Nazi Social Policy

The peoples community

The Nazis promised a Volksgemeinschaft, a peoples community in which class, region and religion would dissolve into one German nation bound by blood, and from 1933 they set out to build it by remaking every social group. Women were to be mothers: a loan of 1,000 marks from June 1933 to any woman who gave up work to marry, a quarter cancelled for each child, the Mothers Cross from 1939 for four children and more, and the bar from the civil service, the courts and, by quota, the universities. The young were to be soldiers and mothers in turn: the Hitler Youth grew from 108,000 members in 1932 to 5.4 million in 1936, when every rival youth group was banned, and to around 8.7 million by 1939, when membership became compulsory; in school the curriculum gave a sixth of the week to physical training and taught race science, and by 1937 some 97 per cent of teachers had joined the Nazi Teachers League. Workers lost their unions on 2 May 1933 and were enrolled in the German Labour Front under Robert Ley, which fixed wages and forbade strikes, and were offered Strength Through Joy in return: cheap theatre tickets, hikes, cruises to Norway and Madeira, around 10 million holidays in 1938, and a savings scheme for a Volkswagen into which 340,000 people paid and from which no car was ever delivered. The churches were dealt with by treaty and then by pressure: a Concordat with Rome in July 1933, a Reich Church for Protestants the same year, and camps for the pastors, Martin Niemoller among them, who refused it. And the community was defined by whom it excluded. Jews were boycotted on 1 April 1933, dismissed from the civil service a week later, stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935, attacked in the streets on 9 and 10 November 1938 when 91 were killed and around 30,000 sent to camps, and, from 1941, murdered in a programme organised at Wannsee in January 1942 that killed some six million Jews of Europe. AQA asks what these policies did to the lives of Germans, and the grade-9 note is exact: weigh benefit and drawback on the same evidence, never on the propaganda alone. This module gives you the policies, the figures and the shapes.

Five terms with their dates

Each definition carries the date and the figure that make it usable as evidence, because a bare definition earns nothing in an explain or judgement answer.

Social policy in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• SA men stand outside Jewish shops on a Saturday urging Germans not to enter
• Trade unions are dissolved and workers enrolled in a single Labour Front
• The Reich signs a treaty with the Vatican
• Laws announced at a party rally strip Jews of citizenship
• A law makes the Hitler Youth the only permitted youth organisation
• Synagogues are burned across Germany in a single night

Why did most Germans go along with it?

Nazi social policy took away unions, youth clubs, careers for women and church schools, and most Germans accepted it. Which explanation best accounts for that acceptance, weighing benefit and drawback on the same evidence?

• Every loss came packaged with a gain that was real for most people: the unions went, but so did unemployment, and the worker who had lost his right to strike could take a cruise he could never have afforded; the youth clubs went, but the Hitler Youth offered camping, uniforms and a sense of belonging that most boys enjoyed until the drill became a chore; women lost careers few had held, and gained loans, medals and a status the regime celebrated; and those who paid the full price, Jews, dissenting pastors and the young who stayed away, were a minority whom propaganda had already placed outside the community, so that the majority could enjoy the benefits without seeing the cost as theirs. The same policies, read from the inside, were benefits; read from the edge, they were the drawbacks.
• Germans accepted it only because the Gestapo would arrest anyone who objected.
• Germans accepted it because every policy improved their lives.
• Germans did not know what was happening to the Jews.

Benefits and drawbacks on the same evidence

The grade-9 note for this Part is explicit: weigh both sides on the same evidence, not a list of gains from propaganda against a list of losses from hindsight. Each row below is one piece of evidence read twice.

Question 1: how do the interpretations differ?

Two interpretations of Nazi social policy, written for this module. Interpretation A: For most Germans the peoples community was a real experience. Unemployment vanished, the Hitler Youth gave the young adventure and purpose, Strength Through Joy took factory workers on cruises, and mothers were honoured; the regime was popular because it delivered. Interpretation B: The peoples community was a bargain whose price was hidden. Germans gave up their unions, their churches, their youth clubs and their freedom to choose, and the benefits they received were bribes that cost the regime little; those defined out of the community, above all the Jews, paid for it with everything. AQA Question 1 asks how they differ about the effect of Nazi social policy on the German people. Tap the TWO statements from Interpretation B that show the difference.

• The peoples community was a bargain whose price was hidden.
• The regime was popular because it delivered.
• Those defined out of the community, above all the Jews, paid for it with everything.
• For most Germans the peoples community was a real experience.
• Strength Through Joy took factory workers on cruises.

Women, youth and workers

Select the THREE statements that are accurate about Nazi social policy.

• Policy towards women reversed itself: from 1933 marriage loans, the removal of women from the civil service and a quota in the universities pushed them out of work, but from 1937 the loan no longer required the wife to stop working and by 1939 more women were employed than in 1933, because rearmament needed them.
• The Hitler Youth grew from around 108,000 in 1932 to around 8.7 million in 1939, helped by a law of 1936 that banned rival groups and one of March 1939 that made membership compulsory, and schools taught race science and gave a sixth of the timetable to physical training.
• Workers lost their unions in May 1933 and the right to strike, saw the working week rise to 47 hours and real wages stay below 1928 levels until 1938, and were offered in return around 10 million Strength Through Joy holidays in 1938 and a Volkswagen savings scheme that delivered no cars.
• No married woman was permitted to work in Germany between 1933 and 1945.
• The Hitler Youth remained voluntary throughout the Nazi period.
• Every worker who saved for a Volkswagen received one by 1939.

Question 2: why do the interpretations differ?

AQA Question 2 asks why the two interpretations differ, for 4 marks, and the answer is about what each author is looking at and asking, not about which is right. Interpretation A is looking at the majority and at what they experienced day to day: the job, the camp, the cruise, the medal. Its question is why the regime was popular, and its evidence is the benefits as the majority felt them, which is why the excluded barely appear. Interpretation B is looking at what was taken and at whom the community left out: the unions of May 1933, the church schools, the Jews after 1935. Its question is what the benefits cost and who paid, and its evidence is the losses and the victims, which is why it reads the same cruise as a bribe. Both use real evidence. This meant that the difference comes from their focus, the majority inside the community against those outside it and what was surrendered, and from the question each asks, why popular against at what cost. 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. Writing that one historian is soft on the Nazis and the other is not scores nothing.

Four Germans, 1933 to 1939

Four people and the policy that reached them. Choose what such a person actually did, and notice where the benefit and the drawback sit in the same choice.

• 1934. You are a 24-year-old typist in Leipzig, engaged to a mechanic. A marriage loan of 1,000 marks is on offer if you leave your job, with a quarter written off for each child. What do you do?
• 1936. You are twelve, in Cologne, a member of a Catholic scout troop that has just been dissolved. The Hitler Youth is now the only youth group, and your friends have joined for the camping and the football. What do you do?
• 1938. You are a lathe operator in a Bochum steelworks. Your union is five years gone, your hours are 47 a week, your pay is roughly what it was in 1928, and Strength Through Joy is offering a week in the Bavarian Alps for a tenth of the cost. What do you do?
• 1937. You are a Lutheran pastor in Berlin. The Reich Church has ordered the Aryan paragraph applied to the clergy and a swastika on the altar. Martin Niemoller, who has preached against it, has just been arrested. What do you do?

From policy to consequence

Because the regime wanted soldiers, it paid women to leave work and have children, and because rearmament then ran out of men, it took the women back, so that by 1939 there were _____ women in work than in 1933. Because it wanted the young shaped before their parents could, it banned every rival group in 1936 and made the Hitler Youth _____ in 1939. Because it had abolished the unions, it offered workers holidays and a car instead of wages, and the _____ savers never received one. Because the churches could not be abolished, it signed a _____ with Rome and broke it, and imprisoned the pastors who would not put a swastika on the altar. And because the community was defined by blood, the laws of _____ made Jews subjects rather than citizens, and the road from there led to the camps.

Paying off the loan

A marriage loan of 1,000 marks had a quarter of the debt cancelled at the birth of each child. How many children did a couple need for the whole loan to be written off?

Question 4: describe two ways, marked

AQA Question 4 asks: Describe two ways in which the lives of young people were affected by Nazi policy. 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 through the Hitler Youth: after the law of 1936 banned every other youth organisation and the law of March 1939 made membership compulsory from the age of ten, some 8.7 million boys and girls spent their evenings and weekends in drill, camping, sport and, for girls, domestic training, so that free time was organised by the state. A second way was through school: the curriculum from 1933 gave a sixth of the timetable to physical training, added race science and rewrote history around the Nazi story, and by 1937 about 97 per cent of teachers had joined the Nazi Teachers League, so that what children learned was chosen by the party.
• Young people had to join the Hitler Youth and it was fun.
• Young people were affected by the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls, schools, teachers, textbooks, camps and sport.
• Young people were affected by the Wall Street Crash, which closed their schools.

Question 5: in what ways, marked

Question 5: In what ways were the lives of German workers affected by Nazi social policy in the years 1933 to 1939? The lives of workers were affected first by the loss of their organisations. On 2 May 1933 the trade unions were dissolved, their funds seized and their leaders arrested, and every worker was enrolled in the German Labour Front under Robert Ley, which set wages, forbade strikes and required dues; this meant that a worker who had bargained through a union in 1932 had no means of bargaining at all by the summer of 1933, and the effect can be measured, because real wages stayed below the level of 1928 until 1938 while the working week rose from 43 hours to 47 as rearmament took hold. The same policy affected them a second way, through what was offered in place of the unions. Strength Through Joy, founded in November 1933 as the leisure arm of the Labour Front, provided subsidised concerts, sports, hikes and holidays, around 10 million of them in 1938, and cruises to Norway and Madeira on its own ships, while Beauty of Labour pressed employers to build canteens and sports grounds, so that a worker who had lost the right to strike could take a holiday his father had never had. The evidence has to be weighed on both sides at once: the holidays were real and popular, but they were paid for out of compulsory dues from wages held down by the same organisation, and the most famous benefit, the Volkswagen scheme of 1938 into which 340,000 workers paid five marks a week, delivered no cars because the factory built military vehicles from 1939. Workers gained employment, leisure and status inside the peoples community, and lost the power to change their hours or their pay; which side weighed more depended on whether a man had been unemployed in 1932. What earned the marks: two ways, each explained with dates and figures; a link phrase that turns each into a consequence for real lives; and benefit and drawback weighed on the same evidence, the Labour Front and Strength Through Joy read from both sides, as the grade-9 note for this Part requires. That structure is what reaches the top level of the 8-mark question.

Question 6: the 12-mark judgement

Which of the following had the greater impact on the lives of the German people between 1933 and 1939: Nazi policies towards women; Nazi policies towards young people? Explain your answer with reference to both bullet points.

• For women, cover the marriage loans, the removal from work and the reversal of 1937, and weigh benefit and drawback on the same evidence
• For young people, cover the Hitler Youth laws of 1936 and 1939 and the changes to schooling, and weigh both sides in the same way

Question 3: which interpretation is more convincing?

AQA Question 3 asks which of the two interpretations from Question 1 is more convincing about the effect of Nazi social policy on the German people, for 8 marks. Interpretation A said the peoples community was a real experience and the regime delivered; Interpretation B said it was a bargain whose price was hidden and that the excluded paid. Which answer reaches the top level?

• Interpretation A is convincing about the majority experience, because unemployment did fall to almost nothing by 1938, Strength Through Joy did provide around 10 million holidays in 1938, and 8.7 million young people were in a movement most of them joined before it was compulsory, so that the benefits were real and the popularity was not invented. But it is less convincing than B about what those benefits cost, because the same figures show the unions gone, real wages below 1928 until 1938, the Volkswagen never delivered, the youth movement compulsory from 1939, and, outside the community, around half the Jews of Germany driven into emigration by 1939 after the laws of 1935 and the violence of November 1938. B is more convincing because it accounts for the evidence that A leaves out while accepting everything A includes, and because it explains why the popularity A describes required no dissent: the price was paid by people the majority had been taught not to count.
• Interpretation A is more convincing because Germans were happy in the 1930s.
• Interpretation B is more convincing because the Nazis were evil.
• Both are equally convincing because it depends on your point of view.