Control and Resistance

The radio and the neighbour

On 13 March 1933, six weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, Joseph Goebbels was made Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. By September his Reich Chamber of Culture licensed every journalist, broadcaster, musician, painter and film-maker in Germany; those refused a licence could not work. On 10 May students in Berlin burned around 25,000 books by Jewish, socialist and pacifist authors while Goebbels spoke. His favourite instrument was cheaper: the Peoples Receiver, a radio sold for 76 marks that could not easily pick up foreign stations, took the medium from around a quarter of households in 1933 to around 70 per cent by 1939, the highest in the world, and loudspeakers in factories and squares carried the speeches to those without one. Behind the ministry stood the police. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS since 1929, took over the Gestapo in 1934 and on 17 June 1936 became chief of all German police, so that the SS, the secret police and the camps answered to one man. The numbers are the surprise: the Gestapo never had more than around 30,000 staff for a population of 80 million, and in the surviving files of Dusseldorf roughly a quarter of cases began with a tip from a neighbour, colleague or relative. A Peoples Court set up in April 1934 tried treason without a jury; Dachau, opened in March 1933, was one of six main camps holding around 21,000 people when the war began. And still some resisted: teenagers who danced to swing and fought the Hitler Youth; students in Munich who printed six leaflets and were beheaded four days after arrest; army officers who put a bomb under the table of the Fuhrer on 20 July 1944. AQA asks how control worked and why opposition stayed small, and expects the three kinds of opposition to be kept precisely apart. This module gives you the machinery, the numbers and the shapes.

Five terms with their dates

Each definition carries the date and the figure that turn it into evidence for an explain or judgement answer.

Control and resistance in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Goebbels is appointed to a new propaganda ministry
• Students burn books in the Opernplatz in Berlin
• Himmler becomes chief of all German police
• The Gestapo arrests more than 300 Swing Youth in Hamburg
• The Scholls are caught scattering leaflets at Munich University
• A bomb explodes in the conference hut at the Wolfs Lair

Why was there so little opposition?

A police force of around 30,000 held a nation of 80 million for twelve years, and the largest act of resistance came from inside the army in the last year of the war. Which explanation best accounts for the weakness of opposition?

• Fear and consent reinforced each other: the camps, the Peoples Court and the Gestapo made the cost of open dissent visible from 1933, and the readiness of ordinary Germans to inform, which produced a quarter of Gestapo cases in Dusseldorf, meant that no one could be sure who was listening; at the same time falling unemployment, the recovery of national pride and a monopoly of radio, press and film gave millions reasons not to want to resist; and the destruction of the parties and unions in 1933 removed every organisation through which discontent could have been turned into action, so that what remained was small, scattered and easily broken.
• The Gestapo had an agent on every street watching every household.
• Every German supported the regime, so there was nothing to resist.
• Opposition was impossible until the war began.

Three kinds of opposition, kept apart

The grade-9 note is explicit: youth subcultures, organised resistance and the 1944 plot are different things with different aims, and an answer that calls them all "opposition" cannot judge how serious any of them was. The second column is what each cost, because AQA credits the consequence as well as the act.

Question 1: how do the interpretations differ?

Two interpretations of how the Nazis kept control, written for this module. Interpretation A: Nazi Germany was a terror state. The Gestapo, the camps and the Peoples Court hung over every conversation, and the knowledge that a careless word could mean Dachau kept a nation silent. Resistance was crushed the moment it appeared. Interpretation B: The Gestapo was a small and overstretched force that could not have watched Germany without the Germans. Most of its cases began with a denunciation from a neighbour, and most Germans had no wish to resist a regime that had given them work and pride. It was a self-policing society, not a terror state. AQA Question 1 asks how the interpretations differ about why there was so little opposition. Tap the TWO statements from Interpretation B that show the difference.

• The Gestapo was a small and overstretched force that could not have watched Germany without the Germans.
• The Gestapo, the camps and the Peoples Court hung over every conversation.
• Most Germans had no wish to resist a regime that had given them work and pride.
• Resistance was crushed the moment it appeared.
• Nazi Germany was a terror state.

The machinery of control

Select the THREE statements that are accurate about propaganda and the police state.

• Goebbels used the cheap Peoples Receiver, wired loudspeakers in workplaces and public squares, and a licensing system through the Reich Chamber of Culture, so that censorship worked mainly by controlling who was allowed to broadcast, publish and perform rather than by reading everything afterwards.
• The Gestapo had roughly 30,000 staff for around 80 million people and depended on informers, block wardens and denunciations, which the surviving Dusseldorf files show began roughly a quarter of its cases.
• From June 1936 Himmler commanded the SS, the Gestapo, the ordinary police and the camp system together, so that arrest, imprisonment without trial and the running of the camps sat under one authority outside the courts.
• Political cases were tried by ordinary courts with juries and a right of appeal.
• Germans were encouraged to listen to foreign stations so that they could compare the news.
• The Gestapo employed around a million agents.

Question 2: why do the interpretations differ?

AQA Question 2 asks why the two interpretations differ, for 4 marks, and the answer lies in what each author is looking at, not in which one is right. Interpretation A is looking at the instruments the regime built and at the fate of those who resisted: the camps from March 1933, the court of 1934, the beheadings of February 1943 and the executions after July 1944. Seen from the victims, the state is all terror, and the author is likely answering the question of why resistance failed. Interpretation B is looking at the Gestapo from the inside, through its own case files, which historians could only read after the war, and at the majority who were never arrested. Seen from the files, the state is small and the population large, and the author is answering the question of why so few tried. Both use real evidence. This meant that the difference comes from their focus, the instruments against the files, and from the question each asks, why resistance failed against why it was rare. A top-level answer names the focus of each, gives one piece of evidence each has chosen, and says that the choice explains the difference. Saying that historian B is trying to excuse the Germans, or that historian A exaggerates, scores nothing.

Four Germans, four decisions

Four moments between 1933 and 1944. Choose what was actually done at each, and notice what the choice cost.

• October 1933. You edit a regional newspaper. The new Editors Law makes you personally responsible for anything that weakens the Reich, and membership of the press chamber is now compulsory. Your best political writer is Jewish. What do you do?
• 1938. You live in a Dusseldorf tenement. The couple upstairs listen to Radio Moscow with the window open, and the block warden has asked you twice whether you have noticed anything. What do you do?
• 18 February 1943. You are Sophie Scholl. You and your brother have left leaflets around the university and have a stack left over. Lectures are about to end. What do you do?
• 20 July 1944. You are Stauffenberg at the Wolfs Lair. The briefing has been moved from the concrete bunker to a wooden hut with open windows, and you have had time to arm only one of the two charges. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because the Reich Chamber of Culture could refuse a licence to anyone, the press, radio and film fell into line without a censor reading every page. Because the _____ Receiver was cheap and could barely reach foreign stations, the voice in seven homes out of ten was the voice of the ministry. Because around a _____ of Gestapo cases began with a denunciation, a force of around 30,000 could seem to be everywhere. Because the youth gangs wanted only to be left alone, the regime met them with camp sentences and, in Cologne in November 1944, the gallows. Because the _____ Rose wanted to awaken conscience rather than seize power, six leaflets were its whole weapon, and the Peoples Court answered them within _____ days of arrest. And because only the _____ had the means to remove Hitler by force, the one attempt that came close was made by its officers in July 1944.

The speed of the Peoples Court

Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested at Munich University on 18 February 1943. Roland Freisler tried them on 22 February and they were executed that afternoon. How many days passed between arrest and execution?

Question 4: describe two ways, marked

AQA Question 4 asks: Describe two ways in which the Nazis used propaganda to control the German people. It is marked for 4, two marks per way, one for identifying and one for supporting detail. Which answer scores all four?

• One way was radio: Goebbels had the Peoples Receiver sold for 76 marks, a set designed to pick up German stations only, and by 1939 around 70 per cent of households had one, while loudspeakers in factories and squares reached the rest during major speeches. A second way was the control of culture through the Reich Chamber of Culture set up in September 1933, which made membership compulsory for journalists, musicians, writers and film-makers and refused it to Jews and opponents, so that only approved work could appear, and the burning of around 25,000 books in Berlin on 10 May 1933 showed what was no longer allowed.
• The Nazis used posters and rallies to make people support them.
• Propaganda included radio, film, posters, rallies, the Olympics, newspapers, schools and art.
• The Gestapo arrested anyone who criticised the regime.

Question 6: the 12-mark judgement, marked

Question 6: "The most serious opposition to the Nazis came from the army." How far do you agree? Explain your answer. The army produced the only opposition that came close to ending the regime. The plot of 20 July 1944 was planned by serving senior officers who alone had access to Hitler and the means to seize Berlin, and Stauffenberg placed a bomb beside him in the Wolfs Lair that killed four men; had the second charge been armed or the briefing stayed in the concrete bunker, Hitler would have died and the Valkyrie plan would have put the conspirators in control of the capital within hours. This meant that the army was the one body whose opposition threatened the regime itself, which is why the regime answered it with around 7,000 arrests and several thousand executions. However, seriousness can also be measured by moral reach, and on that measure the White Rose was more serious than its size suggests: six leaflets between June 1942 and February 1943 named the murder of Jews in Poland and called on Germans to sabotage the war, the sixth was dropped over Germany by the RAF, and the Scholls went to the guillotine four days after arrest rather than deny it. The youth groups were the least serious by either measure, since the Swing Youth and the Edelweiss Pirates wanted to escape control rather than end it, even though Cologne hanged thirteen of them in November 1944. Judged by threat to the regime, which is what "serious" must mean in a question about opposition, the army was the most serious, but only in 1944 and only after eleven years in which no one else could act. I largely agree, with the qualification that the plot shows how weak every other form of opposition had been made. What earned the marks: the case for the army made with dates and figures and a link phrase; the alternatives tested against a stated criterion rather than merely described; the three kinds of opposition kept distinct throughout, as the grade-9 note requires; and a judgement that answers "how far" with a qualification. That structure is what reaches the top level of the 12-mark question, and the writing task next asks you to do it for a different statement.

Question 6: your turn

"Propaganda was the main reason the Nazis faced so little opposition between 1933 and 1945." How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

• Make the case for propaganda: the ministry, the radio, the licensing of culture, with a date and a figure for each
• Set the police state against it: the Gestapo, the camps, the Peoples Court and the role of denunciation, with dates and figures

Question 3: which interpretation is more convincing?

AQA Question 3 asks which of the two interpretations from Question 1 is more convincing about why there was so little opposition, for 8 marks. Interpretation A called Germany a terror state; Interpretation B called it a self-policing society. Which answer reaches the top level?

• Interpretation A is convincing about the cost of resistance, because the camps held around 21,000 people in 1939, the Scholls were beheaded within four days of being caught, and the July plot was answered with thousands of executions, so the fear it describes was real. But it is less convincing than B about why opposition was rare, because a Gestapo of around 30,000 could not watch 80 million people, a quarter of its Dusseldorf cases came from denunciations, and radio in 70 per cent of homes, falling unemployment and restored pride gave millions no reason to resist. B is more convincing because it explains how the terror in A actually worked: through Germans informing on Germans, which A treats as the work of the state alone.
• Interpretation A is more convincing because the Nazis were terrifying.
• Interpretation B is more convincing because it was written more recently.
• Both are equally convincing because both contain some truth.