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Employment, living standards and persecution

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The Nazis claimed to have ended unemployment and improved workers' lives. At the same time they persecuted anyone outside their idea of the 'national community'.

Reducing unemployment

Unemployment fell from about 6 million in 1933 to very low levels by 1939.
Reich Labour Service (RAD): compulsory work for young men.
Public works such as the autobahns (motorways).
Rearmament: conscription (1935) and arms factories.
Invisible unemployment: Jewish people and many women were not counted, so the figures looked better.

Living standards

Trade unions were banned and replaced by the Labour Front (DAF).
Strength Through Joy (KdF): cheap holidays, concerts and the Volkswagen savings scheme (no cars were delivered before the war).
Beauty of Labour: improved workplaces, such as canteens.
But working hours got longer, and workers lost the right to strike.

Persecution of minorities

Nazi racial beliefs said Aryans were superior.
Slavs, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and people with disabilities were persecuted; many disabled people were sterilised by law (1933).
Jewish people: boycott of Jewish shops (April 1933); Nuremberg Laws (1935) took away citizenship and banned marriage with non-Jews; Kristallnacht (9 to 10 November 1938): synagogues, homes and shops attacked, about 30,000 Jewish men sent to camps.
Worked example

Why were unemployment figures in Nazi Germany misleading?

  1. Jewish people forced out of work were not counted.
  2. Many women who left work were not counted.
  3. So 'invisible unemployment' made the figures look better than reality.

Answer: Some groups were left out of the figures, hiding real unemployment.

Key idea

Unemployment fell through the RAD, autobahns, rearmament and invisible unemployment. The Labour Front replaced unions; KdF and Beauty of Labour offered benefits, but hours rose. Minorities were persecuted: boycott (1933), Nuremberg Laws (1935), Kristallnacht (1938).

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