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Volksgemeinschaft

Volksgemeinschaft. Did the Nazis achieve a social revolution between 1933- 1939?. How far did the Nazis succeed in winning over the hearts and minds of ordinary German citizens?. What is meant by Volksgemeinschaft?. Hitler aimed to create a ‘national people’s community’

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Volksgemeinschaft

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  1. Volksgemeinschaft Did the Nazis achieve a social revolution between 1933- 1939?

  2. How far did the Nazis succeed in winning over the hearts and minds of ordinary German citizens?

  3. What is meant by Volksgemeinschaft? • Hitler aimed to create a ‘national people’s community’ • Weltanschauung- shared ideals- a common world view • Volksgenossen- Fellow Germans • Blut und Boden- Blood and soil • Outsiders

  4. What problems are there with the concept of Volksgemeinschaft? • What do you think Hitler was really trying to achieve?

  5. Role of Women • ‘One might be tempted to say that the world of women is a smaller world. For her world is her husband, her family, her children and her house’ • Kinder, Kirche, Kuche- Children, Church, Kitchen • Family as the ‘germ cell of the nation’ State backed motherhood- made an attractive financial proposition

  6. How did women fit in with Nazi ideology? • Volkisch ideas about role of women – subservient wife, prolific mother, guardian of moral virtue & racial purity • Three K’s – Kinder, Küche, Kirche • Restrictions – women excluded from judiciary, medicine & civil service; university places limited to 10% • Incentives – free loans to newlyweds,, tax rebates, medals • Nuremberg Laws, 1935 – banned sexual intercourse between Germans & Jews • Lebensborn – impregnation by SS officers • Organisations – National Socialist Womanhood; German Women’s Enterprise

  7. Interpretations • Reactionary- in response to the Weimar trend- full employment, vote, fashion, freedom of women- Nazis picked up on a Depression era reaction • Contradictions in Nazi policy- family unit, but Hitler Youth, sterilisation programme, euthanasia programme, Lebensborn programme- birth outside marriage • Nazi economic recovery-women stayed in employment • Ideology versus economic need- many laws relaxed as demand for workers increased

  8. Success? • Did women absorb Nazi propaganda? • Nazi family values an extreme version of Catholicism • Increase in social services for women • Unable to reconcile social policy with political,economic and military ambitions • No evidence that policies were unpopular- secured the approval - ‘tolerance’ by women • Modernism versus traditionalist tendencies within the Third Reich • Family used a tool of the totalitarian state- reproduction

  9. Church • Shared values?- family / state / nationalism (Lutheranism) anti- communism • Church an obstacle to achieving total control • Hitler speaks of a need for ‘Positive Christianity’ • Catholic 32% population / Protestant 58%- Lutheran / Calvinist • Catholic Zentrum / BVP political parties • Provincial religion- protestant state based

  10. Third Reich and Religion • Reich Church- ‘coordination’ of Protestant churches • German Christians- ‘racial based’ Christianity (Ludwig Muller) • Confessional Church- breakaway from Reich Church- (Niemoller) (Bonhoffer) • German Faith Movement- ‘pagan’ Nazi Faith (Alfred Rosenberg)

  11. Stages of Nazi Policy towards the Churches • Control • Weaken • Replace

  12. Interpretation • ‘Only insititution which had both an alternative ideology…and retained organisational autonomy’ • Subservience to the state • Ensuring the survival of insititution through cooperation- self defence- rather than political oppostion • Individuals rather than Institutions opposing the regime • Highlights the limits of the Totalitarian State

  13. Overall- did Hitler break down the classes? • How much had society changed by 1945? • Descriptions of life in the 1930s before the outbreak of war (Lutz Niethammer 1986)- comments about life - ‘quiet’, ‘good’, ‘normal’ • People seem more concerned with employment, economic stability, order and peace. • Class structures probably not altered as a result of Nazi rule. • ‘Revolution of form, not substance’- Hitler’s aim to deceive the people. VMS a propaganda gimmick.

  14. Conclusions continued • Social effects were at times contradictory- sometimes modernising/ sometimes reactionary • Deep social divisions and discontent existed beneath the propaganda- this was dealt with by repression. • If a social revolution was achieved it was as a result of the elimination of people • Strongest argument for social revolution is based on the regime’s social destruction- things changed as a result of war- but this was not intentional. Nazi Germany had an impact on society beyond its own existence.

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