In contrast to Gellately, John Delaney purports certain groups of German civilians were less inclined to follow racial policies, in his article, “Sowing Volksgemeinschaft in Bavaria’s Stony Village Soil: Catholic Peasant Rejection of Anti-Polish Racial Policy, 1939-1945.” Examination of the two articles displays that geographical location, wealth, and one’s pre-existing ideologies played a ample role in how individual citizens experienced ordinary life during Nazi Germany. Geography played a crucial role in how one experienced life during Nazi ruler ship. Agrarian parts of Germany would have been harder to patrol and would have a higher degree of privacy. When labor shortages encouraged Nazis to ship Polish laborers to rural areas, such as Bavaria, the agrarian type people could relate more to the Polish worker. Before the war, many Polish citizens had lived in small villages or rural landscapes and were used to the agrarian lifestyle.
Overall I think that the building of the Berlin Wall could actually have had a more positive effect. On the one hand it may be argued that the results of building the wall were mainly negative as it led to a great deal of tension between the two sides. The wall separated many families and friends and this persuaded Willy Brandt to do a demonstration in response. Due to the uncertainty of whether they could be anything to follow military forces were strengthened in the FRG. In 1961 USA sent an additional 40,000 soldiers to Europe, the majority to West Berlin.
The years leading up to the war the German people were dreading it, there were protests in Berlin in July 1914. The proletariat knew that they would have to bear the brunt of the war. However once the war broke out, the government played on the German’s people nationalism as he presented the war as defensive one against Slav aggression. The Enabling Act known as Burgfrieden was passed. The Act promoted national unity.
This was a ‘catch-all’ name conforming to the aim of the party: to have as many supporters as possible and appeal to the Pan Germans and Working class. Hitler therefore redefined socialism by placing the word 'National' before it. He claimed he was only in favor of equality for those who had "German blood". Jews and other "aliens" would lose their rights of citizenship, and immigration of non-Germans should be brought to an end. After the failure of the Knapp Putsch the Freikorps were disbanded and Hitler got a few key members to act as an army for the party, giving them the name of the S.A, and instructing them to disrupt the meetings of political opponents and protect Hitler from revenge attacks.
Why was opposition to the Nazi’s so weak? In Germany, it was obvious that the Nazi party could not please everyone and they faced opposition to the their policies. However, this opposition was very weak for a range of reasons; including the current state of the economy, the Nazi propaganda methods and their brutal terror campaigns. Following the Weimar government, a large majority of the German people wanted one strong leader to bring Germany back to its former glory – and Hitler offered this. One predominant reason many backed Hitler and the Nazi’s was on the basis that they believed they could restore Germany to its former strong and internationally-dominant state.
Some historians say it was the consent and willingness of the German people that took him to Fuhrer but there are other strong arguments such as the Enabling Law, the demolishment of other political parties and trade unions, his agreements with the church, media and industrialists and the Night of the Long Knives. One of the main reasons Hitler was able to come into power was the consent from the German people. Without their willingness to believe and back Hitler, he wouldn’t have been able to gain any real momentum. On the 5th of March in 1933 the Nazis increased their vote from 33.1% to 43.9%, securing them 288 seats. One of the ways Hitler got the backing of the German people was by telling them what they wanted to hear.
Eugenics was the human equivalent of selective animal and plant breeding. Eugenics was first embraced as a scientific means of halting the stream of impoverished immigrants who came to the United States between 1880 and 1914. These new immigrants arrived principally from eastern and southern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia. They were ethnically and culturally different from earlier waves of foreigners, who had migrated mostly from the countries of western Europe such as Germany, England, Ireland, and Scotland. Many Americans thought these new immigrants were “defective”—less intelligent, more radical, and willing to work for low wages (Figure E4.2).
The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign that called for active opposition to Adolf Hitler. Most Germans took the position, that once war broke out, it was the duty of the citizen to support the government. But Hans and Sophie Scholl, the founders of The White Rose, believed
Furthermore, it reveals another reason for the failures of emigration rather than the refusal to Jews to leave Germany. The inability for Jews to emigrate successfully to foreign countries due to the scale and sheer number of evacuees was also another reason. After the results of the Evian Conference in August 1938, the Virgin Islands of America accepted 1000 Jews; the only country to do so out of the 32 attending. The 1000 Jews leaving Germany were prominently young; those who would benefit from starting again elsewhere. Many older generations remained due to financial, health or patriotic reasons such as fighting in the WW1 or believing that Nazism had reached its peak with the 1935 Nuremburg Laws
One of the restrictions put on the Germans was the amount of Soldiers that they could have. No more than 100,000 troops were to be in the army which left many soldiers frustrated. Most of these soldiers ended up joining nationalist’s party and extremists parties from both sides. With the extremists gathering members and supporters from ex-soldiers to Germans they were becoming a threat to the Weimar. The reason why so many people joined these extremists was that in the Treaty of Versailles the Germans would have to accept ‘the War guilt clause’.