Life in Authoritarian States
Women
Children
Culture
Economics
Germany
Italy
Battle of the Births
The three K's
Kuche (Kitchen)
Kirche (Church)
Kinder (Children)
"The mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world." - Goebbels
Marriage and Family
Law of Encouragement (newlywed couples a loan of 1,000 marks, and allowed them to keep 250 marks for each child they had)
Award was given if certain threshold of children was reached (Mother's cross)
Allowing women to volunteer to have a baby with a SS member (Aryan)
Employment
Law of reduction (gave women financial incentives to stay at home)
not conscripting women to help in the war effort until 1943
Germany
Italy
The Hitler Youth
The league of German Maidens
Aim was to prepare German girls for future motherhood
Girls wore a uniform of blue skirt, white blouse and and heavy marching shoes
Girls undertook physical exercise, but activities mainly centred on developing domestic skills such as sewing and cooking
They were not expected to wear make-up or trousers, dye their hair or smoke in public. They were discouraged from staying slim, because it was thought that thin women had trouble giving birth.
Its aim was to prepare German boys to be future soldiers
Boys wore military-style uniforms
Activities centred on physical exercise and rifle practice, as well as political indoctrination
Teaching and curriculum
History - lessons included a course on the rise of the Nazi Party.
Biology - lessons were used to teach Nazi racial theories of evolution in eugenics.
Race study and ideology - this became a new subject, dealing with the Aryan ideas and anti-Semitism.
Physical Education - German schoolchildren had five one-hour sports lessons every week.
Chemistry and Mathematics - were downgraded in importance.
Italy
Germany
Germany
Italy
Mussolini's cult of personality
Fear of Secret Police
Persecution of Minorities
Pure white Aryan
Employment
Living Standards
The battle for Land
The battle of the Lira
Big businesses
Rearmament
Public Works
National Service
building hospitals, schools, and public buildings such as the 1936 Olympic Stadium. The construction of the autobahns created work for 80,000 men.
Most responsible for the bulk of economic growth between 1933 and 1938. Rearmament started almost as soon as Hitler came to power but was announced publicly in 1935. This created millions of jobs for German workers.
all young men spent six months in the NLS and were then conscripted into the army. They were no longer counted in the unemployment figures.
Fronts
Big Business increased in profit by 50% because of the bias with them.
The labor front: This was a Nazi organization that replaced Trades Unions, which were banned. It set wages and nearly always followed the wishes of employers, rather than employees.
The Nazis’ racial philosophy taught that Aryans were the master race and that some races were ‘untermensch’ (sub-human).
Euthanasia
Sterilization
Concentration camps
In order to keep the Aryan race pure, many groups were prevented from reproducing. The mentally and physically disabled, including the deaf, were sterilised, as were people with hereditary diseases.
Between 1939 and 1941 over 100,000 physically and mentally disabled Germans were killed in secret, without the consent of their families. Victims were often gassed - a technique that was later used in the death camps of the Holocaust.
Homosexuals, prostitutes, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, alcoholics, pacifists, beggars, hooligans and criminals were often rounded up and sent away to camps. During World War Two 85 per cent of Germany's gypsies died in these camps.
Boys
Girls
Children were taught that Mussolini was the only man who could lead Italy back to greatness. Children were taught to call him “Il Duce” and boys were encouraged to attend after school youth movements. Three existed.
Girls were taught that giving birth was natural
Boys were taught that fighting for them was a natural extension of the normal male lifestyle. One of the more famous Fascist slogans was “War is to the male what childbearing is to the female.”
Boys took part in semi-military exercises while members of the Balilla. They marched and used imitation guns. Mussolini had once said “I am preparing the young to a fight for life, but also for the nation.”
girls were expected to be good mothers who would provide Italy with a population that a great power was expected to have
El duce
Manipulate the people and promoting propaganda
Those men in this unit were usually ex-soldiers and it was their job to bring into line those who opposed Mussolini. It was the Blackshirts who murdered the socialist Matteotti – an outspoken critic of Mussolini.
The death penalty was restored under Mussolini for serious offences. Yet up to 1940 only ten people had been sentenced to death. Only 4000 people were arrested by the OVRA and sent to prison.
The secret police was known as the OVRA and it was formed in 1927
More children
Tax reduction
The task of young girls was to get married and have children – lots of them.
Women were encouraged to have children and the more children brought better tax privileges – an idea Hitler was to build on. Large families got better tax benefits but bachelors were hit by high taxation.
Families were given a target of 5 children. Mothers who produced more were warmly received by the Fascist government. In 1933, Mussolini met 93 mothers at the Palazzo Venezia who had produced over 1300 children – an average of 13 each!
Mussolini wanted Italy to have a population of 60 million by 1950. In 1920, it stood at 37 million so his target was a tall order. However, the Battle for Births was a failure. Though the population grew as people were living longer due to better medical care, the birth rate actually went down between 1927 and 1934.
The battle of the Grain
Mussolini wanted to make Italy economically stronger and near enough self-sufficient. Hence his desire to grow grain.
Success
Failure
Italy did not have the expanse of industry to bolster her farming based economy.
Italian grain became expensive at home and the price of bread rose. This hit the poor the worst as bread was a major part of their diet. Rich farmers did well out of this as they were guaranteed a good price for what they produced.
Mussolini inflated the value of the lira making exports more expensive.
Success
Failure
Mussolini believed that a weak lira looked bad for Italy when he was trying to create the image of a super-power in Europe.
This created unemployment at home as many industries and firms could not sell their goods. This particular battle proved a failure primarily as the economic base of Italy was too small.
clear marshland and make it useable for farming and other purposes.
Success
Failure
These schemes were labour intensive and employed a lot of people so they served a purpose in this area. Many saw the Battle of Land as a success.