason for the Nazis popularity there were also a few other reasons. The Nazis were also popular for using the Jews as a scapegoat for the First World War. In source F Norman Thomas quoted “The number of unemployed Jews is great and increasing…” Hitler blamed Jews because they lost the war so he treated them as un-equals and made a law that they couldn’t work, eventually sending them to concentration camps. Germany was pressured with a lot of “War Guilt” and the orders they had to comply with in the T.O.V. Jews, The Allies and The November Criminals were all blamed and this made the Nazis popular because the peoples morale was boosted. Even David Lloyd George thought Hitler had made great changes and improved the countries morale e.g. “…he has achieved a marvellous change in the spirit of the people…” The Nazis were popular because the country was being managed again. Fear also made the Nazis popular; people thought that if anything negative were said about the Nazis the offenders would be sent to re-education or concentration camps. The Germans were scared because people were beaten and “mysteriously disappeared” (They were murdered). The Gestapo (secret police) would be called if people had said anything negative or at all bad e.g. “business was not good” then they would be taken away. Adults couldn’t even trust their own children who were encouraged to tell on people even their parents. Children joined youth groups like Hitler Jugend (Hitler youth) or for girls the Bund Deutsche madchen (the German girl’s league). The boys grew up fighting and parading in their uniforms. The girls paraded in their uniforms as well but they learned how to clean, cook, look after children and their husband. The Nazis were popular to the children because they grew up learning to love Hitler and felt they were responsible and important to the Nazis. The schoolbooks were re-written and the children learned to hate the Jews for making them loose the war. Boys were taught separately to girls and learned subjects with a theme of war e.g. boys, in maths had to calculate the angle at which a bomb dropped on a Jewish town. Girls learned domestic skills and not normal subjects so they wouldn’t be able to get careers. This is illustrated in Source D, which gives advice to women and girls telling them to stay at home. The Nazis were popular with the children because they grew learning what was right (to the Nazis) and learned to respect him. In conclusion economic success was a main reason for the Nazis popularity although other reasons like Gestapo, kicking out the T.O.V, child education, Jew concentration camps, Propaganda, anti-communism and their policies added to their popularity. But the Nazis would have never have had their ideas heard if it wasn’t for The Great Depression.
