PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

SECTION TWO: THE NAZI SOCIAL AND RACIAL REVOLUTION:
1933-1939
Source A
The German Labour Front is set up in 1933.
The German Labour Front is the organisation for all working men, irrespective of
their economic or social standing. In it the worker shall stand alongside the
employer, no longer separated into groups and associations which serve to perpetuate
special economic or social distinctions or interests. In the German Labour Front a
person’s worth will be the deciding factor, be he worker or employer …
(The Hitler State, Martin Broszat, Longman, 1981)
Source B
Robert Ley on the Nazi work ethic in 1936.
There is one thing we must understand if we are to comprehend the greatness of this
time: we are not dealing with a new state system, or a new economic system…
Human being are being transformed … National Socialism has the power to free the
German people, the individual German, from the injuries inflicted on him which have
prevented from performing his task … Of course we do not have a comfortable life.
Life on this earth is hard and must be earned through struggle, and earned every day
afresh. All we can do is to give you the strength for this struggle, to make you
inwardly strong. We can give the worker physical and spiritual health, healthy
housing, and a proper livelihood with which to maintain himself and his children.
Above all, thanks to Kraft durch Freude, we can offer him a great deal to nourish his
spirit.
(Fascism, Roger Gribbon (Ed), Oxford University Press, 1995)
Source C
An interview with an unnamed member of the Nazi Party in 1936.
… for five years I remained unemployed and I was broken both in body and spirit and
I learned how stupid were all my dreams in those hard days at university. I was not
wanted by Germany…then I was introduced to Hitler. You won’t understand and I
cannot explain either because I don’t know what happened, but life for me took on a
tremendous new significance … I have committed myself, body, soul and spirit, to
this movement … I can only tell you that I cannot go back. I cannot question, I am
pledged. I beg you not to try to set up conflict in my mind.
(from Hitler and Nazism, Jane Jenkins, Longman, 1998)
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 79