1. HI136 The History of Germany Lecture 10
The Third Reich:
A Racial State?

2. Economic Policy
No detailed economic policy on the assumption of power in 1933.
Different approaches to economic management considered:
Anti-capitalist clauses of the 25-point programme: nationalisation, profit sharing, expansion of welfare state.
Deficit financing
Wehrwirtschaft (defence economy)
Throughout its lifetime the economic policy of the Third Reich was characterised by inconsistency and pragmatism.
Three key stages:
: economic revival under Hjalmar Schacht
: preparation for war
: wartime economy

3. Economic Revival,
Respected financier Hjalmar Schacht appointed President of the Reichsbank ( ) & Minister of Economics ( ) – demonstrates the Nazis need to keep big business on side.
Schacht given virtual dictatorial powers over the economy.
The priority to stimulate investment in the economy – this facilitated and led by state intervention.
Interest rates set at a lower rate.
Public works to get people back to work.
Hjalmar Schacht ( )

4. Public Works Source: G. Layton, Democracy and
Dictatorship in Germany (2009)

5. Public Works Reichsautobahnen Year km total 1935 108 108 1936 979 1087
Total: 3896 

6. Economic Revival,
Sept. 1934: ‘New Plan’ introduces state control of trade & currency exchange. Bilateral trade agreements with South America and the Balkans.
By 1935 Germany had a trade surplus, unemployment was down to 1.7 million and industrial output had risen by 49.5%
‘The Fight Against Unemployment’: Graph
Presented by the Reich Ministry of Employment (1934)

7. The Four Year Plan
A looming balance of payments crisis by 1936 – Schacht’s solution to reduce expenditure in re-armament & focus on production of manufactured goods for export.
However, in August 1936 Hitler issued a memorandum calling for the German economy to be ready for war within four years.
This led to the introduction of the Four Year Plan under Hermann Göring – the aim was to make Germany self-sufficient in food and raw materials.
Tighter control of economy and workforce.
Success of the plan was mixed, but generally it fell short of its targets.

8. Labour
The state-run trade union, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), was the largest Nazi organization with a membership of 22 million by 1939.
It was responsible for setting wages and working hours, organizing training, dealing with strikes and absenteeism and supervising working conditions.
Kraft durch Freunde (KdF, Strength through Joy) provided opportunities for loyal workers to go on cheap holidays, participate in cultural visits or access sporting facilities.

9. Winners and Losers
Benefits of economic recovery hard to assess and mixed.
Creation of jobs accepted gratefully and helped raise millions out of the misery of unemployment.
But real wages for industrial workers remained low and were subject to high taxes and deductions.
Some measures aimed at farmers and small businesses (subsidies and tax breaks), but the Nazis slow to deliver on the promises they made to their core constituency.
Only real winner big business as heavy industry made gains in the drive for re-armament.

10. Eugenics
Eugenics = ‘good birth’; widespread in western societies from late 19thC (i.e. not German-specific)
‘Ideal’ racial stock often equated to middle-class
‘Dangerous’ classes of lumpenproletariat
Note cultural stereotypes rather than scientific criteria
Law for Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (July 1933): approx. 2 million people sterilized
‘Inferior Hereditary Material Penetrates a Village’: lone mother, illegitimate children, drinking fathers, mental illness & prison

11. Pronatalism
The Great Depression discouraged large families; part of a wider trend of a falling birth-rate.
Positive eugenics: incentive schemes such as marriage loans, mothers’ crosses
Lebensborn (Well of Life): SS scheme to promote Aryan births out of wedlock
Anti-natalism (Gisela Bock): several hundred thousand women sterilised
Above: Mother’s Cross; below: ‘The nation’s military strength is safeguarded by hereditarily healthy, child-rich families’

12. Homosexuals Gay men targeted as “failing their reproductive duties”.
1936: penal code amended to make it easier to prosecute homosexuals.
4,000 arrests between 1933 and 1935; 22,000 between 1936 and 1938.
Homosexuals incarcerated in concentration camps with pink triangle.
50% of gay men in camps died.
Around 2,000 men castrated as a “cure” for homosexuality.
Nazi chart alleging that one homosexual man can ‘contaminate’ 28 others; note the pseudo-scientific diagram

13. ‘This is how it would end.’
‘Asocials’
Racial theory of hereditary illnesses (criminality, alcoholism), rendering sufferers ‘unfit for community’
‘Workshy’ & prostitutes targeted from 1936 on, becoming significant proportion of concentration camp population
‘This is how it would end.’

14. Euthanasia Financial savings on mentally handicapped.
Killings in sanatoria. Around 360,000 people killed, many of them children, by 1939.
‘T4’ programme under Viktor Brack experiments with gas vans. As many as 93,000 killed by 1941.
Bishop Galen of Münster leads Catholic opposition (euthanasia becomes clandestine from 1941)
Key text: Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance
Victor Brack, architect of the ‘T4’ euthanasia programme
Bishop Galen of Muenster, outspoken critic of euthanasia

15. Gypsies await their fate at Belzec camp
Roma and Sinti gypsies
Sinti & Roma labelled workshy.
Ethnographic studies of gypsies as Indo-European migrants.
From 1938 laws directly aimed at Gypsies similar to those aimed at Jews.
Proportionally as many gypsies died in Holocaust as Jews.
Gypsies await their fate at Belzec camp

16. Anti-Semitism Religious antisemitism, dating back to medieval period
Economic antisemitism: emancipation of Jewish Germans post-1871 coincided with economic depression
Biological antisemitism: Social Darwinism; organicist view of body politic; Jews as parasites ‘contaminating’ Aryan blood

17. Assimilation Rejected
1933 April Boycott of Jewish Businesses

18. Nuremberg Race Laws
1933: Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.
1933: Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools.
1935: Reich Citizenship Act.
1935: Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour.

19. German Foreign Policy, 1933-1937
Oct. 1933
Germany leaves League of Nations and Disarmament Conference
Jan. 1934
Non-Aggression Pact with Poland
Jan. 1935
The Saar votes to return to Germany
March. 1935
Hitler announces reintroduction of conscription
April 1935
Stresa conference, Britain, France, and Italy protest against German infringement of Versailles
June 1935
Anglo-German Naval Agreement on an enlarged German Navy
Oct. 1935
Italy invades Abyssinia
January 1936
Mussolini ends Italian guarantee of Austrian independence
March 1936
German troops reoccupy the demilitarised Rhineland
July 1936
Germany sends military to help the nationalist rebels in Spain
Nov. 1936
Rome – Berlin Axis announced; Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan
Nov. 1937
Italy joins Anti-Comintern Pact

20. German Foreign Policy, 1938-1939
March 1938
Invasion of Austria (Anschluss)
Sept. 1938
Munich conference of Germany, Italy, France, Britain
Oct. 1938
Germany takes Sudetenland, Teschen to Poland
March 1939
Germany occupies Czechoslovakia
Germany occupies Memel
Britain and France guarantee Poland
One woman’s reaction to the German entry into the Sudetenland, Sept

22. The Nazi-Soviet Pact, 23 August 1939
Article I. Both High Contracting Parties obligate themselves to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other Powers.
Article II. Should one of the High Contracting Parties become the object of belligerent action by a third Power, the other High Contracting Party shall in no manner lend its support to this third Power.
Secret Additional Protocol:
Article I. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna area is recognized by each party.
Article II. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San.
The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish States and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments.
In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement.
Article III. With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinterestedness in these areas.
Article IV. This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret.
“Rendezvous”, by David Low, The Evening
Standard, 20 September 1939