How far did attitudes towards ethnic minorities affect their status in Germany in the years 1918-89?

Question 1

what did the idea of Volk and German nationalism mean for ethnic minorities in Germany from 1871 upwards?

Answer 1

German nationalism and the idea of Volk meant that from 1871 onwards, ethnic minorities (Poles, Gypsies, and Jews) in Germany were not regarded as equal, especially by elite groups such as the landowners or the army.

Question 2

before the war, were ethnic minorities partially integrated with Germans? give examples.

Answer 2

yes, they were. Business men did business together and people interacted in daily life.
-there was also a significant amount of intermarriage, especially in the big cities. In 1915, for example, about one-third of all married Jews were married to non-Jews.

Question 3

Despite the apparent integration of ethnic minorities with Germans before the war, what are examples that show differences?

Answer 3

-there were also clear areas of difference: ethnic minorities had their own exclusive clubs and associations, and Germans had theirs

Question 4

What was life like for ethnic minorities in Weimar Germany?

Answer 4

under the Weimar Republic, life for ethnic minorities varied widely, depending on where these minorities lived and who they were.
-in broad terms, ethnic minorities were widely accepted.

Question 5

was there discrimination towards ethnic minorities in the Weimar Republic?

Answer 5

in broad terms, ethnic minorities were mostly accepted, although there was low-level discrimination of the kind faced by women.
-they received lower wages, for example, and were less likely to be hired than a ‘German’ man

Question 6

who was less welcoming of ethnic minorities and who was more welcoming?

Answer 6

-elite, conservative groups like landowners and the army, were less welcoming
-city based liberals were more welcoming

Question 7

what did Article 113 of the Weimar Constitution state?

Answer 7

it said that groups that spoke a different language could not be legally stopped from using this language or preserving their national identity in they way they ran their schools and daily lives.

Question 8

was Article 113 always implemented?

Answer 8

no, it was not always implemented and it did not control laws made by the Lander against minorities either

Question 9

in 1918 what % was the Jewish population of the German population

Answer 9

in 1918 it was about one percent, and the falling birth-rate meant it was only 0.76% in 1933 (about 500,000)

Question 10

where did a significant number of Jews live?

Answer 10

a significant number of Jews lived in the cities (66.8%), and about one third of them lived in Berlin, which many anti-Semites called ‘Jew Berlin’

Question 11

How many Jews held cabinet posts in the Weimar Republic?

Answer 11

5 Jews held cabinet posts in Weimar Germany, including Walther Rathenau who became foreign minister in 1922.

Question 12

did the Weimar Republic get criticism for appointing Jews into cabinet posts? What happened shortly after Rathenau was appointed foreign minister? what did his assassination lead to?

Answer 12

yes it did.
-shortly after being appointed foreign minister, Rathenau was assassinated.
-his assassination led to the government banning some anti-Semitic organisations

Question 13

what was the most aggressive anti-Semitic group in Weimar Germany? what did they believe?

Answer 13

it was the German Peoples Offensive and Defensive Alliance. It had 25,000 members in 1919 and around 170,000 when it was disbanded in 1933.
-the believed that the Jews had conspired with the Allies and lost them the war

Question 14

What did many members of the Germans People Offensive and Defensive Alliance do after the group disbanded?

Answer 14

Many of them joined the Nazis

Question 15

Where some conservative judges in Weimar Germany anti-Semitic?

Answer 15

yes, some conservative judges were anti-Semitic and made racist remarks with their judgements, in the way that they were also anti-communist

Question 16

was there any Jewish organisations set up to fight anti-Semitism?

Answer 16

yes there was, the Reich Federation of Jewish Front Soldiers were set up to fight anti-Semitism.
-Their name stressed that they had fought for Germany in the war, 85,000 Jewish soldiers had fought and 12,000 had died.

Question 17

as the Depression worsened in Weimar Germany, what happened?

Answer 17

as the depression worsened, more and more people turned to parties on the extreme left or right and many of these parities were extremely anti-Semitic.

Question 18

why were Gypsies discriminated against in Weimar Germany?

Answer 18

because they moved around and so did not contribute to the country by working, paying taxes or becoming involved in life outside their own community.

Question 19

was there any federal legislation against Gypsies during the Weimar Republic?

Answer 19

no there wasn’t, however, there were several Lander - Prussia and Bavaria, for example - that passed laws to try and control them
-in 1926 Bavaria passed a series of laws against Gypsies, mostly controlling their movement and aiming to get their children into schools and the adults into work. Various other states, such as Hesse, adopted these laws.
-other states passed different laws to control Gypsies. In 1927, for example, Bavaria said all Gypsies should carry identity cards

Question 20

immediately after WW1, what happened to the border between Poland and Germany?

Answer 20

it was redrawn, leaving people from each group on the wrong side of the border. Some moved, others stayed because they did not want to leave their homes just because the border had moved

Question 21

in 1925 how many Polish speakers were there in Germany?

Answer 21

in 1925 there were over 200,000 Polish speakers in Germany and 500,000 who spoke both Polish and German and who were more integrated, often born in Germany and seeing themselves as German

Question 22

why was there significant hostility towards Poles in the Weimar Republic and between 1925 and 1933, how many Poles left the country?

Answer 22

there was significant hostility to Poles because they had fought Germany in the war, and between 1925 and 1933 about 30,000 left the country

Question 23

what was one very visible ethnic group that met with rising hostility after 1923?

Answer 23

it was black people
-this was because the French army of occupation that took over the Ruhr in 1923 had black units from the French colonies. From 1923 on, about 500 mixed race children were born as a result of the arrival of these troops and they were denounced as ‘Germany’s shame’.
-Black adults who had lived in Germany before 1923 found that some areas became more hostile after the occupation, though musicians and writers were accepted in the cities

Question 24

What did the pursuit of racial purity in Nazi Germany include?

Answer 24

it included getting rid of the elderly and disabled, even if they were pure-blood Germans

Question 25

on 1 January, what programme did the Nazis begin?

Answer 25

on 1 January, 1934, the Nazis began a compulsory sterilisation programme
-Doctors had to report those they saw as ‘unfit’ to breed to one of of hundreds of Hereditary Health Courts set up all over Germany, which decided who to sterilise.
-Sterilisation was supposedly for hereditary defects, but it extended to include Jews, Roma and Sinti, criminals, and black and mixed race people.
-the Law was widened in June 1935 to allow abortion of the unfit.

Question 26

was sterilisation during the Nazi regime hidden?

Answer 26

no, far from being concealed, sterilisation was publicised in the press and at public meetings.
-it was even taught it schools, using pamphlets, books and films.

Question 27

what is the estimated number of people sterilised between 1934 and 1945? How many are known to have died from the procedure?

Answer 27

it is estimated that about 400,000 people were sterilised between 1934 and 1945
-almost all were sterilised against their will.
-at least 5,000 people were known to have died from the procedure, most of them women. There is no knowing how many died after leaving the clinics

Question 28

did the Nazis immediately begin killing Jews and other ethnic minorities when they came into power in 1933? and why?

Answer 28

no, the Nazis did not immediately start murdering Jews and other ethnic minorities when they gained power in 1933.
-this was because Hitlers position in 1933 was not strong enough to begin mass slaughter.

Question 29

how did the Nazis work towards the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem’?

Answer 29

by degrees:
-even before gaining power, their propaganda was anti-Semitic
-next, alongside the propaganda, they began to separate Jews from the community in two ways. Firstly, by legal separation - removing Jews from jobs and separating them from non-Jews in public spaces. Secondly, bans and boycotts - imposed with escalating violence - on Jewish shops and businesses

Question 30

when and what was the first national boycott by the Nazis to Jewish businesses and shops? from then on what happened?

Answer 30

it was on 1 April 1933, while it did not stop people from using the shops and businesses, the SA members stood outside urging people not to enter, sometimes roughly.
-from then on, the SA and Hitler Youth organised attacks and boycotts all over Germany, and the violence to both Jews and their supporters escalated.

Question 31

during April 1933, what did the series of laws passed against the Jews do?

Answer 31

-restricted the number of Jewish university students
-banned Jews from athletic and sporting groups
-stopped people with ‘Jewish names’ from sending telegrams.
-by the end of the year, Jews were excluded from working on German newspapers or as financial advisors

Question 32

what were the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935?

Answer 32

they were a number of laws passed to exclude Jews from many areas of life

Question 33

during the Nazi regime, who was considered Jewish?

Answer 33

-anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was Jewish. So a Catholic nun whose parents had been Jewish but had become Catholic and brought up the nun as a Catholic was still counted as Jewish.

Question 34

what is Kristallnacht?

Answer 34

it is the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ of 9 November 1938 when the Nazis organised concerted attacks on Jews across Germany.
-over 260 synagogues were burned and Jewish-owned homes and shops attacked and looted
-over 20,000 Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps, some were released some weeks later. Jews were then taxed a billion Reichsmark for repairs that were never carried out

Question 35

at first did the Nazis encourage the Jews to leave Germany? between 1933 and 1939 how many Jews emigrated?

Answer 35

yes they did, and the Nazis took a ‘flight tax’ of 30-50 percent of their wealth
-between 1933 and 1939, over 450,000 Jews emigrated
-some did not go far enough; those who settled in the Netherlands or France later found themselves in Nazi-occupied territory, often without time to get away because of the rapid German advance into these countries.

Question 36

when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, what special SS units were set up and what was their role?

Answer 36

-the special SS unit set up was called Einsatzgruppen
-their official job was to root out Polish political and resistance leaders and kill them.
-the troops also killed Jews in increasing numbers by shooting or, for example, locking them in a synagogue and setting it alight

Question 37

by the time the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, how were they committing mass murder of Jews?

Answer 37

they were committing mass murder by rounding up Jews, forcing them to dig huge graves, making them strip and stand on the edge of the graves and shooting them
- in very short figures, two million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were Einsatzgruppen victims

Question 38

what happened to the Poles who were not shot? when and where was the first ghetto set up?

Answer 38

they were rounded up into ghettos in towns and cities such as Warsaw
-the first ghetto was set up in Piotrkow in October 1939

Question 39

what were the conditions in ghettos like?

Answer 39

they were deliberately badly overcrowded and food and medical supplies were kept to a minimum.
-often electricity and water were only available for a few hours each day

Question 40

how many Gypsies were sent to the Lodz ghetto during the Nazi regime?

Answer 40

around 5,000 were sent there, where there were already 160,000 Jews at the start

Question 41

what were the conditions like in Nazi concentration camps?

Answer 41

-the conditions were appalling and there was hardly any food. People died from starvation, dysentery or due to beating or other mistreatment by the guards.
-most of these camps had crematoriums to burn the many people who died there

Question 42

what was the Final Solution the Nazis came up with for the Jews?

Answer 42

Death camps were to be set up. People working in these only did so for a short while, while waiting to be gassed

Question 43

on 1 April 1947 how many refugees and ‘expellees’ were there?

Answer 43

10 million

Question 44

what did the economic boom in the FRG during the 1950s create?

Answer 44

it created a need for more workers
-by 1955, there was more or less full employment, and the government wanted to recruit workers from abroad. At first, the unions disliked the idea.

Question 45

why were the unions in the FRG at first against the idea of the government employing workers from abroad? so what did the gov do about this?

Answer 45

because there was already a significant number of foreign workers in the country, and the unions feared that new foreign workers would force wages down and undercut existing workers by accepting less favourable working conditions.
-so the gov guaranteed non-German workers the same wages, and agreed to give preference to German workers when hiring

Question 46

the foreign labour programme, during the FRG, favoured men of what ages? what type of work did it give them?

Answer 46

favoured men of 20-40 years of age at first, and the work they were given was heavy manual labour?

Question 47

were foreign workers during the FRG taking jobs away from Germans?

Answer 47

no, rather than taking work from Germans, they were taking jobs that Germans were happy to leave for other work
-between 1961 and 1973, about 3 million German workers switched from industrial and agricultural work to white-collar jobs
-between 1961 and 1971, about 870,000 Germans left jobs in mining and 1.1 million guest workers took those jobs

Question 48

what did foreign workers in the FRG become known as?

Answer 48

they became known as ‘guest workers’
-this name underlines the German attitude - there were guests, so their stay would be temporary
-while they had guarantees under their contracts with their employers, they did not have the rights of German citizens
-even if their contracts were renewed (25% of workers in Germany in 1964 had been there over three years), it was only on a year-by-year basis. However, they kept coming, and many stayed. Some brought their families, hoping to settle and integrate in the community

Question 49

did unions in the FRG help the new guest workers?

Answer 49

yes, the unions helped them to adjust to work, but they were less helpful about long-term assimilation, saying that they had no desire to turn these workers into Germans

Question 50

did guest workers in the FRG have support from church organisations?

Answer 50

yes, e.g. the Catholic organisation Caritas and the Protestant organisation Diakonisches Werk helped guest workers

Question 51

did the 1966 recession create a lot of hostility towards the guest workers?

Answer 51

yes, especially those who did not speak much German or try to integrate
-many landlords refused to take guestworkers as tenants, so helping to confine them to living among other guest workers in the poorest areas
-while the recession was over quickly and demand for guest workers increased again, hostility, especially from some right-wing groups, remained and it was made worse when guest workers began to organise and demonstrate for better working and living conditions

Question 52

during the 1970s with the oil crisis and increase in unemployment, what happened to guest workers? what did the government do? what did Ford do in 1974?

Answer 52

they were under pressure again to leave jobs and Germany
-in November 1973, the gov put a stop on hiring and banned permits for families of workers already in the country. The number of guest workers fell to just under 2 million
-in 1974, Ford car works in Cologne offered guest workers ‘voluntary severance packages’ based on their time working at the factory. They said that many layoffs were likely otherwise, and that many would not get their contracts renewed at the end of the year. Many workers accepted, not realising that legally, workers had to be laid off according to a point system, so a German with two children, for example, would be laid off before a Turkish guest worker with four children.

Question 53

what did the government give guest workers’ children in 1975?

Answer 53

gave guest workers’ children the same benefits as other children, because there were now unemployed guest workers

Question 54

was one serious problem concerning guest workers children?

Answer 54

it was managing their education
-the gov policy as laid down in the Basic Law, was to provide ‘democratic education’: equal opportunity for all. They tried to persuade the Lander to provide mixed-culture learning groups with classes of Germans and of the children of guest workers, giving these children books in their mother tongue and books in German.

Question 55

by how much did the number of foreign children in schools rise from 1976 to 1983?

Answer 55

the number of foreign children in schools rose from 165,000 in 1976 to almost 200,000 in 1983 and 60 percent of these were Muslim, so there were significant cultural problems with education provision
-most Muslim guest workers’ children started school at the age of six with no pre-school education and language help as much pre-school education was run by Christian, mainly Catholic, schools.