Nazi Germany, 1934-1945 (AQA GCSE History: The Period Study (Paper 1: Section A)): Flashcards

The main aim of the Strength Through Joy (KdF) programme was to make work seem more enjoyable and to prevent unrest by providing leisure activities, holidays, and rewards for workers.

Beauty of Labour (SdA) was a programme set up to improve working conditions for German workers by providing better facilities such as toilets and canteens.

True.

The Nazis banned all trade unions in May 1933 using the powers of the Enabling Act.

Total War is when all parts of society and the economy are focused entirely on the war effort, and every person, including civilians, participates in supporting the war.

Albert Speer was the Minister of Armaments and War Production who helped switch Germany to a war economy in 1942, increasing production of armaments and munitions.

British aerial bombings caused the destruction of infrastructure and homes, leading to high civilian casualties and displacement.

A bombing raid in Dresden in February 1945 killed 150,000 citizens.

By 1944, German citizens ate 20% less bread, 60% less meat, and 40% less fat compared to before the war.

The Nazi government started rationing in 1939 to ensure there were enough resources to equip and feed soldiers after war was declared.

Rationing is the controlled distribution of limited resources and goods to ensure everyone receives a fair share, especially in wartime.

Labour shortages were caused by many men serving in the Army and by Nazi policies encouraging women and minorities not to work.

By 1944, one-quarter of Germany's workforce was enslaved.

Speer stopped non-essential industries, increased the number of workers, and kept factories open longer to boost war production.

True.

Aerial bombings made cities unsafe, so children were evacuated to the countryside to protect them from danger.

Germany plundered resources from occupied countries and used enslaved labour in ghettos and concentration camps.

Hot water was rationed to two days per week in Nazi Germany during the war.

The Third Reich refers to the Nazi regime in Germany under Adolf Hitler, which aimed to last a thousand years.

Hitler believed that controlling the youth would ensure future generations were loyal to the Nazi Party, making it more likely that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years.

Bernhard Rust was the Nazi Education Minister from 1934 who reorganised schools and enforced Nazi ideology in education.

Teachers in Nazi Germany had to join the Nazi Teachers’ League and swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler.

False.

In Nazi Germany, boys and girls were educated separately.

After 1935, all textbooks in German schools had to be approved by the Nazis.

Napolas schools focused mainly on sport and physical training, preparing students for roles in the SS or police services.

A university education was not highly regarded in Nazi Germany because it could distract men from military obligations or women from commitment to the home.

The two main youth organisations were the Hitler Youth for boys and the League of German Maidens for girls.

Boys joined the Hitler Youth at age 14 and became members of the Nazi Party or armed forces at age 18.

The Three 'Ks' were Kinder (children), Kirche (church), and Küche (cooking), which were the focus of activities in the League of German Maidens.

The three Ks stand for Kinder (children), Kirche (church) and Küche (cooking), representing the traditional roles for women promoted by the Nazis.

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was the leader of the National Socialist Women's League and oversaw all policies related to women in Nazi Germany.

The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage offered loans of 1,000 marks to women who got married and left their jobs.

True.

Nazi policies such as marriage loans and incentives for children initially succeeded in increasing both the marriage and birth rates.

The Lebensborn Programme was a Nazi policy started in 1935 to encourage ‘genetically pure’ SS men and women to have children, aiming to increase the Aryan population.

In 1933, the Nazis introduced the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, which allowed forced sterilisation of women deemed unfit for motherhood.

The Mother's Cross was an award given to women who had four or more children, to encourage large families and increase the birth rate.

The 1938 divorce law allowed husbands to divorce their wives for failing or refusing to have children.

The Nazis aimed to ‘re-feminise’ women by banning them from smoking, dancing, and advised against wearing excessive makeup in public.

The German Women's Enterprise (DFW) was an organisation all women-related groups had to join, providing courses on childcare, cooking, and sewing.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, many women had to work in factories and industries to replace men who went to fight, reversing previous Nazi policies that encouraged women to stay at home.

Nazi beliefs held that the mission of women was to be beautiful and bring children into the home.

The Reich Church was a unified Protestant Church established by the Nazis, led by Ludwig Müller, which aligned church teachings with Nazi ideology.

The Nazis saw Christianity as a threat because its beliefs often conflicted with Nazi ideology and it provided a rival source of authority and loyalty for the German people.

Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted by the Nazis because they were pacifists and refused to serve in the army.

The Concordat was an agreement in 1933 allowing Catholics to worship freely and keep their schools in exchange for the Church staying out of politics and priests swearing loyalty to the Nazis.

Communism is an atheist ideology that promotes classless society and was strongly opposed by many Christians and the Nazi Party.

Martin Niemöller was a Protestant pastor who founded the Pastors' Emergency League and opposed the Nazi's Reich Church, leading to his imprisonment in a concentration camp.

By 1937, it was clear that the Concordat had failed, as persecution of Catholics continued.

True.

Many Christians hated communism because it was an atheist ideology, and supported the Nazis for their anti-communist stance.

The Confessional Church was set up by Martin Niemöller and the PEL in 1934.

Smaller Christian faith groups such as the Salvation Army were ordered to stop their charity work and had their property confiscated by the Nazis.

The Nazis wanted to control churches because many Christians had voted for Hitler and shared some beliefs about the importance of family.

Cardinal Galen was a Catholic leader who openly criticised the Nazis, especially their euthanasia programme, leading to widespread opposition against Nazi policies.

A pacifist is someone who refuses to take part in war or violence, often for religious or moral reasons.

In Nazi Germany, 67% of the population were Protestant and 33% were Catholic.

Eugenics is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of a population by selective breeding. The Nazis used eugenics to support their racial policies.

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were two laws that stripped Jewish people of their German citizenship and banned marriage or relationships between Jewish people and Germans.

By 1933, there were only 437,000 Jewish people in Germany, less than 1% of the population.

True.

The Nazis viewed Jewish people as a race, meaning persecution continued regardless of religious practice.

The Holocaust is the name given to the systematic murder of approximately six million Jewish people by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War.

Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was a violent attack on Jewish people and property in November 1938. Afterwards, Jewish people were forced to pay 1 billion marks in damages and around 20,000 were sent to concentration camps.

The Nazis murdered around six million Jewish people and another six million people from other minorities in extermination camps.

The Final Solution was the Nazi plan to systematically kill all Jewish people in Nazi-controlled territory by building extermination camps such as Auschwitz.

The largest extermination camp built by the Nazis was Auschwitz.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was an act of Jewish resistance in April 1943, where around 700 Jewish fighters resisted the Nazis for 41 days before being defeated.

During the Treblinka uprising in 1943, about 1,000 Jewish prisoners revolted and several hundred escaped.

The SS was an elite Nazi organisation created in 1925 as Hitler's personal bodyguard, whose members were required to be ‘racially pure’ and extremely loyal to the NSDAP.

Heinrich Himmler became leader of the SS in 1929.

The SS wore black uniforms and broke down into three key units: the SD, the Waffen SS, and the Death's Head Units.

The Gestapo was the secret police force of Nazi Germany, created by Hermann Goering and led by Reinhard Heydrich from 1934, which aimed to investigate and combat threats to the Nazi state.

True.

The Gestapo wore plain clothes to avoid identification and create an atmosphere of fear.

By 1939, around 160,000 people had been arrested by the Gestapo for political crimes.

A concentration camp in Nazi Germany was a prison where minority groups, political opponents, and ‘undesirables’ were held in awful conditions and forced to do hard labour.

Dachau was the first concentration camp opened in Nazi Germany, in 1933.

The People’s Court was a Nazi law court introduced to hear cases of treason, where trials were held in secret and judges loyal to the Nazi Party decided the outcome without a jury.

Between 1934 and 1939, the number of political opponents executed rose to 534 people.

The Death's Head Units were created by Theodor Eicke in 1934, and their original role was to run concentration camps.

Propaganda is information or ideas spread by a political group or government to influence people’s opinions.

Censorship is when the government controls what people see, hear, watch or read.

Joseph Goebbels was the Minister for People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda and was in charge of Nazi propaganda.

By 1939, the Nazis controlled most newspapers compared to only 3% in 1933.

The official newspaper of the Nazi Party was Der Völkischer Beobachter, which reached 1.1 million people by 1941.

The Volksempfänger (People’s Receiver) was a cheap radio designed so most Germans could afford it, allowing the Nazis to spread their propaganda widely through radio broadcasts.

All films in Nazi Germany had to be approved by the government before being released.

One famous Nazi propaganda film was Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl.

Even telling an anti-Hitler joke was punishable by death in Nazi Germany.

Censorship allowed the Nazis to remove information or prevent it from being made public, stopping anti-Nazi ideas from spreading and keeping the public under control.

False.

All books, plays, and songs had to be approved by the Nazi government before they could be published or released.

The Nuremberg rallies were used to create a sense of unity, advertise the strength of the German Army, and merge the Nazi Party’s identity with that of Germany.

The Reich Chamber of Culture was an organisation established in 1933 to ensure all aspects of German culture and the arts aligned with Nazi beliefs.

The purpose of the Reich Chamber of Film was to control all film-making in Nazi Germany and ensure films supported Nazi beliefs and propaganda.

The Reich Chamber of Creative Art accepted around 42,000 artists and, in 1936, over 12,000 paintings and sculptures were removed from galleries.

The Nazis promoted traditional German music such as works by Wagner, Beethoven, and Bach, while music by Jewish composers and jazz music was censored or disliked.

Book burning refers to the deliberate destruction of books by fire, as carried out by the Nazis to remove works that did not conform to their ideology, especially in May 1933.

The Nazis banned experimental and politically themed theatre, closed cabarets, and only permitted plays that focused on approved parts of German history or classical works.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens won four gold medals, angering Hitler and the Nazis.

Albert Speer was Hitler's favourite architect who designed important Nazi buildings such as the Zeppelinfeld and contributed to the Berlin Olympic Stadium.

False.

The Nazis disliked jazz music because it was associated with Black people and many jazz artists were of Jewish origins.

The Nazis favoured romantic ideas about Germany’s past and the importance of family.

The film Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl presented the strength and power of the Nazi Party.

In May 1933, students in Berlin burned 20,000 books by anti-Nazi authors as part of the Nazi effort to control literature and eliminate ideas they opposed.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics allowed Nazi Germany to showcase its strength and promote the idea of Aryan superiority to the world through a carefully controlled event.

The Nazis disliked the modern designs of the Bauhaus movement, preferring classical features inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome.

True.

Gestapo members visited art studios to ensure artwork conformed to Nazi ideology.

Low level opposition in Nazi Germany refers to private or subtle acts of resistance against the Nazi regime, such as anti-Nazi conversations, telling jokes, or refusing the Nazi salute.

Most opposition remained private because the Nazi dictatorship used fear, propaganda, and punishment to discourage open dissent. Open opposition was dangerous and could lead to severe consequences.

One example of low level opposition was refusing to do the Nazi salute.

There were around 50 assassination attempts against Hitler during his rule.

The Kreisau Circle were a group of influential Germans, including army officers and university professors, who discussed opposition to Hitler between 1942 and 1943 but did not attempt to kill him.

The July Bomb Plot of 1944 was led by army officer Claus von Stauffenberg.

After the failed July Bomb Plot, Hitler ordered the execution of 4,900 Germans.

The Edelweiss Pirates were a youth group in Nazi Germany who resisted the strict discipline of the Hitler Youth and sought more freedom, using the edelweiss flower as their symbol.

The White Rose group was founded by Hans and Sophie Scholl.

The Swing Youth were known for playing jazz music and organising illegal dances.

True.

Illegal trade unions encouraged acts of sabotage such as damaging machinery and striking to resist Nazi policies.