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Germany, 1890–1945: Democracy and Dictatorship

Nazi economic changes and the impact of war

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1 section A

Overview

The labour service and rearmament, how the jobless figures were made to look better, self-sufficiency and the Four Year Plan, what workers gained and lost, forced labour, rationing, Allied bombing and the refugees of 1945.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Who and when

Once the war began, how did the regime fill its workforce, what did rationing mean for families, and what did Allied bombing do to Germany?

Key term

What building schemes did the Nazis use to soak up unemployment?

Numbers

How did rearming Germany help to end mass joblessness?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What building schemes did the Nazis use to soak up unemployment?

    Model answer

    The labour service sent young men to build motorways, lay railways, plant forests and drain marshland for little more than board, lodging and pocket money.

  2. 2

    How did rearming Germany help to end mass joblessness?

    Model answer

    Conscription from 1935 took hundreds of thousands of young men off the register, and orders for tanks, ships, aircraft and uniforms filled the mines, steelworks and engineering shops.

  3. 3

    Give two ways in which the jobless figures were made to look better than they were.

    Model answer

    Jews and women pushed out of their posts were left out of the count, and men in the labour service and the armed forces were recorded as employed.

  4. 4

    What did the Nazis mean by self-sufficiency, and why did Hitler want it?

    Model answer

    Producing Germany's own food and raw materials so that no blockade could ever starve it into surrender again, as had happened in the First World War.

  5. 5

    What was the Four Year Plan of 1936 meant to achieve?

    Model answer

    Under Goering it was to have the economy fit for war within four years, with home-made substitutes for imported oil, rubber and textiles and a drive to raise iron and steel output.

  6. 6

    What did German workers gain, and what did they lose, under the new regime?

    Model answer

    They gained steady wages, cheap holidays and outings through the Strength Through Joy scheme, and a savings plan for a people's car; they lost their unions, the right to strike, the freedom to change jobs and much of their leisure to longer hours.

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