Lesson video

Welcome back, I'm Mr Hutchinson, and this is history.

We're learning all about 20th century conflict, and this is lesson five.

If you haven't watched the lessons so far, that's absolutely fine, you can go onto the website, onto Oak Learning, and you can just watch the previous lessons so that you're up-to-date.

For the rest of us, wow, we've already been through the conditions in Europe that led up to the First World War, militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism, the outbreak of the First World War and how horrific that was.

We learnt about the Treaty of Versailles, and how Hitler rose to power.

And in today's lesson, we're going to be learning all about, now that Hitler's in power, what life was like in Nazi Germany.

So we're in 1933 now, and throughout these lessons, you've been completing some amazing work, I'm really proud and impressed.

So in today's lesson, we're in 1933, okay? So the Treaty of Versailles has been put in place, Hitler has risen to power, and it's 1933, Hitler is now führer or leader.

He becomes chancellor and pretty much immediately says, "Now I'm the only one that's in charge, "I'm führer, I'm leader, I'm dictator." He doesn't listen to what any other parties are saying.

In fact, he starts setting up camps, work camps, like prison camps, where he sends political opponents to so that he has no opposition whatsoever.

So what does today's lesson look like? What are we going to look at in terms of Nazi Germany? Well, first of all, we're going to look at how there were economic improvements in Germany in the 1930s.

How, once Hitler took over, the economy started to pick up.

Then we'll look at how Hitler focused on children and young people by establishing the Hitler Youth and taking over what was taught in schools.

After that, we'll look at what Nazi ideas were around women, the role of women and the roles of girls, and how Hitler started to get his picture of what women and girls should be doing in place.

And we'll end with our end of lesson quiz as usual.

If you haven't already, make sure that you've got a quiet space so that you can really focus.

Make sure that you've got a book or a piece of paper to write on, and a pen, so that as soon as I say pause, you're ready to start thinking hard and applying that knowledge.

So we're going to start today by looking at the German economy.

So economy is just to do with money, okay? So when you hear the word economy, especially in history, it's to do with money or finances.

And when we study history, there are normally three sorts of groups of factors, three sorts of, when we're thinking back at what it was like in the past, it's a bit too much to think about it all in one go, and so we break it down.

And historians very often look at three major groups of factors.

They'll look at social, economic and political, okay? Say those words.

Social, economic, political.

Social factors are to do with people, okay? To do with society, it's to do with people.

Economic factors are to do with money, the money of a country.

And political factors are to do with the leader and the decisions and laws that the leader makes in leading the country.

In today's lesson, we're going to mainly focus on the social and the economic factors.

So we're going to look at what it was like to live in Nazi Germany, especially for children, and what the economy was like in Nazi Germany.

And that's what we're going to start with.

So you'll remember that we ended our last lesson with a huge global financial crisis.

It was 1929, and Wall Street, which is where the stock exchange is in America, crashed.

Money became almost worthless, people lost their homes, they lost their savings, and there was a huge, great depression.

This graph here, look at this graph, look at the years along the bottom and look at what happens in 1929.

And, if you look closely at this graph, then you'll be able to see that Hitler is coming into, Hitler is coming into power in 1933, and he inherits a dreadful economic situation in Germany.

So he has become the führer, he's become in charge of a country, but the country is not in a good place.

Of course, that's one of the reasons he was able to become leader, because people were so unhappy with the economic situation, with the hyperinflation and with the global crash.

Hitler wants to change this, okay? He wants the economy of Germany to be great.

He wants to be a great leader and he wants the economy to be great.

So he puts a man in charge of the economy straight away, and this is the man that he puts in charge, and his name is Hjalmar Schacht.

I think I'm saying that correctly, you try and say it.

Maybe it's Hjalmar Schacht.

If anybody knows how to pronounce that, I'm a bit lost.

Hjalmar Schacht, I think that that's correct.

Hjalmar Schacht gets put in charge of the economy, and he immediately starts making changes.

I'm going to show you another graph now, I want you to look at this graph carefully, I'm going to give you a minute.

Look at this graph carefully and just trace with your finger what happens with the German economy, here's the graph.

Look at the years along the bottom and look at what's happening with the amount of money that Germany has.

Trace your finger along as you go through the years.

So you'll see this graph shows us that there was that global crash in 1929, these green bars showing that Germany's economy is really, really struggling up to 1932.

Hitler comes in charge, and the economy really starts to take off.

They start having much, much more money thanks to Hjalmar Schacht.

So how did they achieve this? How did they achieve this improvement in the economy? Well, there are a few things that Hitler and Schacht did.

One of the things is they started to print a different kind of money, not their currency, a different kind of money.

This was quite clever because they could use this other kind of money to pay for things without it showing up on their economy, without it tanking their economy.

Also, because it was kind of secret money, they could use it to pay for the army, and Hitler immediately starts rearming.

He immediately starts building up the army again.

I know the Treaty of Versailles said that he couldn't, but he didn't care, he immediately started to build up his army again.

And he also puts in place a number of big projects.

So one of the things that he did is he gave lots of people jobs who didn't have jobs before building things like the Autobahn.

So this is them building the Autobahn, you can see Hitler there.

And the Autobahn is like the motorway in Germany.

This was actually already a project that was going on, but Hitler started to put much more money into it and started to give a lot more people jobs to start building things like roads and stadiums and different kinds of public buildings.

And alongside that, Hitler also had, to reward the workers, he put on big sorts of treats.

He put on cinema trips and theatre trips and clubs and dances, and they called this Kraft durch Freude, or Strength through Joy, that's what that means.

Strength through Joy.

So before Hitler came in, there were lots of people unemployed, lots and lots of people unemployed.

Hitler immediately starts printing this new kind of money, he stops paying reparations, he starts these big projects like the Autobahn to give people jobs and to give them money to spend, and at the start of the Third Reich, Hitler's rein, the economy is really, really improving.

And so, I've got a question for you about this.

This is the economic situation in Germany, so have a think about this question.

What would the impact of that improving economy be on people? What would the impact be? Now, of course, like with everything in history, it's complicated, it wouldn't be the same for everybody.

The Jewish community, for example, were already being persecuted by Hitler.

He was taking their businesses away from them, he was saying they couldn't have jobs.

Women were told that they shouldn't work, that they should leave their jobs so that men could have them.

So it's not the same for everybody, but in general, what would the improving economic situation, what impact would that have on people? There are a few factors that you might like to discuss here.

You might like to talk about what people's standard of living would be like.

How it would feel to have larger employment, to have more people employed.

So there are fewer people out of jobs as the economy improves.

What would the attitudes towards political leaders be? What would people think about Schacht and Hitler with the improving economy? Generally, what might the public mood be like? Now, of course, at any time, the public feel differently about all sorts of things, but what the general public mood be like if the economy is improving and people are having more money to spend? And lastly, what about this Strength through Joy programme, these theatre trips and dances and cinema trips and big sort of activities for people? How would that affect people's attitudes? What would the impact of the improving economy be? Pause the video and answer that question now.

Okay, take a photo, ask your parent or carer to send it on Twitter to Oak National, #learnwithoak.

I'd love to see it, I'd love to read it, been really impressed with your work so far.

Let's look at schools.

So what did Hitler want to do with schools? Well, first of all, just to get, in terms of what's the same, what's different between now and then, what I'd like you to do is make a list.

Right now obviously we're in lockdown so it's going to be different, but think about a normal school day from when you were back in school, okay? Think about how you would start the day, the sort of different subjects you would do.

What did your school timetable look like? So write down now what a normal day would look for you in school.

Pause the video and write that.

Okay, great, so I've done this task as well.

So my normal school day before I got put into lockdown like the rest of you is we'd have a reading lesson about 8:30 with my class and we'd read for about an hour doing a reading lesson.

Then, we'd have some play time, then after that, we'd have about an hour writing lesson.

Then we'd have a little bit of a snack, maybe watch Newsround, and then we would have a maths lesson, then some story time, lunch.

And then, in the afternoon, we'd have different kinds of subjects, maybe music and history for the afternoon.

That's what my school day would look like.

As soon as Hitler becomes in charge, he starts changing the school day.

He starts really becoming involved in schools and saying exactly what schools can and can't teach.

And so, within Nazi Germany, a school day looks more like this.

So he puts a big emphasis on subjects like German and history.

He also introduces entirely new subjects.

You'll see here race science is to do with different races, so people of different races.

We know that Hitler thought that the Aryan race are kind of blond, blue eyed, tall, strong, sort of Scandinavian physique, he thought that was the best race.

And other races were inferior, and he wanted to get rid of them, they were impure.

And he would start teaching children that, so he'd teach them that people of colour were worth less than other people.

The Jewish people were worth less, they were a worse race, and there was a master race, an Übermensch, a master race.

And he started teaching that in schools straight away, so you'd be forced to learn that in schools.

He might do a little bit of maths and science, but very limited.

Hitler didn't really want to emphasise those, he thought that giving pupils knowledge in that way wasn't necessary, they just needed to learn how to serve the fatherland, to serve Germany.

And there was another subject that he introduced, and that's the subject here called eugenics.

So eugenics is when you breed to different people or animals together to try and get a better version of that.

So eugenics is done within animals because farmers might want cows that have lots and lots of meat on them, so they take two cows with lots of meat and they'd make them breed.

Hitler wanted to do that with humans.

He thought that master races, the best humans, should get married to the best humans, and the rest shouldn't be allowed to.

So they shouldn't allow mixing of different races, for example.

Now, again, we would look at that today and we would say how awful, how disgraceful, how disgusting, how abhorrent, and you'd be right to have that reaction.

But it's worth remembering that these were children in schools and they were being told this by their teacher because Hitler forced the teachers to do this.

If they didn't do it, they would be fired.

They immediately got sent to training camps to learn about all of this, the teachers, and be told to do it, and if they didn't do it, they would be fired.

So let's just compare those two school days.

Nazi school day on the left there in orange and my school day in the purple.

Have a look at the differences, what's different there? So we've got these new subjects coming in, teachers not allowed to teach what they like or how they like, and they'll be fired if they try and challenge the Nazi ideas.

Hitler even began to change the textbooks.

So the children had to completely obey everything that Hitler said, they're doing the Nazi salute there, that's from 1933.

So straight away, they would have to pledge loyalty, complete loyalty to the führer, the leader of the country.

He rewrote textbooks, so this picture here, this is really awful, so you'll see that, at the top here, he's got a picture of what he calls the degenerates, the bad people, the low race.

And on the top, he's got what he calls the master race, these Aryans, what he wants everybody to be like.

And this is a textbook that children would have in school, and so children would look at this and be told this, that there are some people who are worth less, there are some people who are worse race, they're degenerates, and this German here, I'll read this to you because it's in German, but it says Deutschland, Germany, could be like this, the degenerate race, or like this, the master race.

And this little bit in pencil here that's been written by a, this has been written by a child, this is German, and this says, "Shoot them." So this child has been doing this lesson and they've been learning about this inferior race, now, we know that there's no such thing as an inferior race, we're all just humans, but that's what Hitler was teaching the children.

And so, they immediately start saying, "Shoot them." So that's what Hitler would start doing in schools, that's how he'd start to take over schools and take over children's ideas and indoctrinate or change children's minds to agree with everything that he thought in schools.

So I've got another task for you here.

I'd like you to think about why Hitler really turned his attention to children.

Why, when he became in charge, did he immediately start changing the way that things were taught in school, what was taught in school, and putting such a focus on children and young people? What you might like to consider here is, there are a few sentence starters in fact to make sure you're writing nice, full sentences.

The Nazis focused on young people because, they emphasised.

What did the Nazis put an emphasis on? What did they really make stand out? This indicates that, this is good, historical sort of framing.

This indicates that, so you look back, you see what they were doing, what does it indicate, what does it give you a clue about? What were the Nazis doing? So have a go at writing a paragraph answering those questions.

Why would the Nazis focus on children and young people? What does this tell us about their plans? Pause the video and do that now.

Okay, great, so we can see that Hitler has become very influential in the schools, but that's not all he did with the German youth.

He also put a big emphasis on what he called the Hitler Youth, and this was kind of like a club and activities for children and young people to go to.

So the Hitler Youth was just for boys, we'll talk about girls in a moment, but the Hitler Youth was just for boys, and he really emphasised this.

So this is a picture of the Hitler Youth, you can see all of the children in uniforms, looking like they're in military here.

And there were four, really, there were four big aims of the Hitler Youth, what Hitler wanted to achieve with this.

So he wanted all of these boys to get ready to be in the military.

He wanted to have a huge army so he could be a powerful nation again, and so he emphasised that it should be like the military.

He wanted them to become physically fit, he had this idea of the master race who were really physically fit and the perfect sort of physique, and so he wanted lots of physical exercise.

It was very important that the children became completely loyal to Hitler, and so that's what happened in the Hitler Youth, and he wanted to really hate non-pure races, or what he called non-pure races.

There's no such thing as a non-pure race, but as far as Hitler was concerned, there were pure Jews, there were pure Aryans, and he wanted the young people to hate anybody that wasn't what he called pure.

And so, all of this really is a form of political or ideological indoctrination.

If you indoctrinate somebody, then you brainwash them, you make them think exactly what you think by giving them no choice to question or consider other sides of the argument.

So let's look at what it was really like in the Hitler Youth.

Well, here's a picture of Hitler with some young people in one of the camps, and here's the picture of the boys training, and you'll see that very often they would use weapons and it would be just like in the army.

They would do lots of camping, they would sort of play sort of war games, and it might be easy to think that this Nazi Germany, it sounds horrible, that these children were being forced to go these sort of Hitler Youth clubs, but in fact, if we look at the evidence and some sources of people that were there, we get a bit of a different picture.

So read this source from somebody in the Hitler Youth.

It's somebody that's, so it's a man who's writing many years later, remembering what he felt like being in the Hitler Youth.

So I'll put it up, and you can pause the video to read, and then I'll read it out just in case you want a thorough, or something that's too small.

Read that, so it says, "Far from being," excuse me, "Far from being forced to enter the ranks of the Jungvolk, "I could barely contain my impatience and was, in fact, "accepted before I was quite 10," so younger than you in the Hitler Youth playing with guns and things.

"It seemed like an exciting life, "free from parental supervision, "filled with duties that seemed sheer pleasure.

"Precision marching was something one could endure "for hiking, camping, "war games in the field, "and a constant emphasis on sports.

"To a degree, "our pre-war activities resembled those of the Boy Scouts, "with much more emphasis on discipline "and political indoctrination.

"There were the paraphernalia and the symbols, "the pomp and the mysticism, "very close in feeling to religious rituals.

"One of the first significant demands "was the so-called test of courage, "which was usually administered "after a six month period of probation.

"The members of the Schar, "a platoon like unit of 40 to 50 boys, "were required to dive off a three metre board, "about 10 feet high, "head first into the town's swimming pool.

"There were some stinging belly flops, "but the pain was worth it "when our Fahnleinführer, "the 15 year old leader of the Fahnlein, "literally little flag, "a company like unit of about 160 boys, "handed us the coveted dagger "with its inscription, "Blood and Honour.

"From that moment on, "we were fully accepted." So we can see here, this man looking back fondly of the life in the Hitler Youth and the feeling of belonging, the exciting games they were able to do, being away from their parents.

And it wasn't just the boys, the girls had a different kind of club, which we'll get into in a moment.

But this is from the League for German Girls.

I'll let you pause and read.

And so, Melita Maschmann here says, "I wanted to escape from my childish, narrow life, "and I wanted to attach myself "to something that was great and fundamental.

"I longed to hurl myself into this current, "to be submerged and borne along it.

"The crashing tread of the feet, "the sombre pomp of the red and black flags, "the flickering light from the torches on the faces "and the songs with melodies "that were at once aggressive and sentimental.

"I was overcome with a burning desire "to belong to these people, "for whom it was a matter of life and death." And so, think about those two quotes.

Think about this quote from this member of the Hitler Youth here and from this member of the League for the German Girls.

And consider this question, and you can just think about it, you can write it down if you want to, but just think about this, what were children and young people's attitudes towards the Nazi activities? Were they positive or were they negative? And what would have motivated them to join these clubs? Because by 1939, over 90% of children and young people were members of these clubs.

So what made everybody want to join them? So you might have mentioned their being a part of something big, being a part of something that feels really important, being proud of your nation after it's been pretty rubbish for a long time.

Germany punished by the winning nations in the World War One, the diktat of Versailles, poor, unemployed, embarrassed.

And so, feeling proud again has a real attractive draw.

The sorts of activities they were doing, a really attractive draw for lots of children and young people.

But there was this indoctrination going along as well.

This is the oath that all of the Hitler Youth had to give to the führer, to Hitler.

"Adolf Hitler, "you are our great führer.

"Thy name makes the enemy tremble, "thy Third Reich comes, "thy will alone in law is above us.

"Let us hear thy daily voice "and order us by thy leadership, "for we will obey the end "and even with our lives.

"We praise thee, heil Hitler." So reading that, that reminded me of something.

As I was reading that oath and researching, that reminded me of something.

It reminded me of this prayer here.

See if you know what this prayer on the left is.

"Our Father who art in heaven, "hallowed be thy name, "thy kingdom come, "thy will be done, "on earth as it is in heaven.

"Give us this day our daily bread "and forgive us our trespasses, "as we forgive those who trespass against us.

"And lead us not into temptation, "but deliver us from evil, "for thine is the kingdom, "the power and the glory, "for ever and ever, amen." Now look at the Nazi oath, the Hitler Youth oath, and see if you can spot any similarities.

Do you see the similarities there? Now, that's deliberate, Hitler's putting himself up as God.

He wants complete obedience from the young people in the same way that God wants complete obedience from his followers.

So what about women and girls? We've looked at the Hitler Youth, which was for the boys, but what about the role of women and boys? Well, Hitler had strong views about women and girls.

He had already written in "Mein Kampf," his book, "My Struggle," about women and girls, and he had strong views for women and girls once he came into power with his Third Reich.

And Hitler thought there were three things that girls should be thinking about, three things that women should concentrate on.

See if you can guess what they are? Guess what the three things are.

I'm going to reveal them, see if you got them right.

Kirche, which means church, they should go to church.

Kinder, which means babies, they should have babies.

And küche, they should cook in the kitchen.

As far as Hitler is concerned, the natural place of a woman, a woman's natural role is looking after children and looking after the home and going along to church to be really good.

And he said, look, women and men, they're equal, he did believe in equality, he said, but we're different.

Men are strong and should be leading and should be in charge.

Women are caring and nurturing, but weak and should stay in the home and should look after children.

What do you think about that? So to help him get this idea across, the League of German Maidens, or the League of German Girls, was set up in the same way that there was the Hitler Youth.

They had this special flag, and whereas the boys were getting ready to lead and getting ready to fight and getting ready to learn how to be in the army, the girls were learning how to do sort of housework, learn how to cook, learn how to sew.

So you're probably screaming at the screen now, this is so sexist, oh my gosh, it's so sexist, these ideas, and of course it is sexist.

And now we know that we should never treat girls and boys differently and that girls can do everything that boys can do and boys can do everything that girls can do.

But Hitler used this separate but equal, equal but different defence to try and say, "I do believe in equality, "but just for different things." Which meant that girls did things like this, they're learning how to make hay here, how to put hay together.

And they would learn how to do sort of dances together, instead of being able to do the sorts of physical activities that boys did.

And so, for Hitler, he really thought that a woman's place is in the home.

But don't just take my word for it, you can take Hitler's word himself.

This is what Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf," I'll let you pause to read it.

Okay, I'll read that in case it's too small.

"If the man's world "is said to be the state, "his struggle, his readiness to devote his powers "to the service of the community, "then it may perhaps be said "that the woman's is a smaller world.

"For her world is her husband, "her family, her children and her home.

"But what would become of the greater world "if there were no one to tend and care for the smaller one? "How could the greater world survive "if there were no one to make the cares "of the smaller world the content of their lives." So he's saying woman's world is small.

But look, we need somebody to look after the small world so the men can get out and run the country.

So we're going to sort of sum up here with a big question which is around Hitler and what he wanted to achieve for children and young people, because he really focused on children and young people.

He really wanted to make sure that he changed all of their minds, had complete loyalty, and built them up to be the next leaders and soldiers.

And so, what I'd like you to do is think about this question here, what were Hitler's aims for the youth for these aims? so this is a good historical skill of thinking about what somebody wanted to achieve and whether they did do that and why they did that.

And so, something you might like to consider here is the role of schools.

How did Hitler use schools and what did he want to achieve in schools? The difference between boys and girls in Hitler's opinion, and whether he achieved that.

The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls.

This method of indoctrination, brainwashing children.

And the motivation of children and young people to be a part of this.

Pause the video and write out an answer to that question, what were Hitler's aims for the youth of Germany, and how successful was he in achieving these aims? That's it, well done.

So we're going to finish there, well done, there was a lot of interesting and new content there.

We're going to end with a quote from Hitler just to make really clear why he wanted to capture the youth.

So this was from 1933, Hitler talking in a speech in 1933, and he said, "I begin with the young.

"We older ones are used up, "we're rotten to the marrow.

"We are cowardly and sentimental, "we are bearing the burden of a humiliating past "and have in our blood "the dull recollection of serfdom and servility." That means being sort of slaves, basically.

"But my magnificent youngsters, "are there any finer ones in the world? "Look at these young men and boys, "what material.

"With them, I can make a new world.

"This is the heroic stage of youth, "out of it will come the creative man, "the man-god.

"When an opponent declares, "'I will not come over to your side,' "I say calmly, "'Your child belongs to us already.

"'What are you? "'You will pass on, "'your descendants, however, "'now stand in the camp.

"'In a short time, "'they will know nothing but this new community.

'" So Hitler's aim at making that new Reich with the children, indoctrinating them so that he had complete loyalty of the whole nation very clearly set out there.

And in many ways, very, very successful through the 1930s at achieving that, getting huge uptake with lots and lots of children as part of those clubs, and in schools, learning that stuff.

Women starting to be told that they can't have the same jobs, that they couldn't be judges, that they had to give their jobs to men so that they could be at home.

He gave women more money if they just had more children and stayed at home instead of having a job.

Other groups such as Jewish people, homosexuals, gay people, Gypsy Romani traveller communities, disabled people all starting to be persecuted by Hitler ready for what was to come, which was eventually Hitler sending those people away to work camps and even concentration camps, where they were murdered.

So a sombre note to end on, but we're getting towards the Second World War now.

We've looked at what life was like in Nazi Germany, in the next lesson, we'll look at the outbreak of the Second World War.

So in the next lesson, we'll look at how, by 1939, Hitler had risen completely to power, was führer of a strong and rebuilt Germany, and the actions he took that sparked the Second World War.

Make sure you do the quiz at the end of this to test your knowledge on this lesson, and thank you so much for working so hard.

I will see you in the next lesson.