Hitler’s aims in government
- Destroy treaty of Versailles (abolish ‘diktat’)
- Stronger Germany (military & economy)
- Lebensraum (living space)
- Aryan superiority / racially pure Germany
- Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community)
- Strong national Identity
- Gleichschaltung
Coordination/control of all aspects of society
They achieved control with:
- Censorship
- Propaganda
- Hitler youth
- Education control
- Totalitarian state
- SA + SS + Gestapo
SS (Schutzstaffel)
→ Hitlers personal bodyguards ⇒ Elite and racially pure, fanatically local
→ Partnered with unmarried young Aryan women at lebensraum to reproduce
→ From 1933 their task was to arrest any threats to the Nazi party and send them to concentration camps,
without any trial or explanation.
→ Listened to conversations, intercepted mail, taped phones.
→ Entry requirements = pure Aryan ancestry for 150 years, min height 5f11, with good health and fitness.
Gestapo
→ Secret police force, controlled by Himmler
→ Acted outside of normal judicial control
→ Job was to hunt down any threats to Nazi Germany, people suspected of treachery, etc
→ Were able to arrest, interrogate and imprison people
→ Stories/rumours of what they did were allowed to circulate, in order to scare people into keeping quiet ⇒
kidnapping, forceful interrogation, torture, forced deporation/dissapearance, assasinations.
→ Depended on the willingness of the German population to denounce their neighbors ⇒ Many towns had
less than 50 Gestapo officers
→ Children also became a form of Gestapo
Security section
Police and courts were all required to swear oath of loyalty to Hitler
→ No one was given a fair trial
→ Nazi criminals ⇒ mostly ignored
→ Jewish criminals ⇒ Punished far more severely
→ Gauleiters, Wardens for towns, streets and blocks. They were the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Nazi party and
reported on any opposition (anti-Nazi jokes, not flying swastika, not saying ‘heil Hitler’).
, - Concentration camp section
→ For “Untermuchen ⇒ Jews, other inferior races (African American, Asian), gypsies, political opponents,
homosexuals, criminals, severe alcoholics, mentally and physically disabled.
→ For those who deviated from “Gleichschaltung”
→ First used to jail/re-educate, transitioned into torture and killings.
→ Send there without trial and no right of appeal
→ Knowledge of what happened inside them was spread and used to scare people into keeping quiet
→ Scared people into staying loyal to Hitler and not speaking out.
Propaganda
- Films
→ had to be approved by goebbels and hold a Nazi messages (E.g. ‘The Eternal Jew’ portrayed Jews as dirty
and corrupt)
- Literature
→ Anti-Nazi books were banned and burnt in 1933
→ Mein Kampf = Nazi bible
- Newspapers
→ Anti-Nazi newspapers banned and those that were allowed were controlled by Goebells, who told them
what to write about
- Radio
→ Cheap = affordable for all & could not pick up foreign radio stations = high control and no outside influence
→ Spread the Nazi message efficiently daily
→ Reich radio company controlled all stations
- Art
→ Weimar art = ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘Jewish’
→ only approved art allowed at the House of German art
- Music
→ Only classical music allowed (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart)
→ Jazz = ‘too black’ ⇒ banned
- Reich chamber of culture
→ Musicians, writers, actors had to be approved and only then could join
→ Unsuitable people were banned
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