Curriculum Portal

neurologyYou need to know

• Nazi rule rested on both coercion and consent, because terror punished opposition while propaganda, economic recovery and organised leisure encouraged many Germans to conform.
• The idea of the Volksgemeinschaft claimed to unite the nation, but in practice it rewarded people who fitted Nazi ideals and excluded those labelled alien, inferior or disloyal.
• Race was central to Nazi policy, so ideas about so-called Aryan superiority shaped education, family policy, work, conquest, occupation and genocide.
• Nazi methods became more radical over time, moving from the repression of political opponents inside Germany to the persecution and murder of whole populations across Europe.
• Before the Second World War, many Germans who were not targeted by the Nazi regime saw greater order, employment and national pride, but these gains were tied to lost freedoms and growing control by the state.
• After 1939, everyday life in Germany became harsher as rationing, longer hours, bombing and total war replaced many of the Nazi regime's earlier promises of stability and improvement.
• Nazi social policy offered some benefits to workers and families, but these benefits were designed to win obedience rather than to give people independent rights.
• Nazi policy towards women was contradictory, because it praised motherhood and domestic life while war needs increasingly pulled women into labour and public service.
• Young people were crucial to Nazi plans because schools and youth movements were used to weaken alternative loyalties to parents, churches and independent organisations.
• People's experiences under Nazi rule were very different because sex, age, religion, class, political views, race and where they lived all affected how they were treated.
• Jews experienced the sharpest escalation in persecution, as discrimination and exclusion in Germany developed into segregation, deportation and systematic mass murder in occupied Europe.
• The Nazi machinery of control first used inside Germany, such as censorship, surveillance, imprisonment and fear, was extended into occupied Europe in even more brutal forms.
• Nazi occupation was generally harsher in eastern Europe than in western Europe because the east was seen as a place for racial empire, forced labour and colonisation.
• In the early years of occupation, the Nazis were more likely in western Europe to use local officials and existing institutions, but in eastern Europe they were more willing to destroy local elites and remake society by force.
• Nazi occupation did not produce a single response, because fear, self-interest, nationalism, anti-communism and moral conviction could all push people towards collaboration, accommodation or resistance.
• Nazi power in occupied Europe depended not only on German force but also on help from local officials, police, businesses and collaborators.
• Forced labour linked life inside Germany to life under Nazi occupation, because German war production increasingly depended on the exploitation of foreign workers and prisoners.
• The Second World War widened the gap between Nazi promises and Nazi reality, because a regime that claimed to protect the national community increasingly demanded sacrifice from Germans while inflicting far greater suffering on conquered peoples.
• Military success helped make Nazi rule look strong and effective, but defeats and bombing weakened confidence in victory and made support more fragile.
• Opposition existed throughout Nazi rule, yet terror, censorship and lack of unity meant that most critics could protest, evade or resist only in limited ways.
• Even when many Germans lost faith in victory during the Second World War, fear of punishment, habit, propaganda and fear of the enemy helped keep the Nazi regime functioning until 1945.
• The Holocaust was not separate from the rest of Nazi rule, because it grew out of the same anti-Semitism, bureaucratic control, wartime conquest and dehumanisation found across Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.
• Nazi rule showed both continuity and change, since its core aims of obedience, racial purity and expansion stayed consistent while its methods became wider, harsher and more murderous during the Second World War.
• The biggest divide in experience was between those the Nazi regime counted as part of its national and racial community and those it marked for exclusion, exploitation or destruction.
• Anton Drexler founded the German Workers' Party, or DAP, in Munich in February 1919.
• Adolf Hitler first encountered the DAP in 1919 when the army sent him to observe political groups in Munich.
• Hitler soon joined the DAP and quickly became one of its most effective speakers.
• The DAP began as a small right-wing movement with little influence outside Munich.
• In 1920 the DAP renamed itself the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or NSDAP.
• In 1920 the Nazis published the Twenty-Five Point Programme to define their aims.
• In 1920 the Twenty-Five Point Programme demanded the union of all Germans in one state.
• In 1920 the Twenty-Five Point Programme rejected the Treaty of Versailles and called for Germany to regain power and territory.
• In 1920 the Twenty-Five Point Programme said that Jews could not be full German citizens.
• In 1920 the Twenty-Five Point Programme supported a strong central government and put the needs of the nation above individual rights.
• Hitler's speaking skills helped turn the Nazis from a fringe group into a growing movement.
• In 1921 Hitler became leader of the Nazi Party.
• Hitler built the party around the Führer principle, which meant total obedience to the leader.
• The SA, or Sturmabteilung, was created to protect Nazi meetings and attack opponents.
• The crisis of hyperinflation in 1923 increased support for extremist parties, including the Nazis.
• In November 1923 Hitler and the Nazis attempted to seize power in the Munich Putsch.
• The Munich Putsch failed, Hitler was arrested, and the Nazi Party was temporarily banned.
• Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison but served about nine months.
• While in prison, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess.
• Mein Kampf set out key Nazi ideas such as anti-Semitism, anti-communism, dictatorship and lebensraum in Eastern Europe.
• The failure of the Munich Putsch convinced Hitler that he should win power by legal means.
• After the ban on the Nazi Party was lifted in 1925, Hitler rebuilt the party as a national organisation.
• Germany was divided into party districts called Gaue, each led by a Gauleiter.
• The Nazis used propaganda, rallies and uniforms to make the party look strong, disciplined and modern.
• During the years of economic recovery from 1924 to 1929, Nazi support remained limited.
• The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered a deep depression in Germany.
• Rising unemployment, business failure and poverty made extremist solutions more attractive to many voters.
• From 1930, German governments increasingly relied on presidential decrees rather than stable Reichstag majorities, which weakened faith in parliamentary democracy.
• Many middle-class Germans feared communism and saw the Nazis as a force for order.
• Farmers were drawn to Nazi promises of help with prices, debts and rural decline.
• Business leaders and conservative elites increasingly supported the Nazis because they opposed socialism, communism and trade unions.
• Between 1928 and 1930 the Nazis rose from 12 Reichstag seats to 107.
• In the July 1932 Reichstag election the Nazis won 230 seats and became the largest party.
• In the November 1932 Reichstag election Nazi support fell to 196 seats, but the party was still the largest in the Reichstag.
• By January 1933 Hitler was not in power because of a majority vote, but because the Nazis were the biggest party and conservative elites thought they could use him.
• In January 1933 Adolf Hitler was the leader, chief speaker and public face of the Nazi Party.
• Nazi propaganda presented Hitler as Germany's saviour at a time of crisis.
• Joseph Goebbels directed propaganda and made Nazi messages simple, emotional and repetitive.
• Goebbels used posters, leaflets, newspapers, loudspeakers, radio and film to spread Nazi ideas.
• The 1932 Hitler over Germany campaign used aeroplane travel so Hitler could speak across the country.
• Slogans such as Bread and Work appealed strongly to the unemployed.
• Goebbels helped create a cult of personality around Hitler by presenting him as a decisive national leader.
• Hermann Göring was a leading Nazi who helped win elite support for Hitler.
• After Hitler became Chancellor, Göring used control of the Prussian police to help crush opposition.
• Wilhelm Frick was a senior Nazi who became Interior Minister and helped turn Nazi aims into laws.
• Rudolf Hess was Hitler's loyal deputy and a key organiser inside the party.
• Ernst Röhm led the SA, the Nazi Party's paramilitary force.
• By 1933 the SA had hundreds of thousands of members and could intimidate opponents on a huge scale.
• The SA attacked rival parties, broke up meetings and created fear during election campaigns.
• Some Germans saw the SA as proof that the Nazis could restore order on the streets.
• Heinrich Himmler led the SS, which began as Hitler's elite bodyguard.
• By 1933 the SS was smaller than the SA but more disciplined and personally loyal to Hitler.
• The broad appeal of Nazi policies helped the Nazi Party win support from many different parts of society.
• In 1933 the Nazis promised workers jobs and national revival.
• In 1933 many middle-class voters were attracted by Nazi promises of order, strong leadership and protection from communism.
• In 1933 the Nazis promised farmers help with prices, debts and rural decline.
• In 1933 many business leaders were reassured by Nazi hostility to communism and trade unions.
• Nazi nationalism appealed to voters angry about the Treaty of Versailles.
• The Nazis also benefited because anti-Nazi voters were divided, especially between the SPD and the KPD.
• Many voters backed the Nazis not because they agreed with every policy, but because the party looked stronger than the divided moderate parties.
• In 1932 Hitler challenged Hindenburg in the presidential election.
• In the 1932 presidential election, Hitler lost to Hindenburg, but he won millions of votes and national attention.
• In the first round in March 1932 Hindenburg won 49.6 per cent and Hitler won about 30 per cent.
• In the second round in April 1932 Hindenburg won just over 53 per cent and Hitler won about 36 per cent.
• The July 1932 Reichstag election made the Nazis the largest party in Germany.
• Hitler demanded the Chancellorship after July 1932, but Hindenburg refused because he distrusted him.
• Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher both failed to create stable governments after July 1932.
• Political deadlock convinced some conservative elites that Hitler was needed to provide mass support.
• In January 1933 von Papen made a backstairs deal with Hitler.
• Von Papen believed that Hitler could be controlled if conservatives dominated the cabinet.
• On 30 January 1933 Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor.
• Hitler's first cabinet contained only three Nazis, which encouraged conservatives to underestimate him.
• Hitler and the Nazi Party entered government through political intrigue and constitutional appointment, not through a democratic majority.
• Many conservatives believed in January 1933 that experienced politicians, Hindenburg and the constitution would keep Hitler under control.
• Hitler dismantled German democracy within a few months of becoming Chancellor.
• Hitler did not have full control of Germany in January 1933 because Hindenburg remained President, the Nazis lacked a Reichstag majority, and the Weimar constitution still existed.
• Göring used his position in Prussia to put Nazis into the police and weaken restraints on SA violence.
• In February 1933 the SA and SS were made auxiliary police in Prussia, giving Nazi terror a semi-legal basis.
• The Reichstag building was destroyed by fire on 27 February 1933.
• Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was arrested at the scene.
• Hitler used the fire to claim that Germany faced a communist revolution.
• On 28 February 1933 Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree.
• The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and privacy of mail and telephone calls.
• The Reichstag Fire Decree also allowed detention without trial.
• Communist newspapers were closed and thousands of left-wing opponents were arrested.
• Because KPD leaders and deputies were jailed or intimidated, the Nazis weakened a major rival before the March 1933 election.
• In the election of 5 March 1933 the Nazis won 43.9 per cent of the vote and 288 seats.
• Even after the March 1933 election, the Nazis did not have an outright majority on their own.
• Hitler depended on the Nationalists, police power and intimidation to dominate the Reichstag.
• Dachau, one of the first concentration camps, opened in March 1933 for political prisoners.
• On 23 March 1933 the Enabling Act was passed by 444 votes to 94.
• The vote on the Enabling Act took place in the Kroll Opera House because the Reichstag building had burned down.
• Communist deputies were absent because they had been arrested or prevented from attending.
• The SPD was the only party to vote against the Enabling Act.
• SA and SS intimidation around the Kroll Opera House helped force the Enabling Act through.
• The Enabling Act allowed Hitler's cabinet to make laws without Reichstag approval for four years.
• Laws passed under the Enabling Act could break the Weimar Constitution.
• The Enabling Act gave Hitler the legal basis for dictatorship.
• The Nazis called their takeover of institutions Gleichschaltung, meaning bringing into line.
• In April 1933 the Civil Service Law removed many Jews and political opponents from government jobs.
• Nazi commissioners took control of state governments and reduced local independence.
• On 2 May 1933 trade union offices were occupied, union leaders were arrested and union funds were seized.
• Independent trade unions were replaced by the German Labour Front, which could not bargain freely for workers.
• Before July 1933, political parties other than the Nazi Party dissolved themselves under pressure.
• In June 1933 the SPD was banned.
• On 14 July 1933 the Law Against the Formation of New Parties made the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany.
• By July 1933 Germany had become a one-party state.
• Between July 1933 and August 1934 Hitler consolidated his power and completed the move towards dictatorship in Germany.
• By July 1933, after destroying open party opposition, Hitler still needed the loyalty of the army, the civil service, conservative elites and President Hindenburg.
• Nazi control over Germany continued to expand through the courts and local government.
• Judges were expected to interpret the law in ways that served the Nazi state.
• Special courts were used to punish political offences quickly and harshly.
• The People's Court was set up in 1934 to try treason and other political crimes.
• Defendants in political cases had very little chance of a fair trial.
• Nazi control of the legal system made repression look legal.
• Federalism was dismantled as power was moved from the Länder to central government.
• In January 1934 the Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich abolished the powers of the state parliaments.
• Germany's states were increasingly run by Nazi officials who answered to Berlin, not to local voters.
• By 1934 the biggest remaining threat to Hitler inside the Nazi movement came from the SA.
• Ernst Röhm wanted a second revolution that would give the SA more power and reduce the influence of conservative elites.
• Röhm also wanted the SA to absorb the regular army.
• Army leaders feared Röhm and would not support Hitler unless he dealt with the SA.
• Business leaders and conservatives were also alarmed by SA violence and radical talk.
• Himmler and Göring encouraged Hitler to act against Röhm and the SA leadership.
• On 30 June 1934 Hitler launched the Night of the Long Knives.
• Röhm and other SA leaders were arrested.
• At least 85 people were killed in the Night of the Long Knives, and the true total may have been higher.
• Hitler also used the Night of the Long Knives to kill other opponents, including Kurt von Schleicher and Gregor Strasser.
• The Night of the Long Knives destroyed the SA as an independent political force.
• After the Night of the Long Knives, the SS gained status and emerged as a far more powerful organisation than the SA.
• The army approved because Hitler had protected its position against the SA.
• Hitler later defended the killings in the Night of the Long Knives as necessary emergency action to save Germany.
• The Night of the Long Knives showed that Nazi rule rested on terror as well as law.
• President Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934.
• After Hindenburg's death, Hitler merged the offices of President and Chancellor.
• Hitler took the title Führer and Reich Chancellor.
• Members of the armed forces had to swear a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler, not to the constitution.
• The personal oath of loyalty sworn by members of the armed forces was important because it tied the army directly to Hitler himself.
• On 19 August 1934 a plebiscite approved Hitler's new powers.
• By August 1934 Hitler had achieved total power through propaganda, terror, legal change and army support.
• The Weimar Republic had ended and Germany had become a Nazi dictatorship.
• Nazi Germany under Hitler was often called the Third Reich.
• The Nazis built a police state to destroy opposition and make obedience seem unavoidable.
• After the Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933, emergency powers suspended freedoms of speech, assembly and privacy and made searches, mail interception and arrest easier.
• Fear of arrest, denunciation and imprisonment made many Germans too frightened to criticise the regime openly.
• The SS was founded in 1925 as Hitler's personal bodyguard.
• Heinrich Himmler became leader of the SS in 1929 and turned it into an elite organisation loyal only to Hitler.
• SS recruits were expected to meet Nazi racial standards and show total obedience.
• The SS originally protected Nazi leaders and meetings, but its power expanded rapidly after 1933.
• During the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, the SS helped murder SA leaders and other opponents.
• The Night of the Long Knives destroyed the SA as a rival organisation and increased the SS's prestige.
• By 1936 Himmler controlled all German police forces, linking policing directly to Nazi rule.
• The SD was the intelligence branch of the SS.
• The SD collected information on people the Nazis considered enemies.
• The SD relied on reports from informers and local Nazi activists as well as formal surveillance.
• The Gestapo was created by Hermann Göring in Prussia in 1933 and later became a national secret police force.
• Gestapo officers often wore plain clothes and could operate without normal legal restraints.
• The Gestapo investigated suspected opponents, opened mail, tapped telephones and carried out interrogations.
• The Gestapo could send people to concentration camps without trial through protective custody.
• The Gestapo was feared despite being relatively small because officers depended heavily on denunciations from ordinary citizens.
• Denunciations made the police state effective because neighbours, workmates and even relatives could report suspicious behaviour.
• The regular police were not abolished under Nazi rule, but they lost independence and gained wider powers to arrest and question people.
• By the mid-1930s, ordinary policing had become part of the wider Nazi system of surveillance, intimidation and terror.
• Nazi terror worked through both direct force and the belief that the state was always watching.
• Many Germans obeyed because they could not know who might be informing on them.
• The Nazis reshaped the legal system so repression looked lawful.
• Judges and lawyers were expected to put Nazi ideas above justice and individual rights.
• Judges who would not support the regime could be removed.
• Special courts were set up to deal quickly with political offences.
• The People's Court was created in 1934 to hear cases such as treason.
• The judges of the People's Court were chosen for political loyalty, and the People's Court almost always produced convictions.
• Defendants in political cases had little chance of a fair hearing or a successful appeal.
• Harsh sentences and executions under Nazi rule warned the wider population what could happen to opponents.
• Dachau, opened in 1933, was one of the first concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
• When concentration camps were first established in 1933, they were used mainly for political opponents such as communists and social democrats.
• After 1933, the SS took control of the concentration camp system.
• Later in the 1930s, concentration camps held many other groups the Nazis targeted, including Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexual men and Roma and Sinti.
• Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps could be detained without normal legal process.
• Conditions in Nazi concentration camps were brutal, with beatings, humiliation, poor food and forced labour.
• Camp guards used violence to punish and intimidate prisoners.
• News and rumours about camp conditions spread fear far beyond the camps themselves.
• Nazi propaganda worked with censorship and terror to shape what Germans knew and how they thought.
• Joseph Goebbels was Minister for Propaganda and controlled the press, radio, film, literature, art and music.
• The aim of Nazi propaganda was to glorify Hitler, spread Nazi ideas and limit criticism.
• Propaganda presented Hitler as a strong leader who had rescued Germany from weakness and division.
• Nazi propaganda promoted key Nazi messages about nationalism, obedience, militarism and racial superiority.
• Journalists were told what could be published, and editors could be dismissed if they disobeyed.
• Independent newspapers were closed or taken over, so by the late 1930s most of the press was under Nazi control.
• Der Völkische Beobachter was the main Nazi Party newspaper.
• Posters and newspapers repeated simple messages so that Nazi ideas became familiar.
• Radio was one of Goebbels's most powerful tools because it could reach millions of people at once.
• Cheap People's Receivers were sold so ordinary households could hear Nazi broadcasts.
• The limited tuning of People's Receivers made it harder to listen to foreign stations.
• Loudspeakers in public places spread important speeches and announcements.
• Films and newsreels showed carefully controlled images of Hitler, Nazi successes and national unity.
• Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will presented the 1934 Nuremberg Rally as proof of Nazi strength and order.
• Annual rallies at Nuremberg used flags, marching, music and lighting to make individuals feel part of a disciplined and powerful national movement.
• The 1936 Berlin Olympics gave Hitler a chance to impress foreign visitors and show off Nazi Germany.
• Stadiums, ceremonies and media coverage were used to project efficiency, pride and international respectability.
• Nazi propaganda at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was awkwardly challenged by the success of Jesse Owens, an African American athlete who won four gold medals.
• Despite Jesse Owens's success, the 1936 Berlin Olympics still helped the Nazi regime present Germany positively to many observers.
• Propaganda reached schools, youth groups and workplaces as well as the media.
• The wide reach of Nazi propaganda meant Nazi messages were repeated in everyday life, not just in speeches.
• Propaganda was effective in creating enthusiasm among many Germans, especially when combined with economic recovery and foreign policy successes.
• Nazi propaganda helped many people believe Hitler was restoring German pride.
• Censorship made propaganda more powerful because alternative views were hard to find.
• Nazi propaganda did not persuade everyone, and some people conformed outwardly because they feared punishment rather than because they truly believed Nazi messages.
• The true popularity of the Nazi regime is difficult to measure because fear could produce outward conformity.
• Opposition to Nazi rule continued throughout the 1930s, but it was fragmented and usually ineffective.
• The police state made it difficult for opponents to meet, print material or organise nationally.
• There was no single united opposition movement capable of overthrowing Hitler before the war.
• The political Left was among the Nazis' earliest targets.
• Communists were blamed for the Reichstag Fire and were arrested in large numbers in 1933.
• The Communist Party was banned and many of its leaders were imprisoned, exiled or killed.
• Social Democrats were suppressed and their party was banned in 1933.
• Members of the Left sometimes continued underground resistance by distributing leaflets, painting slogans and meeting secretly.
• Some left-wing opponents gathered information for exiled anti-Nazi groups.
• Left-wing opposition was weakened by arrests, exile and the earlier hostility between communists and social democrats.
• By the mid-1930s, left-wing opposition posed little direct threat to Nazi control.
• Hitler tried to control the Christian Churches because they could influence millions of Germans.
• In 1933 Hitler signed the Concordat with the Catholic Church, promising to respect its rights if it stayed out of politics.
• The Nazi regime soon broke the Concordat by harassing Catholic organisations, schools and clergy.
• Catholic opposition was usually cautious, but some priests and bishops criticised Nazi actions.
• In 1937 Pope Pius XI issued Mit Brennender Sorge, which condemned parts of Nazi ideology and was read in Catholic churches in Germany.
• Mit Brennender Sorge showed that some Catholic leaders were willing to challenge the regime publicly.
• Most Catholic opposition defended church rights rather than trying to overthrow Hitler.
• The Nazis tried to unite Protestant churches under a pro-Nazi Reich Church.
• The creation of a pro-Nazi Reich Church alarmed ministers who believed the state was interfering in religion.
• Martin Niemöller helped found the Pastors' Emergency League in 1933.
• Many supporters of the Pastors' Emergency League later joined the Confessional Church, formed in 1934 to resist Nazi control of Protestantism.
• The Confessional Church defended the independence of the Church, but it did not oppose all parts of Nazism.
• Niemöller was arrested in 1937, showing the risks faced by church leaders who challenged the regime.
• Opposition from Catholic and Protestant church leaders mattered because those leaders were respected figures, but that opposition remained limited and divided.
• Some German young people rejected Nazi control of their leisure time and identity.
• The Edelweiss Pirates were loose working-class youth groups who rejected the strict discipline of the Hitler Youth.
• The Edelweiss Pirates went hiking, sang banned songs and sometimes taunted or fought Hitler Youth patrols.
• The behaviour of the Edelweiss Pirates showed nonconformity, but before the war they were more rebellious than revolutionary.
• The Swing Youth came mainly from middle-class backgrounds and admired American and British music, fashion and dance.
• The Swing Youth rejected the uniformity and militarism of official Nazi youth culture.
• Swing groups met illegally to dance, smoke and listen to jazz and swing.
• Swing Youth activity was a cultural challenge to Nazi values rather than an organised political movement.
• Youth opposition showed that not all young Germans accepted Nazi ideas.
• Opposition youth groups were small compared with the millions in Nazi youth organisations.
• Opposition in 1933-39 survived in small pockets, but terror, censorship and lack of unity stopped it from becoming effective.
• The Great Depression helped Hitler because mass unemployment made Nazi promises of work and recovery attractive.
• Around 6 million Germans were unemployed when Hitler came to power in 1933.
• Nazi policy aimed to turn men into disciplined workers and soldiers who would support national recovery.
• The Nazis wanted full employment partly to reduce support for communism and other opponents.
• In Nazi Germany, official unemployment figures fell sharply during the 1930s.
• In Nazi Germany, the fall in unemployment was partly real and partly exaggerated by the way the Nazis counted the unemployed.
• In Nazi Germany, women, Jewish people and some other groups were excluded from official unemployment figures.
• The Nazis created jobs through public works schemes.
• In Nazi Germany, public works included road building, housing, public buildings and sports facilities.
• The autobahn network became the most famous public works project.
• Autobahn construction employed thousands of workers and was used as propaganda for Nazi success.
• In Nazi Germany, rearmament created even more jobs than public works because factories needed workers to make weapons, aircraft and vehicles.
• In Nazi Germany, conscription was reintroduced in 1935, which removed many young men from the unemployment register.
• The Reich Labour Service, or RAD, required young men to complete six months of labour service from 1935.
• Workers in the Reich Labour Service, or RAD, built roads, drained marshes and helped with farming.
• The Reich Labour Service, or RAD, was organised along semi-military lines, so it also prepared men for army life.
• Pay and conditions in the RAD were poor, and many men disliked the hard work and strict discipline.
• By 1939, unemployment in Germany was far lower than it had been in 1933.
• In Nazi Germany, many working-class families felt more secure once the main earner was back in work.
• Nazi policy towards workers brought benefits, but it also reduced freedom.
• On 2 May 1933, the Nazis destroyed independent trade unions.
• The German Labour Front, or DAF, replaced the trade unions.
• The German Labour Front, or DAF, did not defend workers in the way a real trade union did.
• Workers could no longer bargain freely for better wages or conditions.
• Strikes were banned under Nazi rule.
• Employers gained more control because workers had lost independent representation.
• In Nazi Germany, working hours often increased in the late 1930s as rearmament accelerated.
• In Nazi Germany, wages rose for some workers, especially skilled men in industries linked to rearmament.
• In Nazi Germany, many unskilled workers gained less because prices also rose.
• In Nazi Germany, food prices rose during the 1930s, so higher wages did not always mean a better standard of living.
• The Strength Through Joy organisation, or KdF, controlled workers' leisure time.
• Strength Through Joy, or KdF, offered cheap holidays, concerts, sports events and day trips.
• Strength Through Joy, or KdF, leisure schemes were meant to make workers feel included in the Volksgemeinschaft.
• Strength Through Joy, or KdF, also helped reduce discontent by giving workers controlled entertainment instead of political freedom.
• The Beauty of Labour organisation, or SdA, tried to improve workplaces.
• Beauty of Labour, or SdA, schemes added canteens, washing facilities, changing rooms and better lighting.
• Beauty of Labour, or SdA, improvements made some workplaces more pleasant, but they did not restore workers' rights.
• The Volkswagen savings scheme was advertised as a reward for loyal workers.
• Many workers in Nazi Germany paid into the Volkswagen savings scheme in the hope of owning a car.
• No ordinary saver received a Volkswagen before the war because production switched to military needs.
• The Nazis also tried to win over the Mittelstand, or small shopkeepers and craftsmen.
• Many people in the Mittelstand had suffered from competition from large department stores before 1933.
• The Nazis promised to protect small businesses, but they did not reverse the growth of larger firms.
• Small shopkeepers and craftsmen still struggled despite Nazi promises.
• Nazi ideology praised farmers through the idea of Blood and Soil.
• The Reich Entailed Farm Law of 1933 tried to keep small farms in family ownership.
• Under the Reich Entailed Farm Law, hereditary farms had to pass to a single heir, usually the eldest son.
• The Reich Entailed Farm Law protected some farms from sale or break-up, but it also limited farmers' freedom.
• Many farmers remained dissatisfied because the state controlled prices and production more closely.
• Rural life did not become as attractive as Nazi propaganda claimed, and many people still wanted to leave the countryside.
• Overall, Nazi work policies reduced unemployment and improved security for many men, but they did so through propaganda, regimentation and the loss of basic rights.
• Women in Weimar Germany had gained the vote and more opportunities in work and public life.
• Nazi ideology rejected the wider freedoms gained by women in Weimar Germany and defined women mainly as wives and mothers.
• The Nazi regime summed up its ideal for women as Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
• Nazi policy towards women aimed to increase the birth rate and create racially approved families.
• Nazi propaganda presented motherhood as a patriotic duty to the nation.
• The Nazis expected men to be breadwinners and women to run the home.
• In Nazi Germany, girls and women were discouraged from aiming for independent careers.
• Women were pushed out of some professions such as law, the civil service and university teaching.
• Married women were encouraged to leave work so that jobs could go to men.
• The 1933 Law for the Encouragement of Marriage offered loans to newly married couples if the wife left paid work.
• The 1933 marriage loan was worth 1,000 Reichsmarks and was reduced by 25 per cent for each child born, so a woman with four children did not have to repay it.
• The Nazis restricted information about contraception and discouraged abortion for so-called Aryan women.
• In Nazi Germany, women who had large families could receive awards and public honour.
• The Mother's Cross rewarded women who had four or more children, with bronze for four or five children, silver for six or seven, and gold for eight or more.
• Gertrud Scholtz-Klink became the leading female Nazi organiser, but she had little real political power.
• Nazi women's organisations taught childcare, cooking, sewing and household management.
• The Lebensborn programme reflected the Nazi obsession with racial purity by encouraging births between racially approved parents.
• Nazi policy did raise the birth rate in the 1930s, but not as much as the regime wanted.
• Despite Nazi slogans, women were still needed in agriculture, domestic service and some factory work.
• By the late 1930s, labour shortages meant the Nazi regime could not remove women from work altogether.
• For many women, Nazi rule narrowed choices in education, work and public life.
• Overall, some women welcomed the status given to marriage and motherhood, but many lost freedom and independence.
• Hitler saw schools as a key way to create loyal Nazi citizens.
• Nazi education aimed to prepare boys for war and girls for motherhood.
• Bernhard Rust, the Education Minister, brought schools under closer Nazi control.
• Teachers had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler.
• In Nazi Germany, teachers who were Jewish or politically unreliable were dismissed.
• Most teachers joined the Nazi Teachers' League and received training in Nazi ideas.
• Classrooms displayed Hitler's picture, Nazi flags and other propaganda.
• Pupils were expected to give the Nazi salute and use Nazi greetings at school.
• Textbooks were rewritten to support Nazi beliefs.
• History taught that Germany had been humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles and needed strong leadership.
• Biology taught eugenics and racial theory, including the supposed superiority of Aryans.
• Maths questions sometimes used examples based on military spending or the cost of caring for disabled people.
• Physical education took up more time because the Nazi regime wanted fit future soldiers and mothers.
• In Nazi schools, girls spent more time on domestic science, while boys spent more time on science, sport and military-style activities.
• Religious influence in schools was reduced as Nazi ideas were given priority.
• In Nazi schools, independent thought mattered less than obedience, discipline and loyalty.
• Elite schools such as the Napolas trained pupils who were seen as physically strong, academically able and racially pure.
• Education in Napola schools stressed leadership, toughness and service to the state.
• Nazi control of education helped spread propaganda, but not every child accepted Nazi ideas completely.
• Nazi education worked best for the regime when it was reinforced by youth groups, censorship and pressure at home.
• Nazi youth groups were designed to win the loyalty of children away from parents, churches and independent clubs.
• Hitler believed shaping the young was essential if the Third Reich was to last.
• Membership of Nazi youth groups grew quickly after 1933 because rival youth organisations were banned or absorbed.
• The 1936 Hitler Youth Law recognised Nazi youth organisations as the official state youth movement.
• A 1939 law made membership in Nazi youth organisations compulsory for most German children.
• Boys and girls were placed in different organisations because the regime expected them to have different futures.
• Boys aged 10 to 14 joined the German Young People, or Deutsches Jungvolk.
• Boys aged 14 to 18 joined the Hitler Youth.
• Girls aged 10 to 14 joined the Young Maidens, or Jungmädel.
• Girls aged 14 to 18 joined the League of German Maidens, or BDM.
• Baldur von Schirach led the Hitler Youth for much of the 1930s.
• In Nazi youth organisations, activities for boys included camping, hiking, sport, marching, map-reading and weapons training.
• Hitler Youth activities for boys were meant to produce obedience, toughness and readiness for military service.
• Girls in the League of German Maidens, or BDM, did exercise, camping and community service but were mainly prepared for marriage and motherhood.
• In Nazi youth organisations, girls were taught that physical fitness mattered because healthy women were expected to raise healthy Aryan children.
• In 1938, the Faith and Beauty organisation was created for girls aged 17 to 21.
• Faith and Beauty focused on health, appearance, domestic skills and preparation for adult life in Nazi society.
• Some young people in Nazi youth organisations enjoyed the uniforms, friendship, outdoor activities and sense of belonging.
• Other young people disliked the strict discipline, endless propaganda and loss of free time in Nazi youth organisations.
• Many parents resented the way Nazi youth groups weakened family authority.
• Some young people resisted through groups such as the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Youth.
• The Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Youth rejected Nazi values in different ways, from music and fashion to more open defiance.
• Nazi youth organisations helped prepare boys for war and girls for family roles, which matched wider Nazi aims for society.
• Overall, Nazi youth policy reached millions, but support was mixed and some membership was based on pressure rather than genuine enthusiasm.
• Nazi racial policy was based on the belief that Germans of so-called Aryan blood were superior.
• Hitler set out Nazi racial ideas, including anti-Semitism and belief in Aryan superiority, in Mein Kampf.
• Nazi racial thinking divided people into a hierarchy and treated Jews as the main racial enemy.
• The regime also persecuted Roma, Slavs, people with disabilities and homosexuals, but Jews were the central target of Nazi racial policy.
• Anti-Semitism had existed in Europe for centuries before 1933.
• Older forms of anti-Semitism included false Christian accusations that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus and medieval claims that Jews spread the Black Death.
• Modern anti-Semitism claimed that Jews controlled finance, the press or communism.
• After the First World War, some Germans used the stab-in-the-back myth to blame Jews for Germany's defeat.
• Economic crises such as hyperinflation and the Depression made it easier for the Nazis to use Jews as scapegoats.
• In 1933, about 500,000 Jews lived in Germany, which was less than 1 per cent of the population.
• Many German Jews saw themselves as patriotic Germans as well as Jews.
• The persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany began soon after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933.
• On 1 April 1933, the Nazis organised a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.
• The 1 April 1933 boycott used intimidation and propaganda to discourage Germans from buying from Jews.
• The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 1933 began removing Jews and political opponents from state jobs.
• Further laws during 1933 and 1934 pushed Jews out of professions, education and cultural life.
• Nazi propaganda in newspapers, posters, films and school textbooks portrayed Jews as dangerous outsiders.
• In Nazi Germany, children were taught racial ideas in school so that anti-Semitism would seem normal and scientific.
• Local discrimination increased as some Jews were excluded from parks, swimming pools and other public spaces.
• In Nazi Germany, many non-Jewish Germans became used to the gradual isolation of Jews because persecution developed step by step.
• The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 turned anti-Semitism into formal law.
• The Reich Citizenship Law took German citizenship away from Jews and reduced them to subjects of the state.
• The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.
• The Nuremberg Laws defined Jewishness by ancestry rather than religious belief.
• The Nuremberg Laws meant that even people who had converted to Christianity could still be classified as Jewish.
• The Nuremberg Laws also created categories for people of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish ancestry.
• After the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jews were excluded more openly from everyday life in Nazi Germany.
• Jewish doctors and lawyers lost more of their right to work for non-Jewish clients.
• Jewish businesses faced growing pressure from boycotts, restrictions and forced sales.
• The transfer of Jewish property to non-Jewish ownership is known as Aryanisation.
• During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, some anti-Jewish signs were temporarily removed because Nazi leaders knew their racial policy could damage Germany's image abroad.
• In 1938, persecution became much harsher and more visible.
• Jewish doctors were banned from treating non-Jews, and many Jewish businesses were closed or transferred.
• In Nazi Germany, Jews had to register wealth and property with the state.
• Jewish passports were marked, and many Jews had to add the names Sara or Israel.
• In 1938, many Jewish children were pushed out of ordinary German schools.
• After Herschel Grynszpan shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris, the Nazis used the event as an excuse for a nationwide attack on Jews.
• On the night of 9-10 November 1938, SA men, SS men and Nazi supporters attacked Jewish homes, shops and synagogues in Kristallnacht.
• Hundreds of synagogues were burned and thousands of Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed.
• Around 90 Jews were killed during the Kristallnacht violence, and many more were beaten and humiliated.
• About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps after Kristallnacht.
• After Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime blamed the Jewish community for the damage and fined it 1 billion Reichsmarks.
• Kristallnacht marked a turning point because open violence now accompanied legal discrimination.
• After Kristallnacht, many Jews tried to emigrate because life in Germany had become far more dangerous.
• The Evian Conference of 1938 showed that many other countries were unwilling to accept large numbers of Jewish refugees.
• By 1939, Jews in Germany had lost most civil rights, much of their property and any sense of security.
• The growing persecution of Jews between 1933 and 1939 showed how the regime moved from prejudice and exclusion to organised violence and terror.
• When war began in 1939, the German economy was better prepared for short campaigns than for a long war.
• Nazi leaders expected quick victories, so civilian life was not placed under full wartime controls straight away.
• As the war against Britain and France continued, the Nazi regime increasingly turned the German economy towards military needs.
• A war economy meant directing labour, factories and raw materials towards supplying the armed forces.
• The shift to a war economy reduced the resources available for ordinary consumer goods and increased state control over daily life.
• By 1941, 55 per cent of German workers were doing war-related work.
• By 1941, 47 per cent of factory output was for the military, compared with 23 per cent in 1939.
• In wartime Germany, rationing and shortages affected food, clothing and other everyday goods.
• In wartime Germany, labour shortages became a serious problem because millions of men were serving in the armed forces.
• The Nazi regime increasingly relied on women, prisoners of war and forced foreign workers to fill gaps in the workforce.
• Nazi ideas since 1933 had encouraged women to focus on marriage, motherhood and the home rather than paid work.
• War needs created disagreement within the Nazi regime about how far women should be pushed into industry.
• During the war, the Nazi regime compromised by encouraging women into work but avoiding full-scale labour conscription for most women.
• In wartime Nazi Germany, young women could be required to complete Reich Labour Service, showing how labour shortages weakened earlier domestic ideals.
• The number of women employed in factories doubled between 1939 and 1941 to about 1.5 million.
• At first, the move to a war economy did not raise production as quickly as the Nazi regime wanted.
• Early wartime production was held back because the army, navy and air force placed separate orders without proper coordination.
• In February 1942, Albert Speer became Minister of Armaments and War Production.
• Speer had Hitler's confidence, which gave him the authority to reorganise production.
• Speer created the Central Planning Board to coordinate raw materials and war production more effectively.
• Speer worked closely with industrialists and reduced military interference in day-to-day economic planning.
• Speer gave factories more freedom over how they organised production.
• Speer's changes helped to increase the output of aircraft, tanks and other armaments.
• Air raids on Germany also affected civilians as well as industry from 1940 onwards.
• Allied bombing of Germany damaged homes, transport links and oil plants, causing disruption and homelessness.
• Early RAF bombing was often inaccurate, so it did not stop German war production immediately.
• Even so, bombing forced Germany to divert workers and resources to repairs, air defences and rebuilding.
• Overall, the move to a war economy increased military output but brought shortages, longer hours and heavier pressure on ordinary Germans.
• No single mass opposition movement emerged during the war that could seriously threaten Nazi rule.
• Even so, opposition to Nazi rule grew as military defeats, bombing and shortages weakened confidence in Hitler.
• Most wartime opposition remained small-scale, local and dangerous because Nazi repression was severe.
• The most serious challenge from inside the Nazi regime came from some army officers in 1944.
• The July Bomb Plot, or 20 July Plot, aimed to kill Hitler and seize control in Berlin.
• Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg became the leading figure in the July Bomb Plot.
• Claus von Stauffenberg had once supported aspects of Nazi rule but turned against Hitler as the war situation worsened.
• Claus von Stauffenberg's wartime experience, especially in North Africa, helped convince him that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster.
• Stauffenberg worked with other opponents, including Ludwig Beck, the former Chief of the German Army General Staff.
• In July 1944, Stauffenberg's position in the Reserve Army gave him access to Hitler's military meetings.
• On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg placed a bomb in his briefcase at Hitler's headquarters.
• Hitler survived because the meeting was held in a wooden hut and the briefcase was moved behind a thick table leg.
• After the bomb failed to kill Hitler, the July Plot conspirators tried to activate Operation Valkyrie to take control of key buildings and arrest Nazi leaders.
• The plot failed because Hitler was alive and many officers hesitated once the news spread.
• Stauffenberg was shot that night, and many other plotters were later executed.
• The failure of the plot showed that opposition existed even in senior army circles, but it came too late and lacked wide support.
• Religious opposition to Nazi rule came from both Catholics and Protestants.
• Catholic protests grew when Nazis interfered with church schools and religious symbols.
• In Bavaria, protests against the removal of crucifixes from schools forced the Nazis to back down locally.
• The Nazis' retreat over crucifixes in Bavarian schools showed that public pressure could sometimes make the regime back down when it feared unrest.
• Catholic churchmen such as Bishop von Galen criticised some Nazi actions, including attacks on the Church and the euthanasia programme.
• Protestant opposition centred on pastors who rejected Nazi control of the Church.
• The Pastors' Emergency League opposed Nazi interference in religion and rejected racist ideas inside the Church.
• In 1934, opponents of the Nazi-backed Reich Church helped to form the Confessional Church.
• The Confessional Church attracted thousands of pastors and church members.
• Many church opponents in Nazi Germany were watched, arrested or imprisoned, which limited their impact.
• The White Rose group was formed by students at Munich University in 1942.
• In 1942 and 1943, the White Rose distributed leaflets condemning Nazi crimes and calling on Germans to resist.
• Members of the White Rose also painted anti-Nazi slogans on walls in Munich.
• Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested and executed in 1943.
• In Nazi Germany, passive resistance meant opposing the regime without open rebellion.
• In Nazi Germany, passive resistance included listening to foreign radio stations such as the BBC.
• In Nazi Germany, passive resistance also included avoiding Nazi rituals, such as refusing to say "Heil Hitler".
• In Nazi Germany, some workers took time off sick, worked slowly or carried out minor sabotage.
• Anti-Nazi jokes and defeatist comments were other small signs of discontent.
• Passive resistance is hard to measure because many acts were private or went unreported.
• Overall, wartime opposition showed growing dissatisfaction, but fear and repression stopped it becoming a mass movement.
• By 1943, Germany could no longer rely on quick blitzkrieg victories.
• Defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa, together with Allied bombing and American entry into the war, pushed Nazi Germany towards Total War.
• Total War meant organising labour, industry and daily life entirely around military survival.
• Total War demanded longer hours, greater discipline and far greater sacrifice from civilians.
• In February 1943, Goebbels publicly called for Total War in his Sportpalast speech.
• Under Total War in Germany, many non-essential businesses and leisure activities were closed or cut back.
• In Germany, the production of civilian goods such as clothes and furniture was sharply reduced so more resources could go to weapons.
• In Germany, women were pushed more strongly into war work, and older men and teenagers were drawn into service.
• In Germany, food rations fell further and shortages became worse.
• Allied bombing raids on Germany killed civilians and destroyed homes, factories, transport links and public services.
• Many German civilians spent nights in air-raid shelters, and some were evacuated or left homeless.
• Damage to German railways and industry made daily life harder and disrupted the supply of food and materials.
• Nazi leaders feared that worsening conditions could damage morale and encourage unrest.
• Nazi propaganda told Germans that sacrifice was necessary for what the regime called Total Victory.
• By late 1944, Germany's military position was disastrous.
• Soviet forces were advancing towards Germany from the east, while British and American forces were advancing from the west.
• Millions of German soldiers had been killed, wounded or captured, creating a desperate shortage of manpower.
• In 1944, Hitler created the Volkssturm as a last-ditch home defence force.
• In late-war Germany, all males aged 16 to 60 who were not already serving were liable for the Volkssturm.
• Volkssturm recruits had little training and were often given poor or outdated weapons.
• Many Volkssturm members wore only an armband instead of a proper uniform.
• Some Germans kept fighting out of loyalty, patriotism, fear of punishment or fear of the Soviet advance.
• Other Germans recognised that defeat was inevitable but could do little because the Nazi regime remained violent and repressive.
• Total War and the Volkssturm failed to stop defeat and increased the suffering, destruction and loss of life experienced by the German people in 1943-45.
• By 1942, Nazi Germany occupied much of Europe, but its rule was not the same everywhere.
• The contrast between occupied Poland and the Netherlands shows that Nazi rule differed sharply between eastern and western Europe because of Nazi racial ideas.
• In eastern Europe, the Nazis wanted land, food, and labour and treated many local people as racially inferior.
• In western Europe, the Nazis were more likely at first to keep local officials and institutions in place because they hoped for cooperation and saw many western Europeans as racially closer to Germans.
• Jewish communities in both east and west were persecuted, deported, and murdered, though the methods and timing varied.
• After the First World War, many Germans resented the Polish Corridor because it separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany.
• In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing not to attack one another and secretly dividing Poland between them.
• In September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland and the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland.
• Germany annexed western Poland directly into the Reich, while central occupied Poland became the General Government.
• The Nazis expelled many Poles and other Slavs from annexed areas to make room for ethnic German settlers.
• In occupied Poland, about 500,000 ethnic Germans took over homes, farms, and businesses seized from Polish families.
• Hans Frank ruled the General Government in occupied Poland and aimed to crush Polish national identity.
• Schools, universities, museums, and cultural institutions were closed or tightly controlled to weaken Polish society.
• Polish teachers, priests, officials, and other community leaders were arrested or killed to make organised resistance harder.
• More than 1.5 million Polish people were deported to Germany for forced labour.
• Polish forced labourers in Germany had to wear a letter P and were treated as inferior workers.
• Jews in occupied Poland were persecuted from the start and were forced into ghettos from 1940.
• Occupied Poland became the main location for ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps used in the Holocaust.
• Around 3 million of Poland's 3.5 million Jews were murdered during the occupation.
• The Polish government escaped to London and supported an underground state and resistance movement inside occupied Poland.
• In August 1944, the Home Army launched the Warsaw Uprising as Soviet forces neared the city.
• The 1944 Warsaw Uprising lasted about two months before the Germans crushed it.
• After crushing the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Hitler ordered Warsaw to be destroyed, and about 200,000 Polish people were killed.
• The Nazis invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940.
• The Dutch surrendered after the bombing of Rotterdam, and Queen Wilhelmina with the government went into exile in London.
• The Netherlands was placed under the Nazi governor Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
• Because the Nazis viewed the Dutch as racially closer to Germans, they treated them less brutally at first than the Poles.
• In the occupied Netherlands, local administration, schools, and many civil service jobs continued under Nazi supervision.
• Even in occupied western Europe, however, Jews were isolated, deported, and murdered.
• In 1941, a strike in Amsterdam protested against anti-Jewish measures, but the Germans crushed it and executed some participants.
• About 107,000 of the Netherlands' 140,000 Jews were deported, and very few returned.
• From 1943, labour shortages and growing resistance led the Nazis to impose harsher controls on the Dutch population.
• In April 1943, plans to send about 300,000 Dutch men for labour in Germany triggered strikes and protests.
• By 1944, forced labour demands had widened, and about 500,000 Dutch people were eventually sent to Germany to work.
• Dutch resistance included hiding Jews and men avoiding labour service, printing illegal newspapers, and sabotaging German forces.
• About 2,000 members of the Dutch resistance were killed.
• In the Hunger Winter of 1944-45, German reprisals and transport disruption helped cause severe shortages, and about 20,000 Dutch civilians died of starvation.
• Nazi occupation of the Netherlands ended on 5 May 1945, when German forces there surrendered and Canadian troops entered the country.
• People under Nazi occupation responded in different ways: collaboration, accommodation, and resistance.
• Collaboration meant actively helping Nazi rule, whether for ideological reasons, nationalism, anti-communism, antisemitism, fear, or personal gain.
• Accommodation under Nazi occupation meant adjusting to occupation and obeying many rules in order to survive, keep working, or protect family members.
• Resistance meant opposing Nazi rule, from hiding people or passing on information to sabotage and armed attack.
• Collaboration under Nazi occupation was never exactly the same everywhere because local politics and wartime circumstances differed across Europe.
• In Latvia, some nationalists and former soldiers welcomed the Germans because they hated earlier Soviet rule and saw Germany as the lesser evil.
• The Nazis used local collaborators in Latvia, including the Arājs Kommando, to murder Jews and hunt opponents.
• The Arājs Kommando helped kill about 26,000 Latvian Jews.
• In Croatia, the fascist Ustaše regime collaborated with Nazi Germany and ran its own concentration camps.
• The Ustaše persecuted and murdered Jews, Serbs, Roma, and political opponents.
• In parts of occupied Yugoslavia, some Chetnik groups later collaborated with Axis forces against communist Partisans.
• In Belgium, the DeVlag movement promoted Nazi ideas and helped recruit men to the Waffen-SS.
• Collaboration could also take everyday forms such as informing on neighbours, working for occupation authorities, or helping identify Jews.
• Many people did not support the Nazis but still accommodated occupation by obeying curfews, carrying identity papers, and continuing their jobs.
• Accommodation was common because open resistance could bring collective punishments, prison, torture, or execution.
• In 1940, Germany quickly defeated France and divided it into an occupied northern zone and Vichy France in the south.
• In occupied France, the northern zone was ruled directly by Germany, while Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis.
• Vichy France passed anti-Jewish laws and helped arrest and deport Jews, showing that collaboration could be led by a local government as well as by German officials.
• French factories and businesses also worked for Germany, producing goods, weapons, and vehicles for the German war effort.
• Some French people joined German organisations, informed on neighbours, or worked closely with occupation forces.
• Accommodation in France meant living with rationing, curfews, censorship, and German soldiers in daily life.
• In occupied France, civil servants, police officers, shopkeepers, and railway workers often kept working because society still had to function.
• Many people under Nazi occupation obeyed orders mainly to survive, not because they believed in Nazism.
• When Germany demanded more workers in occupied France, hundreds of thousands of French men were sent to Germany through forced labour schemes.
• The Service du travail obligatoire forced labour scheme, introduced in France in 1943, pushed many young French men to hide or join rural Maquis resistance groups.
• The French Resistance was made up of many separate groups that later became better coordinated.
• French resistance groups gathered intelligence and passed it to London by radio or courier.
• French resisters sabotaged railways, bridges, factories, and telephone lines to disrupt German transport and supplies.
• Some French resistance fighters ambushed German troops or assassinated collaborators.
• Other French resistance fighters hid Jews, sheltered downed Allied airmen, and produced false identity papers.
• In occupied France, the Germans answered resistance with executions, torture, hostage shootings, and reprisals against whole communities.
• As Allied armies approached France in 1944, resistance uprisings helped weaken German control and support liberation.
• The Bielski brothers formed a Jewish partisan group in occupied western Belarus after escaping Nazi persecution.
• The Bielski partisans lived in forests, carried out sabotage, and saved more than a thousand Jews by hiding them.
• André Trocmé, a Protestant pastor at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in Vichy France, encouraged local people to shelter Jews, provide false papers and help people escape to Switzerland.
• André Trocmé was arrested in 1943 but continued to resist, and the community of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon helped thousands avoid deportation.
• The Holocaust was the Nazi attempt during the Second World War to destroy the Jewish people of Europe.
• Nearly 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
• Nazi persecution developed step by step from discrimination, exclusion, and forced emigration into organised mass murder.
• From 1933, measures such as boycotts, dismissal from jobs, and the Nuremberg Laws pushed Jews out of German public life.
• Kristallnacht in November 1938 showed that open violence against Jews was now encouraged by the Nazi state.
• The invasion of Poland in 1939 brought about 3 million more Jews under Nazi control.
• Nazi leaders treated the large Jewish population of occupied eastern Europe as something to be isolated, exploited, and eventually destroyed.
• Jews in occupied Poland were forced into sealed ghettos, cut off from the rest of the population.
• The Warsaw ghetto was the largest, imprisoning over 400,000 people in a small, walled area.
• Ghettos were overcrowded and short of food, fuel, and medicine, so disease and starvation spread rapidly.
• Tens of thousands died in the ghettos even before deportations to death camps began.
• When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Holocaust entered a more openly murderous phase.
• Mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen followed the German army into the Soviet Union.
• The task of the Einsatzgruppen was to murder Jews, communist officials, and other groups the Nazis considered enemies.
• The Einsatzgruppen worked with SS units, police battalions, and local collaborators.
• Einsatzgruppen victims were rounded up, taken to pits or ravines, and shot.
• Mass shootings such as those at Babi Yar show why the 1941 phase of the Holocaust is often called the Holocaust by bullets.
• Einsatzgruppen and their helpers murdered well over 1 million people, most of them Jews.
• In January 1942, senior Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin.
• The Wannsee Conference did not begin the Holocaust, but it coordinated the Final Solution across occupied Europe.
• The Final Solution meant deporting Jews to occupied Poland and murdering them on an industrial scale.
• The Final Solution depended on trains, bureaucracy, and cooperation from officials across Nazi-occupied Europe.
• Adolf Eichmann played a major role in organising deportations.
• Concentration camps were prison camps used to hold people the Nazis considered enemies or undesirable.
• Prisoners in concentration camps faced brutal labour, starvation, disease, punishment, and death.
• Unlike concentration camps, death camps existed primarily for mass murder.
• Most death camps were in occupied Poland, including Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
• Jews from across Europe were transported by cattle truck and train to Nazi death camps in occupied Poland.
• On arrival at the death camps, some prisoners were selected for forced labour, but many were sent straight to be killed.
• At Auschwitz-Birkenau, victims were told they were going to showers and were murdered in gas chambers using Zyklon B.
• At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the bodies of murdered victims were burned in crematoria to hide the scale of the killings.
• Auschwitz-Birkenau could kill thousands of people in a single day.
• About 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, most of them Jews.
• The Holocaust also relied on local collaborators, police forces, railway staff, and officials who helped identify, arrest, or deport Jews.
• Jewish resistance did exist, including uprisings in some ghettos and camps, though it faced overwhelming odds.
• The Holocaust began to unravel only when Germany started to lose the war and Allied armies advanced.
• As Soviet forces moved west, the Nazis evacuated camps and forced many prisoners on death marches.
• Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz in January 1945.
• Other camps, including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, were liberated by American and British forces.
• The liberation of the camps revealed the scale of Nazi mass murder to the world.

• Explain how propaganda, terror, legal change and elite support combined to bring Hitler to power and secure dictatorship.
• Sequence the steps by which Hitler dismantled democracy between January 1933 and August 1934.
• Differentiate between legal measures, coercive measures and propaganda when analysing Nazi control.
• Assess how far the police state relied on denunciation as well as formal institutions such as the SS, SD and Gestapo.
• Evaluate the effectiveness and limits of opposition from the Left, the Churches, youth groups and conservative elites.
• Compare the experiences of workers, women and young people under Nazi rule using precise policy examples.
• Explain how Nazi policies offered benefits to some Germans while removing rights and freedoms.
• Trace the escalation of anti-Jewish policy from boycott and exclusion to Kristallnacht, ghettoisation and genocide.
• Explain how war changed the German economy and everyday life from 1939 to 1945.
• Assess why Total War increased pressure on civilians without preventing defeat.
• Compare Nazi occupation in eastern and western Europe using case studies such as Poland and the Netherlands.
• Explain how racial ideology shaped different occupation policies, including settlement, forced labour and repression.
• Distinguish between collaboration, accommodation and resistance in occupied Europe and apply those categories to specific examples.
• Assess how far local collaborators helped sustain Nazi rule in occupied Europe.
• Explain how conquest in eastern Europe enabled the radicalisation of Nazi racial policy.
• Differentiate between ghettos, concentration camps and death camps when explaining the Holocaust.
• Trace how the Holocaust developed from discrimination and forced emigration to mass shootings and industrialised murder.
• Evaluate the role of bureaucracy, transport and local cooperation in carrying out the Final Solution.