§-Quick questions
NSWModern HistoryCore Study: Power and Authority in the Modern World 1919-1946
Quick questions on The Nazi state 1933-1939: HSC Modern History Core Study
7short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is propaganda?Show answer
Joseph Goebbels became Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on 13 March 1933. The Reich Chamber of Culture (September 1933) controlled film, theatre, music, press, radio, and literature. The Volksempfanger cheap radio reached 70 per cent of households by 1939. Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935) immortalised the Nuremberg Rallies; her Olympia (1938) glamorised the Berlin Games.
What is women?Show answer
The regime promoted Kinder, Kuche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage (1933) offered marriage loans. The Mother's Cross (1938) rewarded large families.
What is youth?Show answer
The Hitler Youth (HJ) and the League of German Girls (BDM) became compulsory in 1936 and 1939. By 1939 membership exceeded 8 million. Schools were nazified through the National Socialist Teachers League.
What are churches?Show answer
The Reich Concordat with the Vatican (July 1933) was repeatedly violated. The Protestant "German Christians" allied with the regime; the Confessing Church (Niemoller, Bonhoeffer) opposed it. By 1937 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge ("With burning concern") attacking Nazi racial policy.
What is the Hossbach Memorandum and the New Plan?Show answer
Hossbach recorded Hitler's address pressing for rapid rearmament. Hjalmar Schacht's New Plan (September 1934) had used MEFO bills to disguise military spending; by 1936 Hermann Goering's Four-Year Plan was driving autarky. Richard Overy (The Nazi Economic Recovery, 1996) shows military expenditure rose from 1.9 per cent of GDP in 1933 to 18 per cent in 1938.
What is sD reports on the Hitler Myth?Show answer
Sopade (exiled SPD) reports and SD Stimmungsberichte show genuinely high popularity for Hitler after the Saar plebiscite (January 1935) and the Rhineland remilitarisation (March 1936). Ian Kershaw (The Hitler Myth, 1987) draws on both sets of records to argue popular consent was constructed through foreign-policy success and economic recovery rather than terror alone. Robert Gellately (Backing Hitler, 2001) argues the Gestapo relied on denunciation from neighbours, evidence of active complicity.
What is weave historiography as argument?Show answer
Do not bolt a historian on at the end. Use the debate to structure the essay: intentionalist (Dawidowicz, Jackel) versus structuralist (Kershaw, Mommsen), then your synthesis. Kershaw's "working towards the Fuhrer" is the single most useful phrase for this dot point.
Have a question we have not covered?
This dot-point answer is short enough that we have not extracted many short questions yet. Read the full dot-point answer or ask Mo, our study assistant, in the chat for follow ups.