Odd one out & why?

1. Odd one out & why?

2. WALT: To what extent did the Nazi’s achieve Volksgemeinschaft? WILFS D – Describe the features of Volksgemeinschaft. B – Evaluate the importance of propaganda. A – Assess the extent that the Nazi’s achieved Volksgemeinschaft.

3. Weltanschauung - world view • Gleichschaltung - Gleichschaltung is an example from the early days of the Nazi dictatorship of this use of language to manipulate and confuse. It is a word rarely to be found in older German dictionaries. ‘Gleich’ means equal, ‘Schaltung’ means switch, as in an electrical switch; Gleichschaltung therefore means switching on to the same track or wavelength, or, to put it in one word, alignment or co-ordination • Volksgemeinschaft - Come up with a definition of Gleichschaltung. PostIt…

4. Women • Youth • Church • Workers • Middle Class • Propaganda – New national consciousness. How successful was the Nazi Regime in creating a Volksgemeinschaft?

5. You will now have 25 minutes to put as much information down on the Sheet of A3 as possible… WORK AS GROUP • You each have a pot of PlayDoh – You have to create something memorable from each pot to highlight a point about the assigned Group. • You must place as much information around the A3 as possible to explain each creation. • You will peer assess each tables efforts. TASK

6. Example Information • Example Information Women & Volksgemeinschaft • Example Information • Example Information

7. Example

8. Kershaw: ‘The acute perception of social injustice, the class-conscious awareness of inequalities...changed less in the Third Reich than is often supposed...The extent of disillusionment and discontent in almost all section of the population, rooted in the socio-economic experience of daily life is remarkable’. (1983) • Peukert: Volksgemeinschaft had not been achieved by 1939 – internal harmony maintained by diverting public opinion against minority groups. • In conclusion, the Nazi regime created the illusion of a Volksgemeionschaft, which featured in the propaganda, but it is very difficult to say exactly why the German people behaved as they did during the 1930s. Certainly it is difficult to agree that there had been a 'social revolution'. (Schoenbaum) Historiography

9. How successful was the Nazi Regime in creating a Volksgemeinschaft? Question

10. Good answers may conclude that there was a great deal of acquiescence and social conformity – terror had a part to play in this – but the existing class structure remained fundamentally unaltered, despite the insistence of Nazi propaganda otherwise. If there was a social revolution it took the form of the elimination of those excluded from the national community by definition of race, allegiance or usefulness – Jews, political opponents, asocial, and the mentally and physically disabled. The Nazis largely failed to break down old loyalties but achieved at least passive support. For many Germans, ‘belonging’ to a Volksgemeinschaft’ was a powerful attraction. MS

11.  The mystic Utopia of the Volksgemeinschaft required that all its members be centred on the same goal, dedicated to hard work and prepared for self-sacrifice. Those who would not fit in – the ‘asocial’, the ‘workshy’, homosexuals, political opponents – and those who could not fit in – ‘aliens’, the ‘uneducable’, the ‘incurable’ – had to be excluded, even eradicated. Anthropology, biological sciences and eugenics were deployed to identify both these groups of outsiders and even to suggest ‘treatment’. As noted above, the treatment of the ‘insane’ and ‘incurable’ was more violent in Germany than elsewhere and, from 1939, involved murder. http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/world-history/the-holocaust/content-section-2.3