2. Opposition, control and consent 1933–1945

Question 1

Examples of opposition and dissent in Nazi Germany summary

Answer 1

Anti-Nazi campaigns
Sabotage
Disobedience
Attempts to assassinate Hitler

Question 2

Anti-Nazi campaigns: Red Shock Troop

Answer 2

In 1933 the SPD group Red Shock Troop published the newspaper Red Shock Troop about every 10 days and built a membership of about 3000 - leaders were arrested and sent to concentration camps

Question 3

Anti-Nazi campaigns: communist opposition

Answer 3

In 1941 (after operation Barbarossa), communist groups revived - The Uhrig groups leafleted factories and put up posters urging workers to acts of sabotage

Question 4

Anti-Nazi campaigns: The Red Orchestra

Answer 4

The Red Orchestra - group of government employees (not necessarily communist) passed information about the German war effort to the USSR

Question 5

Sabotage before WW2 - workers

Answer 5

Workers held lightning strikes that usually lasted a few hours e,g, in 1936, workers who built the autobahns held a lightning strike

Workers also sabotaged production by working slowly, damaging machinery or reporting in sick - these actions could lead to arrest if reported however as workers were in high demand especially when the war broke out so this was often overlooked

Question 6

Sabotage during WW2

Answer 6

more violent with assistance from the allies included blowing up bridges or railway lines

Question 7

Disobedience: The ‘Swing Youth’ and ‘Jazz Youth’

Answer 7

Some young people (usually affluent middle class) deliberately did not join the Hitler Youth and instead went to clubs to listen to ‘cool’ music such as swing and jazz and wear western clothing

After 1940 these clubs were declared illegal and went underground - the Nazis made occasional arrests but mostly left these groups alone as they did not actively express anti-Nazi sediments

Question 8

Disobedience: Edelweiss Pirates

Answer 8

Large working-class movement and actively anti-nazi - ran their own activites such as hiking and camping but also painted anti-Nazi slogans on wall or collected Anti-Nazi leaflets dropped by allied planes and posted them through letterboxes.

If caught, they were executed. In 1944, the Pirates in Cologne killed the Gestapo chief, so the Nazis publicly hanged 12 of them.

Question 9

Disobedience: White Rose Group

Answer 9

Formed by students at Munich University in 1943 who operated in secret distributing anti-Nazi material urging sabotage and exposing the Nazi murder of Jews while urging non-violent resistance

Its leaders, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, were arrested and sentenced to the guillotine

Question 10

Attempts to assassinate Hitler

Answer 10

July 1921 - July 1944: there were about 15 known attempts to assassinate Hitler. (7 of these were by army members who disapproved of the more extreme Nazi beliefs especially the murder of Jews/other ‘undesirables’.)

All plotters were caught and executed immediately

Question 11

The most serious attempt to assassinate Hitler

Answer 11

July plot of 1944 - attempt by the German army to take over the government and negotiate the end of the war with the allies.

On the 20th July - Lieutenant Stauffenberg left a bomb in a briefcase in a conference where hitler was - while four people were killed, Hitler survived with minor injuries

Plotters were either shot or committed suicide. Investigation led to trial and execution of 200 other people who were said (rightly or wrongly) to be involved.

Question 12

Nazi influence in the church

Answer 12

Hitler first set up a Concordant with the pope in which he promised to leave the Catholic Church alone if it did not interdere in German politics

Hitler then set up a developed a Nazi-influenced ‘Peoples’ Church with a Reichsbishop - became less christian and more nazi evidenced by the removal of the Old Testament from the Bible as it was ‘jewish

Question 13

Church opposition

Answer 13

The removal of the old testament from the bible caused formation of the Pastors’ Emergency League which developed into the Confessing church in 1934 - it condemned the People’s Church for obeying the state, being anti-Semitic and encouraging atheism

Many members were of the confessing Church were arrested and some were executed

Question 14

Spontaneous protests (informal reactions by groups of people): imprisonment of bishops

Answer 14

Large groups protested publicly when the Nazis imprisoned two bishops (Hamds Meiser and Theophil Wurm) for speaking out against the Nazis in October 1934 - the Nazis were moving very cautiously towards both protest and and catholic churches backed down and released the bishops.

Question 15

Spontaneous protests (informal reactions by groups of people): imprisonment of bishops

Answer 15

Hitler ordered military processions in Berlin publicising the invasion of Czecholvakia in 1938 - people were enthusiastic instead of cheering and waving which prompted Hitler to work with Chamberlain at the Munich agreement to reach agreement over the land he was claiming in Czecholvakia rather than go to war

Question 16

The Decree for the Protection of People and the State 1933

Answer 16

Allowed the Nazi’s to ban publications and also suspend civil right; the Nazis could search homes/workplaces and take people into ‘protective custody’ without trial. - supposedly short-term emergency measure was never lifted

Question 17

Censorship of the radio

Answer 17

25th Marxh 1933: Goebbels told all controllers of German radio that radio stations served the government therefore had to express Nazi ideology and follow government instructions about what to broadcast.

1. Radio Content was controlled as well as the staff were purged to get rid of Jews or people who had belonged to the communist KPD and socialist SPD.
2. Foreign radio broadcasts were also made illegal in order to control what information the Germans heard about the war.

The Nazis saw news and information from outside Germany as a threat

Question 18

Press Censorship

Answer 18

4th October 1933: Hitler issued the Reich press law in 1933 which banned all Jewish as well as liberal editors and journalists. The government was also now able to ban newspapers in order to force owners into bankruptcy and by 1935, 1,600 newspapers were closed. It was now a crime for the editor to publish anything that weaken the Third Reich or harm the German economy,

Question 19

Censorship of literature

Answer 19

Nazis created a list of 2500 banned authors and encouraged the burning of books that challenged nazi ideals and values.

On the 10th of may in 1933 joseph goebbels himself supervised the burning of 25,000 books that were written by Jews, pacifists, socialists and communists

Question 20

The beginning of Nazi repression

Answer 20

Nazi Repression began with banning political parties which made forming a political party a crime

The Nazis set up a series of concentration camps to hold political prisoners - Between 1933 and 1945, over 500,000 non-jewish people were sent to these camps for political crimes

Question 21

Repression: Policing

Answer 21

The Gestapo (the secret police) was set up in April 1933 by Hermann Goering. It inaugurated it;s own legal system independent of the existing legal system. Gestapo’s brief was to weed out enemies of the state so people could be arrested for anything from plotting to kill Hitler or telling jokes about the Naxis.

Unlike the SA and the SS, the Gestapo did wear not wear a unoform and encouraged people to think any stranger they met might be a member to make people careful about what they said

Question 22

Repression: Courts

Answer 22

The People’s Court was set up in Berlin in 1934 to try people accused of being trators to the Third Reich - trials were not held publicly and it was not possible to appeal against the verdict.

It had two judges and five other members chosen from the Nazi Party, the SS and the armed forced and tens of thousand of people had passed through the Court by 1945

Question 23

Propaganda - imagery

Answer 23

Propaganda was used to intimately tie nazism to german nationalism and this allowed the nazis to imply that if you were anti-Nazi, you were anti-German included sublimal messaging through associating the swastika with unity and happiness and the glorification of hitler by captioning his image “Es lebe deutchland” in order to promote him as the saviour of germany.

Question 24

Propaganda through the radio

Answer 24

Cheap mass- produced radios were placed in cafes, factories and streets and the nazis even sold radios called ‘peoples receivers’ cheaply so that most Germans could afford them and consequently be indoctrinated by hitler frequent broadcasts.

By the 1930s, there were more radios per person in Germany than anywhere else in europe - effective

Question 25

Propaganda to alienate Jews

Answer 25

spread of negative images and ideas about Jews in magazines, films and other media. Films such as the ‘eternal jew’ which compares Jews to rats, were played in cinemas in order to support the belief that jews were inferior/subhumans and promote anti semitism

Question 26

Indoctrination

Answer 26

All youth groups were taken under the control of the hitler youth organisation by 1939 and it became compulsory for children ages 14 to 18 to be members.

• promoted the need for volksgemeinschaft which is the unity of the German people.
• Curriculum at was altered to teach nazi ideology. History lessons concentrated on the rise of nazis + Eugenics ‘superiority’ of the aryan race.

Question 27

The significance of censorship

Answer 27

Censorship was an effective method in controlling people to some extent as it sheltered people from seeing alternative political ideolgies and anything anti-nazi

Question 28

The significance of terror/repression

Answer 28

Nazi officials were all assumed to be watching for the smallest infringement of Nazi rules so people listened to banned music with volume low/their ear against the radio, conversations into political matters were seldom and it hard for people to be frank about dissident views in case people (even close friends) reported them to the Gestapo

Question 29

The significance of propaganda

Answer 29

Helped reinforce existing Nazi ideas and beliefs as well as ensuring other ideas gradually disappeared

Allowed hitler and the nazi’s to access everyone effortlessly

Simultaneously boosted public morale and created a sense of national pride making control of the masses easier

Question 30

The Fuhrer Myth

Answer 30

Nazi;s gained support by making Hitler into a national hero, a god-like figure who could so no wrong so people were willing to make sacrifices when Hitler asked them to - The Fuhrer myth kept support even when the Naxis made the mistake of invading of the USSR and behan to struggle to keep advancing

Question 31

Judging Nazi support

Answer 31

Difficult to judge their level of support as people cheering and waving does mean they supported the nazis - the nazi system of control meant they had to

Question 32

Subliminal messaging

Answer 32

The use of the swastika, associating it with unity and happiness as well as the regular glorification of hitler by using his image on posters and captioning it “Es lebe deutchland” in order to promote him as the saviour of germany.
Propaganda was used to intimately tie nazism to german nationalism and this allowed the nazis to imply that if you were anti-Nazi, you were anti-German.

Question 33

Nazi slogans

Answer 33

The slogan ‘One People. One Reich, One Fuhrer’was often used to win over the people

Es lebe deutchland” in order to promote Hitler as the saviour of germany.

Question 34

People who supported the Nazis and why?

Answer 34

1. People with the same prejudices as the Nazis: hated jews. Communits, gays, gypies or any other groups Nazis saw as ‘undesirables’ - pleasure for them to see these groups victimised by the nazis
2. Wealthy industrialists - Bennefitted from the banning of the KPD and trade unions
3. People who applied to ‘Germanise’ an area - given homes and farmland
4. Germans who saw the Nazis as reversing the losses of the Treaty of Versailles