Question 9

How successful were the Nazis in achieving the aims of their social policies?

• Discuss what the Nazis were aiming to do in their social policies and then assess the impact of those policies.
• Social policies include their policies towards children, education, women, workers and arguably race and the Church.
• Discuss some or all of these. Higher grade candidates may discuss the overarching vision of the Nazis of a ‘volksgemeinschaft’, or people’s community, the desire to create a population indoctrinated with Nazi ideas that would lay the foundation for the thousand year Reich.
• Nazi policies may have had the greatest impact on the young and least on the old
• Discuss the impact of particular policies (such as the attempts to encourage women to have children or produce the necessary martial qualities in the young).
• Question the success of policies by reference, for example, to the growth of resistance in the young, for example.