Download 8. The impact of the War on Germany File

Effects of WWII on Germany
1.Paper One W2001
To what extent did Germans turn against Hitler during the course of WWII? Explain your answer. (10)
2. Paper One W2006
‘Most Germans supported the Nazis during their twelve years in power.’ How far do you agree? (could use the
war) [10]
3. Paper One 2007
How far did the coming of war change life in Nazi Germany? Explain your answer. [10]
4. Paper One 2010
To what extent did the German people turn against Hitler during the course of the Second World War? Explain
your answer. [10]
5. Paper One 2010
‘German citizens benefited from Nazi rule between 1933 and 1945.’ How far do you agree with this statement?
Explain your answer. [10]
Mark scheme for W2001
(c) To what extent did the German people turn against Hitler during the course of the Second World War? Explain
your answer.]
Level 1 Unsupported assertions [1]
e.g. ‘Many Germans were very loyal to Hitler.’
‘Some started to turn against him as defeat loomed.’
Level 2 Identifies reasons [2–3] e.g. ‘Many remained loyal because of what Hitler had done for Germany.’ ‘Groups like the
Swing and Edelweiss Pirates voiced their discontent.’ ‘Dissatisfaction in the Army.’ ‘Propaganda kept morale high until the
last few months.’
Level 3 Explains support OR lack of support [3–5] e.g. ‘The German people stayed loyal to Hitler because of the recovery
brought about in Germany. People had employment, there was order and a sense of purpose.’ ‘Hitler had reversed the Treaty
of Versailles and had also gained considerable land. His popularity was at its height when France was defeated.’ ‘The loyalty
can be seen by the German war effort when factory workers, including women, worked fifteen hours a day or when asked for
fur coats for the Eastern Front, 1.5 million were donated.’ ‘During the War the opposition did grow. Some of the army
officers were worried the war was going badly and planned to blow up Hitler.’ ‘Some young people also began to rebel
during the war like the Swing Youth. They were fed up with the Nazis controlling their lives and giving them no freedom.’
‘The Navajos gang and Edelweiss Pirates were generally regarded as delinquents but during the war they got involved in
spreading anti-Nazi propaganda and in 1944 took part in an attack in which a Gestapo officer was killed. Some were
executed.’ ‘Hans and Sophie Scholl led a student group in Munich called the White Rose Movement. They were executed in
1943 for anti-Nazi activities.’
Level 4 Explains support AND lack of support [5–7] Both sides of Level 3
Level 5 Explains with evaluative judgement of ‘what extent’ [7–8
Tasks
1. Take the following dates and briefly summarise what happened at this stage of the war for Germany
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1939-1941: The war goes well for Germany
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1941-1942: The tide turns
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1943-1944 Total War
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1944-1945: Failure and defeat
2. Complete question 3.
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This is a 10 mark question so in an exam you would have no more than 20 minutes
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Along with the summary task the homework should take no more than 1 ½ hours
The Home front in Germany in WWII 1939-1945
Since 1935 The Nazis had been preparing Germany for war. However, for all the Nazi emphasis on the glories of
war, when it came was not greeted with enthusiasm. Even many supporters of Hitler and the Nazis still had vivid
memories of the First World War. Many feared the worst. However, the first year of the war went unbelievably
well for Hitler. In twelve months the German army swept through eastern and western Europe, meeting very little
resistance. The first conquests quickly brought extra food and riches back to Germany.
1939-1941: The war goes well for Germany
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In September 1939 the Germans prepared for their first winter of the war. Rationing was introduced for
most foodstuffs and for other items. Many more items were rationed than in wartime Britain. Germans
received seven food ration cards, color-coded for different foods.
As a result of rationing, two out of five Germans ate better than before the war! However, the diet
became increasingly monotonous - vegetables and black rye bread, with small amounts of meat, butter
and a single egg each week. Bread was usually sold when it was one day old because that way it took
more chewing and people ate less! Adults received no milk ration although children received a
generous one.
Clothes rationing was introduced in November 1939. There was a complicated points system. Some
items such as new shoes and winter coats were almost impossible to buy.
Hot water was permitted on only two days per week. Soap was also rationed.
Tobacco was difficult to find. Many people were so desperate for it that tobacco became a kind of
substitute for money. People could buy other things in exchange for tobacco. Farmers would trade one
egg for a cigarette.
Shop windows displayed goods which were labelled 'Nur Attrapen' - for decoration only. Dairies
displayed rows of milk bottles full of white salt to look like milk. '
The first year of war went well for Germany. As Germany conquered other countries, food as well as
huge stocks of luxury goods such as dresses, stockings, furs and perfumes were imported from those
countries. People could buy these on the black market if they had money, but most of the goods went to
loyal or high-ranking Nazis.
Even so, from 1939 to 1941 it was not difficult to keep up civil morale because the war was going
spectacularly well for Germany.
SOURCE 1 The observations of an American radio reporter, Howard K. Smith, in 1941
"In the subway [underground railway} you smell the people. There is not enough time nor enough coaches for
coaches to be properly cleaned and ventilated every day, so the odour of stale sweat from bodies that work hard,
and have only a cube of soap as big as a penny box of matches to wash with for a month, lingers in their interiors.
In summer, it is asphyxiating ... dozens of people, whose stomachs and bodies are not strong anyhow, faint in them
every day. Sometimes you just have to get out at some station halfway to your destination to take a breath of fresh
air between trains. "
One newspaper advised that soap was not necessary for a bath and suggested that the liquid from stewed pine
needles could be used instead. Stewed and strained ivy leaves were recommended for washing clothes. Toilet paper
was not available
1941-1942: The tide turns
In June 1941 Hitler ordered the invasion of the USSR. This was a massive gamble. He was hoping for the kind of
lightning victory he had achieved in western Europe. He got the opposite. His army became bogged down in a
four-year battle for survival that tore the heart out of the army. By the end of 1942 Germany's war was going badly.
New hospital trains brought thousands of wounded Germans home from the war in the Soviet Union. People got
more used to seeing wounded soldiers and women in mourning.
Propaganda
Various propaganda campaigns were launched to keep up morale and to encourage people to support the war
effort. Goebbels claimed that between December 1941 and January 1942 Germans gave 1.5 million furs and 67
million woollen garments to help clothe the German army in Russia. Other campaigns urged people to save fuel,
work harder and even to try to avoid tooth decay. Extra food rations were given out at Christmas 1942 to help keep
up morale.
1943-1944 Total War
By 1943 it was clear that the war was not going Germany's way any longer. The government began preparations
for 'total war' with every part of German society geared to the war effort, producing arms, growing food, caring
for the sick or fighting.
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Anything that did not contribute to the war effort was eliminated.
In March 1943 professional sport was ended.
Magazines not important to the war were closed.
Non-essential businesses were closed.
Hair-dyeing and perming were banned in some parts of Germany. Some women who could afford it
travelled a great distance just to go to the hairdresser's.
In August 1943 clothes rationing was suspended and the manufacture of civilian clothing was ended.
Exchange centres were opened where people could swap furniture and clothes.
They had to cut back on heating, work longer hours and recycle their rubbish. Goebbels redoubled his
censorship efforts. He tried to maintain people's support for the war by involving them in it through
asking them to make sacrifices. They donated an estimated 1.5 million coats to help to clothe the
German army in Russia.
At this stage in the war, the German people began to see and hear less of Hitler. His old speeches were
broadcast by Goebbels, but Hitler was increasingly preoccupied with the war.
In 1942 the 'Final Solution' began, which was to kill millions Jewish civilians in German-occupied
countries.
From 1942, Albeit Speer began to direct Germany's war economy. All effort focused on the armament
industries.
The Postal service was suspended and letter boxes were c1osed.
Places of entertainment were closed, e.g. cinemas - Goebbels needed these to show propaganda films.
Country areas had to take evacuees from cities and refugees from eastern Europe.
Labour shortages
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With most German men in the armed forces there was a severe shortage of workers. More women were
drafted into the labour force.
In the concentration camps Jews and political prisoners were worked to their deaths to supply the
demands of the German war effort.
Millions of captured foreign workers and prisoners of war were also forced to work in factories and on
farms.
By May 1944 there were over seven million such people. Those from France, Belgium and Holland
were given a certain amount of freedom, but workers from Russia and Poland were treated as slaves.
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Germans had to be careful how they treated them, as acts of kindness were punished. A landowner who
attended the funeral of a 'slave' worker who died on his own farm was imprisoned for six months.
Air Raids
It was the bombing of Germany which had the most dramatic effect on the lives of German civilians. In 1942
the Allies decided on a new policy towards the bombing of Germany. Under Arthur 'Bomber' Harris the British
began an all-out assault on both industrial and residential areas of all the major German cities. One of the
objectives was to cripple German industry, the other was to lower the morale of civilians and to terrorise them into
submission. The bombing escalated through the next three years, culminating in the bombing of Dresden in
February 1945 which killed between 35,000 and 150,000 people in two days.
One attack on Hamburg in 1943 led to a fire storm which wiped out large areas of the city. Thirty thousand people
died. The emergency services tried to supply food and shelter but after three days the services collapsed under the
pressure. The government had to step in and build emergency accommodation for air-raid victims.
1944-1945: Failure and defeat
By July 1944 Allied armies were pushing the Germans back in the west and in the east. Refugees were pouring into
Germany from the areas being reconquered by the enemy. Goebbels was appointed Reich Trustee for Total War
and he prepared to mobilise Germany for one final effort to win the war. He ordered the following:
• All non-German servants and all workers into armaments factories and the age limit for compulsory labour was
raised to fifty.
• The Volkssturm (Home Guard) was formed. Someone called it 'the last round-up of the old and the lame, the
children and the idiots'. They marched through Berlin with borrowed weapons.
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In early 1945 some of the most extreme air raids began. In two nights of bombing up to 150,000 people
were killed in Dresden as Allied born destroyed 70 per cent of the properties in the city. Many of them
were refugees from the east, newly arrived in the city. By the end of the war almost as many
German civilians had been killed in bombing as German soldiers had died in combat.
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The Nazi administration could not cope with destruction on this scale. By early 1945 government plans
were in chaos. Ration cards were no longer honoured. Instead people relied on the black market or on
scavenging for food. Almost anything could be bought on the black market - for example, a complete
set of identity papers for 80,000 marks.
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With defeat looming, support for Hitler weakened. Germans stayed away from public meetings and
they refused to give the 'Heil Hitler' when asked to do so. Himmler even asked the Allies about
possible peace treaty!
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By 1945 the German people were in a desperate state. Food supplies were dwindling. Already 3.5
million German civilians had died. Refugees were fleeing the advancing Russian armies in the east.
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Three months after the massive destruction of Dresden, Germany's war was over. In Berlin in April
1945, Hitler, Goebbels and other Nazi war leaders committed suicide. Germany surrendered. It was
now a shattered country. The Nazi promises lay in tatters and the long, painful process of rebuilding
Germany had to begin again. The war and the Nazi regime were over - but at an appalling cost in
human lives and after years of unimaginable suffering for millions of people.
SOURCE 2 Statistics on bombing and casualties German home front
• 800,000 (estimated) civilians killed by bombing
• 2,697,473 tons of bombs dropped by the R and USAAF
• Approximately 50 per cent of bombs fell on residential areas and 12 per cent on factories and war industries
• 3,600,000 homes destroyed
• 7,500,000 people made homeless
• 2,500,000 children evacuated
• 3,640,000 German civilians died as a result the war.
How did the war affect women?
There was even greater pressure to increase the birth rate. There had always been a contradiction in Nazi policy on
women and now it was more extreme than ever. On the one hand women were expected to work for the war effort.
Some served refreshments at railway stations to servicemen and evacuees. Others did Red Cross work or helped
collect and sift scrap metal. On the other hand they were expected to have more children and to conform to the
Nazi ideal in appearance: there was even a campaign against women wearing trousers!
Rationing, bombing and absent husbands made life very difficult for mothers. Under the pressure smoking and
nervous fatigue increased. Many women did not want to have a child in war time when there were so many other
pressures on their lives and when the risks to the child were so great. Nevertheless, the Nazis still urged women to
have children whether they were married or not.
When the war began to go badly in 1943 the Nazis tried to mobilise all women except those with young children.
Three million women aged 17 to 45 were called to work, yet only about one million tool up jobs. Many tried to
evade this call up - some pretended to be ill, others deliberately got pregnant. One magazine talked about 'fear of
the factory' as a new disease.
The high male casualties in the war led the Nazi leaders to come up with ideas to compensate for such losses. They
assumed that after the war three out of four women would be unable to marry. Hitler calculated the loss in future
soldiers and began to consider the idea that after the war healthy men could have two wives.
How did the War increase opposition to the regime?
You already have notes on this in your packs and previous work. Most importantly
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The army began to plot against Hitler, culminating in 1944 in the July Bomb Plot (Operation
Valkyrie)
A host of Youth opposition groups sparing up
a) The White Rose group
b) The Edelweiss Pirates
c) The Swing Movement
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The Hitler youth membership declined
Workers sabotaged goods
Church leaders began to speak out against the Holocaust
Most of the opposition groups and individuals we have studied began their opposition AFTER the war began.
Particularly after 1941-1942 when the War began to go badly for the Nazis. This would be key evidence to give
if there was a question about how the war affected the German people.