How Ze Jermanz did it ya!

The Nazi party aimed to control every aspect of people's political, social and working lives. It maintained control through a mixture of Propaganda and intimidation.

1. 1. Government (political) The way Hitler consolidated power in 1933-1934 meant that the Nazis had absolute control of national and local government. Hitler installed Gauleiters: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and their Deputies, 1925-1945. They were among the most powerful men in Germany from 1933 to 1945 and answered to only one man...Adolf Hitler.
   

• 2. Religion (social)Hitler believed that religion was a threat to the Nazis' control over people's minds, so he tried different ways to reduce the power of the church over people.
• 3. Culture (social)Hitler ordered Nazification - the imposition of Nazi values - on all aspects of German life.
• 4. Work (working)Dr Robert Ley, head of the DAW.F [DAF: German Labour Front ], boasted that he controlled workers' lives from the 'cradle to the grave'.
• 5. Education and youth (working)The lives of young people were controlled both in and out of school to turn them into fanatical Nazis.
• 6. Terror (method of control)Germany became a country where it was unsafe to do or say anything critical of the government.
• 7. Propaganda (method of control)Josef Goebbels controlled the Propaganda Ministry, which aimed to brainwash people into obeying the Nazis and idolising Hitler.
  

This page summarises the main aspects of life where the Nazis took control, and the methods they used to maintain control. The rest of of this Revision Bite will look into these aspects in more detail.
Political life
Government
The following points allowed Hitler to gain control of the government:

• Enabling Act
• Local government reorganized
• Political parties banned
• Hitler became Führer
  

Social life
Religion
The following points are examples of how the Nazis took control of religion:

• Non-Nazi Catholic priests and Protestant pastors such as Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhöffer were sent to concentration camps.
• Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses were openly persecuted.
• Hitler set up a state Reich Church, which banned the Bible and the cross.
• Nazis encouraged people to revive the old Viking myths and ceremonies.
  

Culture
The Nazis dictated what people were allowed to do in their social and private lives:

• Artists had to produce acceptable paintings that portrayed Nazi values.
• Jazz music was banned.
• Books written by Jews were publicly burned.
• Homosexuals were persecuted; they did not fit the Nazi image of the ideal family.
• The Olympic Games of 1936 were a huge Nazi propaganda success.
  

Education and work
Education and youth
Measures were imposed to make sure that schools and youth associations became Nazified:

• Non-Nazi teachers and university professors were sacked; teachers had to join the National Socialist Teachers' League.
• Textbooks were re-written to include Nazi political and racial ideas.
• History was taught to glorify Germany.
• There was a concentration on physical fitness.
• Girls were taught cookery; boys were taught science and maths.
• The Hitler Youth was compulsory; it indoctrinated boys and prepared them for war.
• The Nazi Girls' youth organisation - the BDM - was compulsory; it indoctrinated girls and prepared them for church, children and cooking.
  

Work
The following points are examples of how the Nazis took control of workers lives:

• The RAD (National Labour Service) sent young men on public works.
• Hitler introduced conscription in 1936; most men went into the army after the RAD.
• The DAF (German Labour Front) controlled workers' conditions at work.
• The KdF (Strength through Joy) movement regulated their leisure time.
  

Methods of control
Terror
The Nazi state intimidated and terrorised those who were opposed to it, using:

• SS [SS: Also known as the Blackshirts. A German police/ military style organisation created to serve as the personal bodyguards of Adolf Hitler. In Hitler's Germany they eventually controlled the intelligence, security and police forces, and extermination of those they considered undesirable. ] and Gestapo [Gestapo: (Secret State Police.) A ruthless organisation that aimed to eliminate political opponents in Nazi Germany, and was responsible for the rounding up of Jews during the Nazi period and attempting to exterminate them. ] investigations.
• Blockleiters in each block of flats and street informed on 'grumblers'.
• Arrests of thousands of people terrified opponents.
• Set up Nazi people's courts.
• Concentration camps.
  

Propaganda
The Propaganda Ministry worked hard to ensure that people were persuaded to adopt the Nazi point of view:

• Mass rallies at Nuremberg.
• Newspapers were censored.
• People's radios were sold very cheaply, but broadcasts were controlled.
• Films were controlled to make films that glorified war and pilloried the Jews.
• Loudspeakers in public places blared out Nazi propaganda.
• Cult of personality - Hitler's picture was everywhere, and he was portrayed as Germany's saviour.

However

 The 25-point Program of the NSDAP

We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination.

We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people and colonization for our surplus population.

Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.

Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.
The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore, we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideratioxrn rz o character or abilities.

We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.

All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. rz benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:
Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.

In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation,

immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the state must be striven for by the school [Staatsbürgerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the state of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.

The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.

We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that:
a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race;

b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the state to be published. They may not be printed in the German language;
c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications or any influence on them and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.

We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: "The good of the community before the good of the individual".("GEMEINNUTZ GEHT VOR EIGENNUTZ" [all caps in original])

For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.