Nazi Germany - Women, Minorities, Culture and Education

Question 1

What were the Nazis’ key aims towards in regards to women?

Answer 1

• To reproduce racially pure aryan children
• Return women to traditional gender roles and morals
• Remove women from the work force in order to keep them in domesticated roles

Question 2

How did the Nazis limit the entry of women into the workforce?

Answer 2

• Through reducing education opportunities by limiting university acceptance for women to 10% (had been 1 in 5 in 1933)
• Law to reduce Unemployment 1933: top level female civil servants and medical personals were dismissed. Any remaining received lower wages
• 1936: Women were no longer allowed to be judges or sit on a jury
• Female teachers who were the largest group of profession female employees were only allowed to teach primary education

Question 3

Why did the war mean that the Nazis became dependant on women joining the workforce again?

Answer 3

Shortage of workers due to men going off to war

Question 4

What evidence is there that limiting women entering the work force ended during the war?

Answer 4

• Between 1939 and 1944 employment of women rose 2%
• Compulsory agricultural work was introduced for unmarried women under 25
• October 1941 Compulsory military service in clerical/administrative roles for women 18-40 was introduced
• By 1944 women were being trained to fire anti-aircraft guns
• Restrictions on women’s education were reduced as the demand for educated workers grew

Question 5

What happened to the lives of women in regards to domestic life under the Nazis?

Answer 5

• Return to “Kinder, Kuche, Kurche”
• Motherhood heavily emphasised - women seen as being creating the “pure aryan race of the future”
• Law for the protection of Heredity Offspring 1933: sterilised people with mental or physical disabilities, non aryans, (later on) alcoholics and women with several sexual partners
• Performing an abortion on a racially pure aryan woman was made illegal and punishable by death in 1943
• The Nuremberg laws banned marriage betweens aryan and a non-aryans
• Lebensborn programs used to produce racially pure aryan children who would be sent to “suitable” homes

Question 6

How were women encouraged to go into motherhood?

Answer 6

• Financial incentives: 1933 introduced the marriage loan 1000 marks if women left work and were racially pure aryans, reduced 25% per child born under Law to Reduce Unemployment
• Establishment of 25,000 mother and child centres
• Mother Day made a national holiday
• The Mothers Cross awarded to women who had 4,6 and 8+ children

Question 7

What happened to the lives of women in regards to politics under the Nazis?

Answer 7

• Disenfranchised (all people were)
• Not a single female nazi deputy
• 1934 - senior female civil servants were dismissed
• 1936 - women could no longer serve on jury or as a judge
• Women were allowed to participate if it furthered the Nazi agenda e.g. (Gertrud Shlotz-Klink ran the National Socialist Women’s League, Emmy Goering and Leni Refienstahl)

Question 8

What happened to culture for women under the Nazis?

Answer 8

• Greater emphasis on the peasant look - braided hair, long dresses, no hair dye or make up, traditionally ‘feminine looking’
• Jazz and cabaret clubs were banned
• Women were no longer to drink, dance, smoke in public
• Pre marital sex was allowed for aryan women due to women being seen as producing the future of Germany

Question 9

Why was the persecution of Jews restrained in the first two years of Nazi Rule?

Answer 9

To ensure the electorate still supported them

Question 10

What anti-Semitic legislation was passed in 1935?

Answer 10

Sept 15 1935
• Reich Citizenship Law Passing of the Nuremburg Laws saw Jewish Germans lose citizenship
• Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour - prevented non aryans from marrying other Germans

Question 11

What anti-Semitic legislation was put in place in 1936

Answer 11

Jewish doctors not allowed to work in government hospitals and Jewish paitents would not be treated there

Question 12

Name anti-Semitic events/ laws made in 1938

Answer 12

• Oct 5 - Jewish passports required to have large red J on them
• Nov 9 - Kristallnacht, Jewish homes, business and synagogues, Jewish property is stolen and 28,000 German and Austrian Jews are sent to concentration camps
• Dec - Law passed confiscating all Jewish business

Question 13

What anti-Semitic laws were passed in 1939?

Answer 13

• September saw Jewish people have a curfew of 8pm and are banned from owning radios.
• Germany invades Poland and all Jewish Poles are forced to wear a yellow star of David

Question 14

Name key anti-Semitic events went on in 1940

Answer 14

• April 30 - Jewish people in Poland forces into ghettos

Question 15

Name key anti-Semitic events went on in 1941

Answer 15

• May - Hitler creates 6 Einsatgruppen (killing squads) to follow army into Russia an dkiill all the Jewish people and communists
• Aug - Voluntary emigration of German Jews is forbidden
• Sept - Mass murder of 34000 Jews at Babi Yar, near Kiev, by Einsatgruppen and Ukranian police

Question 16

Name key anti-Semitic events went on from 192-45

Answer 16

• Jan 20 1942 - Discussion of the ’final solution’ to deal with Jewish people. The first gassing of Jewish people occurs at Auschwitz then extended to Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor
• 1942-44 - Transportation of Jews around Europe to death camps. 6 million Jews are killed, 1 million by Einsatgruppen

Question 17

How did the Nazis persecute homsexuals?

Answer 17

• 1934 - Gestapo ordered to draw up pink lists of gay men. 10,000s are brought to trial
• 1940 - Himmler says that after gay men known to have multiple sexual partner have served prison time can either be sent to concentration camps or be castrated
• 1936 - The office to combat abortion and homosexuality is created

Question 18

How did the Nazis persecute Roma and Sinit people?

Answer 18

• June 1941 - after the invasion of Russia 100,000 Roma people are shot
• January 1943 - 5007 Roma killed in gas vans at Chemlo death camp
• 1936 Roma people include in Nuremburg Laws
• Multiple occupied nations take part in roma/sinti genocides : 3000-6000 are put in camps in France, almost all of 25,000 in Croatia are killed and 26,000 are deported to camps from Romania

Question 19

How did the Nazis target other individuals?

Answer 19

• July 14th 1933 - Sterilization of disabled people, alcoholics and others were forced to prevent them having children. 300,000 to 400,000 occurred
• Black Germans were also sterilised starting April 1937
• 1939 - saw the beginning of the euthanasia program that killed 170,000 disabled Germans

Question 20

How did the structure of the education system change under the Nazis?

Answer 20

• Education became centralised with the Lander losing control
• Confessional schools were abolished
• March 20 1933 - Education of boys and girls done separately
• 1937: Adolf Hitler schools set up to for students 12 -18
• Castle of the Order: boarding schools trained boys to go into government service

Question 21

How did the role of teachers change under the Nazis?

Answer 21

• Teachers had to join the National Socialist Teachers League to get a job, 95% of teachers joined
• Undesirable teachers were purged in April 1933, 60% of teachers and 15% of university professors
• Reduced respect for teaching profession with 8000 vacancies by 1938
• Ministry of education controlled the selection and training of teachers and professors by 1935

Question 22

How did the curriculum change under the Nazis?

Answer 22

• Children were taught to be ‘good Nazis’ through indoctrination to be loyal to Hitler
• December 1936 saw law passed that all children be taught Nazi ideologies by the age of 10
• Children performed Labour or military service for certain weeks of the year
• Curriculum became focused around physical fitness (15% of timetable), racial purity, history and health biology. Religious studies was dropped
• Textbooks became censored and education roles forced children into stereotypes (boys train for military service, girls trained to become mothers)

Question 23

How did outside activities for children change under the Nazis?

Answer 23

• The Hitler Youth became the only youth group you could join and was compulsory by 1936 with 4 million members
• Children in the Hitler youth were trained to report anything anti Nazis that their parents or teachers said

Question 24

What were the Nazi aims in regards to culture?

Answer 24

To indoctrinate the population to support 
• Anti-Semitism
• Militarisation 
• Nationalism 
• Glorification of the Aryan race
• Cult of the Fuhrer
• Anti-modernism

Question 25

What did the Nazis do in regards to music in Germany?

Answer 25

• Banned jazz and swing music

* Supported militaristic/traditional German music such as Beethoven, Bach and Wagner

Question 26

What did the Nazis do in regards to literature?

Answer 26

• The banned ‘All quiet on the Western Front”

* The burning of the books May 1933 saw the burning of 400,000 books outside the Reichstag

Question 28

Why did sport become important in Nazi culture?

Answer 28

• Promoted the healthy nation ideal

* Hosted the 1936 Olympics and the Germans won 89 medals (also the whole Jesse Owen not given gold medal by Hitler)

Question 29

What happened to the cinema industry under the Nazis?

Answer 29

• Was run by Nazi sympathisers so they didn’t actually mind it
• Was used as a means of propaganda with the production of films such as ‘The Eternal Jew”
• Jewish actors and directors (e.g. Fritz Lang, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Bergner) were removed

Question 30

What happened to art and design under the Nazis?

Answer 30

• Great German Exhibition of acceptable art - 900 pieces of art portrayed
• Bauhaus was rejected
• Degenerate art was rejected - anything that didn’t portray people as perfect
• Artists such as Albert Speer (designed Olympic stadium) and Arno Breher were celebrated