Social Policy and Practice

Remaking society around Nazi beliefs

After taking power in 1933, the Nazis tried to change more than Germany’s government. They wanted family life, education and religion to serve their dictatorship. Their ideal was a Volksgemeinschaft, or national community, united behind Hitler. However, belonging to this community depended on Nazi racial classifications: people the regime considered undesirable were excluded and persecuted.

Social policies therefore combined encouragement with coercion. Some Germans received financial rewards, opportunities or public recognition. Others lost jobs, freedom and eventually their lives. To understand their impact, distinguish what the Nazis wanted from what their policies actually achieved.

Women: motherhood as service to the state

The Nazis wanted to reverse the greater independence some women had gained during the Weimar Republic. They presented men as soldiers and workers, and women primarily as mothers and homemakers. The slogan Kinder, Küche, Kirche — children, kitchen, church — summarised this ideal. Its reference to church reflected traditional family expectations, not a guarantee that churches would remain independent.

There were two connected reasons for this policy. The Nazis wanted to increase a birth rate that had fallen by the early 1930s, creating future workers and soldiers. They also wanted more children whom they classified as ‘Aryan’. Motherhood was therefore presented as a duty to the nation, but only for women the regime judged racially and hereditarily suitable.

The 1933 Law for the Encouragement of Marriage offered eligible couples a loan of 1,000 marks. Initially, the woman had to leave employment or remain unemployed. A quarter of the loan was cancelled for each child born, so four children could remove the entire debt. This linked financial support directly to marriage, childbirth and withdrawal from paid work.

The Mother’s Cross rewarded large families with public recognition: bronze for four or five children, silver for six or seven, and gold for eight or more. Restrictions on birth control and abortion for women considered ‘Aryan’ also served the aim of increasing births. Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the National Socialist Women’s League, helped promote the regime’s expectations, while women’s organisations provided training in childcare and domestic work.

Women’s career opportunities were restricted, particularly in professions such as law, medicine and the civil service. This reduced their independence and access to positions of authority. Meanwhile, forced sterilisation under the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring prevented people judged to have certain hereditary conditions from having children. Nazi policy did not encourage motherhood for all women: it rewarded some while violently denying reproductive freedom to others.

The limits and contradictions of women’s policy

Marriage and birth rates initially rose, and some women valued the financial assistance and recognition given to mothers. Nevertheless, these benefits came with pressure to conform and reduced freedom to choose a career or family life. Women subjected to sterilisation experienced a particularly severe violation of their rights.

The ideal of keeping women at home also conflicted with economic demands. As rearmament expanded, Germany needed more workers, and restrictions intended to remove women from employment were relaxed. During the Second World War, women were increasingly required to replace men serving in the armed forces, including in factories and auxiliary roles.

The result was not a simple, permanent removal of women from work. The regime continued to praise motherhood while increasingly relying on women’s labour. This shows how practical needs could override parts of Nazi ideology without giving women genuine equality.

Education: making Nazi beliefs seem normal

The Nazis considered children easier to influence than adults. Controlling their education could create future generations who accepted Hitler’s authority and Nazi racial beliefs without questioning them. Schools were intended to prepare boys for military service and girls for motherhood, while making loyalty to the state more important than independent thought.

Bernhard Rust became Education Minister in 1934. Jewish teachers and teachers considered politically unreliable were dismissed. Teachers were expected to join the Nazi Teachers’ League, swear loyalty to Hitler and receive political training. Classroom routines, including the Nazi salute and displays of Hitler’s portrait, made the dictatorship part of everyday school life.

Control extended to what children learned. Textbooks were checked for conformity with Nazi ideology, and lessons were reshaped:

• History glorified Germany’s military past and blamed Jews and the ‘November Criminals’ for Germany’s defeat and humiliation after the First World War.
• Biology presented racist ideas about heredity and supposed racial superiority as science.
• Physical education developed fitness, discipline and endurance, particularly for future military service.
• Girls’ education emphasised domestic skills, motherhood and marriage to men considered racially suitable.

These changes connected ordinary subjects to political aims. A biology lesson could teach children whom to exclude, while a history lesson could encourage loyalty through a distorted account of the past. Jewish pupils faced increasing segregation and exclusion, making racial persecution an experience within schools as well as a subject taught in them.

Youth groups: controlling life beyond school

School control alone was not enough. The Nazis also wanted to shape young people’s friendships, leisure and loyalties. Independent youth organisations, including religious groups, competed with the state for influence, so they were restricted, banned or absorbed into Nazi organisations.

The Hitler Youth trained teenage boys through camping, sport, marching, military drills and survival skills. These activities encouraged teamwork and physical fitness, but also obedience and preparation for war. The League of German Girls, or BDM, combined exercise, community service and ideological instruction with domestic skills such as cooking and needlework. Girls were prepared for the regime’s ideal of healthy, loyal motherhood.

Legislation in 1936 brought German youth under the Nazi youth organisation, and participation became increasingly compulsory. The regime sought to monopolise young people’s time and reduce the competing influence of parents, churches and non-Nazi friendships.

The impact was mixed. Camping, comradeship and a sense of belonging attracted some young people. Others disliked the constant drills, restrictions and loss of personal freedom. Attendance therefore cannot be treated as proof of support: a young person might enjoy an activity, comply under pressure or resent the organisation. Nazi policies greatly increased control, but did not make every child a committed Nazi.

Churches: cooperation followed by interference

Churches mattered because Germany was predominantly Christian. They had their own leaders, schools, youth organisations and moral authority. The Nazis wanted loyalty to Hitler to come first, so independent religious influence presented a potential obstacle. Their approach combined agreements, attempts to take over church institutions and punishment of critics.

In 1933, Hitler signed a Concordat with the Vatican. The agreement promised protection for Catholic religious affairs in return for the Catholic Church staying out of politics. It helped reduce the possibility of organised Catholic opposition, but the regime subsequently violated its promises. Catholic schools were closed or taken over, youth groups were banned, and priests who criticised Nazi policies could be arrested and imprisoned.

The Nazis also tried to bring Protestant churches together under a Reich Church led by pro-Nazi clergy. This aimed to make religious leadership support the dictatorship. It did not secure complete obedience. The Confessing Church opposed Nazi interference in Protestant religious affairs. One of its prominent leaders, Martin Niemöller, was arrested and imprisoned.

Attempts to promote alternatives such as the German Faith Movement, which combined pagan ideas with Nazi racial beliefs, also sought to weaken Christianity. Nevertheless, the Nazis never fully replaced Christian faith. Many Germans continued to worship. The state restricted church independence more successfully than it eliminated personal religious belief, and opposition to interference did not necessarily mean opposition to every Nazi policy.

Racial ideology: exclusion built into the national community

Nazi racial policy rested on false claims that humanity consisted of unequal biological races. The Nazis described ‘Aryans’ as superior and treated Jewish ancestry as a supposed racial threat, rather than simply identifying Judaism as a religion. These were racist beliefs, not scientific facts.

This thinking connected several areas of social policy. Schools taught supposed racial differences; family policies encouraged births among people judged desirable; and laws prevented relationships the Nazis labelled racially unacceptable. The ideal of national unity depended on excluding those whom the regime refused to recognise as equal members of society.

Jews were central targets of Nazi antisemitism, but persecution extended to other groups. Roma and Sinti people were subjected to sterilisation, deportation and murder. Disabled people were forcibly sterilised, and the T4 killing programme murdered tens of thousands through methods including gas, injections and starvation. The Nazis misleadingly called these killings ‘euthanasia’.

Other people were persecuted for different reasons. Gay men faced persecution because of their sexuality; Jehovah’s Witnesses because their religious commitments conflicted with Nazi demands; and political opponents because they challenged the dictatorship. These victims should not all be treated as targets of an identical racial policy.

From discrimination to organised violence, 1933–1938

Persecution of Jews escalated through laws, economic exclusion and violence. In 1933, Jews were dismissed from civil service jobs, while increasing restrictions damaged their livelihoods and place in public life.

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 made racial exclusion part of the legal system. The Reich Citizenship Law deprived Jews of citizenship rights. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and people classified as German or related blood. These laws affected work, relationships and legal status, turning prejudice into enforceable state policy.

In November 1938, Kristallnacht, or the ‘Night of Broken Glass’, marked a major escalation. Nazi-organised attacks destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses. About 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The regime was no longer only restricting rights: it was openly organising widespread violence and mass imprisonment.

War and the implementation of the Final Solution

Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 brought many more Jews under Nazi control. Jews were forced into ghettos in cities including Warsaw and Łódź. Overcrowding, inadequate food, disease and violence caused many deaths. Ghettos isolated Jewish communities and made them easier for the occupying authorities to control and deport.

Wartime persecution developed into systematic mass murder. Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units, carried out mass shootings in Eastern Europe. Killing therefore did not take place only inside camps, and mass murder was already underway before the Wannsee Conference.

At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, Nazi officials coordinated the implementation of the Final Solution: the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews. The conference should not be understood as the moment when persecution or killing first began. It helped organise cooperation between government agencies for deportation and murder on a continental scale.

Jews were transported by train to killing centres including Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau. At extermination camps, victims were murdered in gas chambers. Auschwitz also operated as a concentration and forced-labour camp complex: many deportees were killed on arrival, while others were selected for labour under conditions that caused enormous numbers of deaths.

By 1945, approximately six million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust. The process had escalated from exclusion and loss of rights to imprisonment, deportation and genocide. War expanded the territory and populations under Nazi control, enabling the regime to carry out persecution and murder on a far greater scale.

Women

• Aim: more children classified as ‘Aryan’; women primarily as mothers and homemakers.
• Three Ks: Kinder, Küche, Kirche — children, kitchen, church.
• 1933 marriage loans: 1,000 marks; initially required withdrawal from employment; one quarter cancelled per child.
• Mother’s Cross: bronze 4–5 children, silver 6–7, gold 8+.
• Professional restrictions reduced independence; forced sterilisation prevented those judged ‘unfit’ from having children.
• Contradiction: rearmament and war increased the need for women workers, undermining the stay-at-home ideal.

Education and youth

• Aim: loyal future generations; boys prepared for war, girls for motherhood.
• Teachers controlled through dismissal, loyalty requirements and the Nazi Teachers’ League.
• History glorified Germany; biology promoted racial ideology; PE stressed fitness and discipline.
• Jewish teachers and pupils were increasingly excluded.
• Hitler Youth: military drills, camping, sport and obedience.
• BDM: fitness, domestic skills, community service and ideological training.
• 1936 legislation: brought youth under Nazi organisation; participation became increasingly compulsory.
• Impact: some enjoyed comradeship; others resented restrictions. Membership did not equal enthusiasm.

Churches and religion

• Aim: prevent religious institutions competing with loyalty to Hitler.
• 1933 Concordat: protection for Catholic religious affairs in return for political non-interference; later violated.
• Catholic schools and youth groups restricted; critical clergy imprisoned.
• Reich Church: attempt to control Protestant churches through pro-Nazi leadership.
• Confessing Church: opposed interference; Niemöller imprisoned.
• Limit: church independence weakened, but Christianity survived.

Racial persecution and mass murder

• Nazi claims of ‘Aryan’ superiority were racist beliefs, not scientific facts.
• 1933: Jews dismissed from civil service jobs.
• 1935 Nuremberg Laws: citizenship rights removed; marriage and sexual relations across Nazi racial categories prohibited.
• November 1938 Kristallnacht: synagogues and businesses attacked; about 30,000 Jewish men imprisoned.
• From 1939: occupied Poland; ghettos including Warsaw and Łódź; starvation and disease.
• Einsatzgruppen: mass shootings in Eastern Europe.
• 1942 Wannsee Conference: coordination of the Final Solution, not the beginning of killing.
• Deportations to killing centres including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor; gas chambers and lethal forced labour.
• By 1945: approximately six million Jews murdered.
• Other victims included Roma and Sinti people and disabled people; the T4 programme murdered disabled victims.