At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! … Don’t forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!
Adolf Hitler, reporting to a British Correspondent, 1934
Hitler employed his “Work and Bread” tactic once he became Führer. It started with when he would make it appear that unemployment had gone down. He did this by counting women who made families as employed. He fired Jewish shopkeepers and replaced them with non-Jewish shopkeepers. He then didn’t count the Jews as unemployed. If the Jewish business owners refused to cooperate, they would be boycotted.
Hitler built the Autobahn, which took only 3 years to build 1000 kilometres. He also made the Volkswagen Beetle, a cheap and affordable car for the working class. Unemployment went down to 400,000 during Hitler’s time in office and things seemed to be looking up for Germany. Little did the German people know, Hitler was preparing them for war.
He denounced the Treaty of Versailles and rearmed his army, by building tanks, planes and warships for the German Army and reintroduced conscription. Hermann Goering would become the head of the new Luftwaffe, a name that has stuck with the German Air Force to this day.
Young boys were made to join a Nazified version of the Scouts, the Hitler Youth. They did exercise, sports and learned not to trust Jews.
Jews suffered from relentless persecution and segregation under the time of the Nazi’s being in power. Jewish Lawyers and judges were sacked in March 1933. They were banned from sports clubs and the teachers were sacked by April. Race Studies was introduced in schools in September. Jewish businesses boycotted by painting the Star of David or the word “Juden”, the German word for Jew, on shop windows and soldiers turned people away. Jews had their German Citizenship revoked. They weren’t allowed to vote and marry non-Jews. By 1936, Jews weren’t allowed electrical equipment. In 1938, Jewish doctors were sacked, had to have something to identify them as a Jew in their name, Jewish children were banned from non-Jewish schools, Synagogues and businesses were attacked. The discrimination escalated further and further until the straw broke the camel’s back.
Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat, was killed by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew who killed Rath for deporting his parents, along with thousands of other Polish Jews to a slum of a refugee camp near the Polish Border, as the Polish government were not admitting Jews without valid passports who had lived in Germany for more than five years. Many Polish Jews wanted to return to Poland due to Hitler’s antisemitic laws, but were denied entry. Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, forced thousands upon thousands of Polish Jews to illegally cross the border. Due to the increased influx of immigrants, faster than they could build homes, the Polish Government denied Polish Jews from entering the country, and the Jews remained trapped between two countries who did not want them. Enraged by the Nazi government’s actions, an angered Grynszpan killed Vom Rath. On the night of November 9th, 1938, members of the SS and SA, along with the Hitler Youth and the general public, attacked Jewish businesses, burnt down synagogues and arrested Jews in an attempt to force them out of the country. Over 30,000 Jews were sent to the concentration camps, where many would die. Herschel was arrested and sent to the concentration camps. He was never seen again. His parents, who had survived the war, requested that his date of death be put as May 8th, 1945, the day Germany surrendered and the European war ended. This night of November 9th 1938 is known as Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass.
Jewish and non-Jewish children weren’t allowed to play together, and Jews were banned from swimming pools. They were evicted from homes in April 1939 and by September weren’t allowed outside between 8pm and 6am. All of this lead up to the Final Solution in 1942, referred to as the Holocaust or the Shoah, in which 6 million Jews were killed by shootings and, more infamously, Zyklon B gas. Those who survived returned home to find their houses taken and Jews still suffer persecution to this day.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, unlike the Jews, were given a choice to join them and stop being a Jehovah’s Witness or go to a concentration camp. Over a third of German Jehovah’s Witnesses were killed in concentration camps.
Under Nazi policy, women were not allowed to do much of anything, either. They were required to wear traditional German dresses instead of trousers and high heels. They weren’t allowed to work and if they were working, they were fired and encouraged to start a family. Women were given 25% of a year’s wage for every child they had. They were awarded medals for how many children they had, the highest being a gold medal for 8 children. They were even paired up with SS officers to have the “perfect” Aryan children, since all SS officers were pure Aryan.
They were imposed an ideology where they were only to focus on three things, Kinder, Kirche, Kuche or Children, Church, Cooking in English. They were banned from juries in court trials, considered to be too emotional to judge such a decision.