The Nazi Government (1934-39)

Question 1

What were 2 ways that Hitler dealt with the existing bureaucracy?

Answer 1

• He purged his opponents and Jews from it in 1933
• Hitler kept some ministers who weren’t Nazis, since they gave the people a sense of continuity

Question 2

List 5 defining aspects of the Nazi government.

Answer 2

• Führerprinzip
• ‘Working towards the Führer’
• Polyarchy
• Personal rivalries
• Terror

Question 3

What was Führerprinzip? Give 3 details.

Answer 3

• The ‘leadership principle’
• The idea of a strict hierarchical order
• It meant that Hitler had absolute power
• It also meant that leaders gave orders which were instantly followed (contrary to a democracy, where there would be discussion and consultation)

Question 4

What other idea did the Nazis use to support Führerprinzip?

Answer 4

• The idea of Volksgemeinschaft; that the whole nation would work together for the common good rather than for their own good

Question 5

What was ‘working towards the Führer’, and why did it exist?

Answer 5

• The Nazis implemented policies that they thought would please Hitler, as they did not have their own party programme, but rather were aware of what Hitler roughly wanted
• This would then give them more responsibility and power

Question 6

How was ‘working towards the Führer’ justified by the Nazis?

Answer 6

• Through the idea that Hitler perfectly represented the will of all Germans

Question 7

What was the issue that Nazi officials faced with ‘working towards the Führer’? Give 3 details.

Answer 7

• Hitler rarely set out his views clearly, but tended to say them in long monologues about various other topics
• Therefore, access to Hitler was the way to gain power
• However, access to Hitler was controlled by the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers and later Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary
• This made Bormann more powerful than his own superior, Rudolf Hess, who was deputy Führer

Question 8

What 3 types of bodies existed within the government by 1936? Give one or two examples of each.

Answer 8

• Ministries: Hitler kept many of the traditional ones from Weimar, and created new ones such as the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
• Nazi Party departments: the party itself had departments that were intended to develop policies in certain areas, such as a department of economics
• Supreme Reich authorities: special agencies created by Hitler that came from neither the party nor the state, such as the Office of the Four Year Plan and the DAF

Question 9

What was the problem with the existence of these different bodies? Give an example.

Answer 9

• They overlapped, which made the regime polycratic (it had many centres of power)
• The economy; before 1933, the ministries of economics, agriculture and labour all played a role in economic policy
• In 1936, Hitler created the Office of the 4 Year Plan for the purpose of creating a new economic policy
• It had the power to organise labour, industrial production and even transport, which therefore interfered with the work of several other industries

Question 10

What were 4 reasons why Hitler ultimately created a polycratic regime, although it was chaotic?

Answer 10

• To create competition, which would cause ministers to want to please him and remember that they were dependent on him
• He even stopped groups from working on policies to prevent the formation of opposition
• He believed that this competition would lead to the creation of a better government (social Darwinism)
• Officials would ultimately have to come to him to solve disputes

Question 11

Describe 4 aspects of a personal rivalry that affected the Nazi government.

Answer 11

• Himmler and Göring fought over control of the political (/secret) police after they purged Röhm
• From mid-1934, Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich (head of the SD) wanted to remove Göring’s influence from the Gestapo
• The dispute was taken to Hitler in 1936, and Göring no longer had control over the Gestapo
• Himmler’s power base grew as a result, and he expanded the Gestapo to monitor the whole of Germany

Question 12

What happened to political opposition under the Nazis?

Answer 12

• The Gestapo found any opposition
• Political prisoners were sent to concentration camps ran by the Gestapo

Question 13

What was Hitler’s lifestyle like as Führer?

Answer 13

• He spent a lot of time away from central government at his villa, the Berghof
• He was rarely awake before lunch, had irregular sleep patterns and spent most of his time doing leisure activities

Question 14

In what 7 ways did Hitler play an important role in the government?

Answer 14

• His will was the basis of the regime instead of the law
• He allowed the Nazi Party to play a bigger role in government
• He created new agencies
• He disliked being involved in the day-to-day affairs of government, unless it was foreign policy
• He used his authority to end disputes between senior Nazis
• His style of government caused the regime to be increasingly radical as Nazis came up with more extreme ideas to please him
• His presence actually made the regime more organised

Question 15

What proof is there that Hitler did not want to take part in the government’s daily affairs?

Answer 15

• While the cabinet had met 72 times in 1933, it only met 4 times in 1936
• It met for the final time in 1938

Question 16

When did Hitler tend to intervene in issues? Give an example.

Answer 16

• When it became a crisis
• The Night of the Long Knives; Hitler had previously refused to deal with Röhm

Question 17

What bit of legislation that was meant to be a temporary measure was never lifted by the Nazis? What were 2 powers it gave the Nazis?

Answer 17

• The Reichstag Fire Decree from February 1933
• It suspended individual rights and the freedom of the press
• The government could now imprison people without charging them with a specific crime

Question 18

In what 3 ways was Hitler presented to people, and why?

Answer 18

• Germany’s Messiah after the loss of WW1 and Versailles
• As representing the whole nation
• As being above politics
• Most people weren’t interested in Nazi ideology, so the Nazis created the ‘Führer myth’ to win themselves support

Question 19

What were 6 reasons why people supported the Nazis?

Answer 19

• Due to their economic achievements
• They rewarded conformity, such as mothers who had many children
• They were popular with people who shared the same prejudices as them
• They had the support of people who benefitted from them being in power, such as wealthy industrialists
• They had the support of people who wanted Versailles overturned and for Germany to be a dominant power within Europe again
• Their use of propaganda

Question 20

Give an example of the Nazis using propaganda to present their policies as correct.

Answer 20

• After 1939, the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos where there was a lack of food, electricity and water
• Images of this were then used to justify antisemitic propaganda

Question 21

How did the Nazis censor German culture?

Answer 21

• They set up the Reich Chamber of Culture under Joseph Goebbels in 1933
• This then had 7 other chambers that were responsible for an aspect of culture

Question 22

How did the Nazis present the culture of the Weimar Republic?

Answer 22

• They claimed it was over-intellectual and Jewish-led, which was a disruption of German values
• They therefore called certain aspects of culture ‘degenerate’

Question 23

List 6 ways the Nazis controlled the German press.

Answer 23

• All journalists had to be members of the Reich Chamber of the Press in order to write for newspapers/ magazines
• ‘Unpatriotic’ journalists could be expelled from the chamber, which meant they lost the right to publish
• Goebbels created the German News Agency, which merged various news agencies and put them under the control of the government, so they became German journalists’ one main source of information
• The Nazi publishing company (Eher Verlag) bought up existing newspapers (Nazi ownership of papers increased from 2.5% in 1933 to 82% in 1945)
• 1933 Editor’s Law: editors became responsible for the content of their newspaper/ magazine
• Specific newspapers were banned, such as the KPD newspaper, Red Flag, at the end of January 1933 (Göring also banned most SPD newspapers in Prussia in February 1933)

Question 24

How did the popularity of newspapers change under the Nazis, and why?

Answer 24

• There was a 10% drop in newspaper sales between 1933 and 1939
• The points of view available to Germans were extremely limited, and newspapers were dull

Question 25

Other than the press, what 3 other forms of culture were heavily censored?

Answer 25

• Radio
• Films (they banned some foreign films)
• Literature

Question 26

List 4 ways that the Nazis controlled the radio.

Answer 26

• The Reich Radio Company (RRG) had already been regulating radio
• In 1933 they put Reich governors in charge of the RRG
• Mass production of the ‘people’s receiver’, which was subsidised, and only had 1 station and limited range
• It was compulsory to listen to key speeches (radio wardens reported on attendance)

Question 27

Give 2 figures on the people’s receiver.

Answer 27

• 1939: 70% of households owned one
• 1943: one-third of all radios were people’s receivers

Question 28

What proportion of the film industry was owned by the government?

Answer 28

• In 1933 the 4 major film companies were allowed to remain private so that they could continue to generate money through exports
• However, their shares were slowly bought up by the government
• In 1942 all film companies were nationalised

Question 29

What proportion of films made under the Nazis were clearly meant to be propaganda?

Answer 29

• 1/6 of over 1000 films had a clear propaganda message

Question 30

What films were released in 1940, and why? Describe one of them.

Answer 30

• 3 anti-Semitic films, with the purpose of stressing the Nazi view of Jews
• ‘The Eternal Jew’ presented Jews as parasitic
• It was extremely unpopular, and many even fainted watching it, as Jews were juxtaposed with rats, for example

Question 31

How successful was the use of films as propaganda? Give 2 details.

Answer 31

• Films kept support for the regime, rather than indoctrinating people, as:
• only more subtle films were successful at delivering a message, as people only tended to see films as a form of entertainment
• newsreels were compulsory before films, and admission was not allowed after them

Question 32

In what 3 ways was literature censored?

Answer 32

• In May 1933, the Burning of Books ceremony was held in Berlin
• 20,000 books were burned to ‘cleanse’ the new Germany
• This was then repeated in other cities
• Famous novelists either went into exile, were not allowed to publish books, or were imprisoned
• Authors had to either support the regime, or be neutral at the very least

Question 33

List 4 other ways the Nazis spread propaganda.

Answer 33

• Sport
• Art
• Architecture
• Social policy

Question 34

How did the Nazis use sport as a form of propaganda?

Answer 34

• The 1936 Olympics were treated as a way to display the physical superiority of Germans
• Germany won

Question 35

What did Hitler do in 1937 in regards to art? How popular was this?

Answer 35

• 2 parallel art exhibitions were held to show what German art was meant to be against the art considered to be ‘degenerate art’
• More than 600,000 people went to the exhibition of Great German Art, while 2 million attended the Exhibition of Degenerate Art

Question 36

What style of architecture did Hitler favour, and what were 2 reasons why? Give an example.

Answer 36

• Neo-classical style that was similar to the Ancient Greek style, but on a grander scale
• They represented the Thousand Year Reich the Nazis wanted to build
• It also gave the impression of absolute authority
• The new Olympic stadium built for the 1936 Olympics

Question 37

Why was social policy used as a form of propaganda, and what did this extend to?

Answer 37

• It gave the idea that the people were working together while protected by the state
• Festivals and holidays were rearranged around important days in Nazi history

Question 38

List 3 initiatives aimed at supporting the idea of Volksgemeinschaft.

Answer 38

• The people’s car scheme
• The Winter Relief Campaign (Winterhilfswerk)
• Eintopf (one-pot meal once a week, and the money saved would go towards the Winter Relief Campaign)

Question 39

Give an example of a festival that the Nazis changed, and 3 details about it.

Answer 39

• Mother’s Day became an official holiday celebrated on Hitler’s mother’s birthday
• There were parades that usually ended with a propagandist speech
• From 1935, these parades became more military in some large cities