Chapter 14: The Terror State (Sec 4)

Question 1

Which political parties were most likely to mount stiff resistance to Hitler?

Answer 1

1) The parties of the left - the SPD and the KPD.
2) Hitler feared that the unions, which were linked to the SPD would stage a general strike to thwart the Nazi takeover in 1933.

Question 2

How did the SPD resist the Nazis?

Answer 2

1) SPD was unprepared for the Nazi takeover in Jan 1933.
2) SPD activists campaigned openly for the election campaign in March 1933 and suffered SA violence as a result.
3) SPD deputies bravely defied SA and SS intimidation to vote against the Enabling Act in the Reichstag, but once the regime had acquired legal powers to establish a dictatorship, it began to crush the SPD.
4) By the end of 1933, thousands of SPD activists had been murdered or placed into ‘preventive custody’ and the SPD leadership had fled into exile.

Question 3

How did the KPD resist the Nazis?

Answer 3

1) The KPD was much better prepared than the SPD for engaging in underground activity.
2) However, the KPD was devastated by the wave pf repression unleashed upon communists in Germany after Hitler came to power.
3) It was the first party to be banned.
4) Around 10% of the KPD’s membership was killed by the Nazis during 1933.
5) Nevertheless, the KPD established an underground network in some German industrial centres. Revolutionary unions were setup in Berlin and Hamburg to recruit members and public newspapers. All of these networks were broken up by the Gestapo

Question 4

How did workers resist the Nazis?

Answer 4

1) Before 1933, the German working class was the largest and most unionised workforce in Europe. The largest unions in Germany were linked to the SPD.
2) After January 1933, trade unions were absorbed into the German Labour Front (DAF).
3) Strikes did occur (although very risky). September 1935, there were 37 reported strikes in the Rhineland. In 1937, there were a total of 250 recorded strikes.
4) Strikes were a reaction to poor working conditions or low wages.
5) There was increased strike activity in 1935-36 at a time when there was widespread discontent over food prices.

Question 5

How did Nazis react to dissent? What did this lead to amongst workers?

Answer 5

1) From the point of view of the regime, any expression of dissent was regarded as a challenge.
2) Of the 25,000 workers who participated in strikes in 1935, 4000 spent short periods in prison.

Question 6

What tactics did workers use to express their dissatisfaction?

Answer 6

1) Absenteeism was a reaction against the pressure to work longer hours.
2) Some workers tried to deliberately damage their machinery.

Question 7

How and why did the Protestant Church resist the Regime?

Answer 7

1) The establishment of the Pastors’ Emergency League in 1933 and its development into the Confessional Church in 1934 were acts of resistance.
2) Refusal to accept being part of a ‘coordinated’ Reich Church was due to 3 main factors:
- They were trying to protect the independence of the Protestant Church from the Nazi regime.
- They were resisting the attempt to impose the Aryan paragraph on the Church. This involved purging from the Church any pastor who had converted from Judaism.
- They were trying to defend Lutheran theology, which was based purely on the Bible.

Question 8

Who was Martin Niemöller? What did he do? What happened to him?

Answer 8

1) Niemöller was a Protestant pastor who had been a U-boat commander during the First World War and held strong nationalist views.
2) Although he initially welcomed Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in Jan 1933, he wasn’t a Nazi Party member and he began to oppose Nazi efforts to politicise the Evangelical Church.
4) He was anti semitic but believed that Jews should be welcomed into the Christian faith. He was a co-founder of the Confessional Church formed in 1934.
5) He was arrested and sent to a concentration camp in 1937, however in prison, he was treated as Hitler’s personal prisoner and allowed certain privileges.

Question 9

Did the Confessional Church yield to Regime?

Answer 9

1) The majority of the confessional church professed their loyalty to Hitler and the 3rd Reich.

Question 10

How did the Roman Catholic Church resist the regime?

Answer 10

1) Catholic leadership in both Rome and Germany tried to come to terms with the Nazis regime.
2) It was when the privileges granted to the Church in the concordat of 1933 came under attack that the Church found itself increasingly at odds with the regime.

Question 11

1) What did the Pope issue in 1937?
2) What happened to it?
3) How did the Regime react to it?

Answer 11

1) The papal encyclical ‘With Burning Grief’ against the background of mounting pressure on the catholic church in Germany, condemning Nazi hatred upon the church.
2) The document was smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messengers on bicycle or foot and read out from almost every church pulpit in March 1937.
3) The regime’s response was to increase repression. Charges against priests for ‘abuse of the pulpit’ became regular occurrences.

Question 12

Why did young people become disillusioned with the Nazi Regime?

Answer 12

1) After membership to the Hitler youth became compulsory in 1936, there were growing signs of disillusionment with the official movements among young people.
2) Membership of the HJ and BDM made great demands on a teenager’s free time, including compulsory gymnastic sessions on Wednesday evenings, all day hikes on Sundays and endless military drilling.

Question 13

What Nazi policy made young people unhappy with the lack of free time?

Answer 13

1) The Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung infuriated the young people. The policy was based on the premise that individuals should have no independent activity.

Question 14

How did young people resist the regime?
What gang became relatively popular?

Answer 14

1) Many people simply didn’t turn up to weekly parades.
2) Some young people formed cliques, or gangs, to show their independence. Some were little more than criminal gangs, other gangs were more political.
2) The Meuten gangs flourished in old communist strongholds in Leipzig in the late 1930’s.

Question 15

Why did some elites resist?

Answer 15

1) Some aristocratic generals in the army and senior civil servants regarded Hitler as a threat to the old Germany, even after the Night of the Long Knives.
2) Opposition within the army and civil service came to a head in the autumn of 1938. They felt that Hitler was leading an unprepared Germany to war.

Question 16

How did Nazi desire to begin invading nations sit with the army and civil service? Provide examples.

Answer 16

1) In November 1937, Hitler outlined secret thoughts to senior army leaders and leading Nazis making it clear that he envisaged a union with Austria and an invasion of Czechoslovakia.
2) At the meeting, Defence Minister General Bloomburg and Commander in Chief of the army General Fritsch expressed their doubts to Hitler.
3) Within 3 months, Hitler purged them from both the army and leadership.

Question 17

How did the threat of war sit with the Army and Civil Service?

Answer 17

1) The imminent threat of war prompted Head of Army General Staff General Beck and a number of senior army figures to plot to remove Hitler from power in a military coup.

Question 18

How effective was opposition to the Regime?

Answer 18

1) There was no basis for an organised and sustained resistance in Nazi Germany, certainly not one commanding mass support.
2) Opposition to the Nazis was therefore fragmented and hampered by the fact that there was a belief that the Regime should be credited with having restored order, prosperity and national pride, and rid Germany of its internal enemies.

Question 19

What were the forces that made up the police system in the Third Reich?

Answer 19

1) The SS, controlled by Himmler.
2) The SD, an intelligence gathering offshoot of the SS.
3) The SA, controlled by Rohm until 1933. SA also acquired police powers to arrest and detain political prisoners.
4) The Gestapo, secret State police in Prussia, where Goering was the President

Question 19

What were the forces that made up the police system in the Third Reich?

Answer 19

1) The SS, controlled by Himmler.
2) The SD, an intelligence gathering offshoot of the SS.
3) The SA, controlled by Rohm until 1933. SA also acquired police powers to arrest and detain political prisoners.
4) The Gestapo, secret State police in Prussia, where Goering was the President

Question 20

Explain the role of the SS in depth.
When did it acquire police powers? Did it receive more as time went on? What did Himmler want the SS to be like?

Answer 20

1) SS had certain police functions from the start. Especially after the Night of the Long Knives, the police role of the SS was expanded and it became the main Nazi Party organisation involved in the identification and arrest of political prisoners.
2) By 1936, after Himmler had been appointed chief of the German police, the SS controlled the entire Third Reich police system and the concentration camps.
3) Himmler wanted the SS to be strictly disciplined, racially pure and obedient. The key members for an SS members were loyalty and honour.

Question 21

Explain the role of the SD.

Answer 21

1) Established in 1931 as the internal security service of the Nazis.
2) It was set up to investigate claims that the party had been infiltrated by its political enemies.
3) Led by Heydrich.
4) After 1933, its role was intelligence gathering. An important role was to monitor public opinion, identify those who voted ‘no’ in plebiscites and to report on these to Hitler.
5) Worked independently to the Gestapo, which was a state organisation.
6) SD was staffed not by professional police officers but by amateurs who were devoted Nazis.

Question 22

Explain the role of the Gestapo.

Answer 22

1) Originally set up in Prussia alone, but under the Nazi regime its operations were extended to cover the whole country.
2) Developed an reputation for being all-knowing. Ordinary Germans believed that the Gestapo had agents in every workplace, pub and neighbourhood. Yet, it was a small organisation with 20,000 members in 1939.
3) Depended on information supplied by informers.
4) Gestapo was very successful in instilling an atmosphere of fear and suspicion in the German population. Political debate and criticism was stifled.

Question 23

What was the tradition of the courts and justice system in Germany like?

Answer 23

1) Judges and lawyers were generally very conservative, but few belonged to the Nazis in Jan 1933. Long term tradition of freedom from political interference for lawyers and judges posed an issue for the Nazis.

Question 24

How did the Nazis coordinate the justice system? What was the effect of this coordination?

Answer 24

1) The merging of various professional associations of judges and lawyers with the League of National Socialist Lawyers, creating the Front of German Law in April 1933.
2) Introduction of new courts. Special courts were set up in 1933 and the people’s court in April 1934 to run alongside the existing court system. These courts had 3 Nazi judges alongside 2 professional judges.
3) With these measures, backed by the SA and SS, lawyers and judges fell into line. The justice system had no power to interfere with the Nazis use of terror.

Question 25

How many people were tried by the People’s court?

Answer 25

1) Around 3,400, most of who were communists and socialists.
2) Many of those brought before the courts were given the death penalty, which was increasingly used in the Third Reich.