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WalesHistoryQuick questions
Depth Studies (Unit 4)
Quick questions on Nazi Germany 1933 to 1945: dictatorship, police state, persecution and war - WJEC A-Level History
6short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is consolidating the dictatorship, 1933 to 1934?Show answer
This process, Gleichschaltung ("coordination"), gave dictatorship a veneer of legality. Other parties and trade unions were banned by mid-1933 (the law against the formation of new parties, 14 July 1933), the states were brought under central control, and the one-party state was complete. The Night of the Long Knives both removed the radical SA and secured the army's backing for Hitler.
What is the police state?Show answer
The SS under Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo (secret state police), the SD and the concentration-camp system (beginning with Dachau in March 1933) enforced terror and surveillance. Block wardens and informers extended control into daily life, and the courts were Nazified, including the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) from 1934. Recent research stresses that the Gestapo was relatively small and depended heavily on denunciations from ordinary Germans, suggesting a partly self-policing society rather than an all-seeing terror machine.
What is model paragraph?Show answer
The regime's grip on German society rested on both terror and consent, but the balance shifted with circumstance. Fear was real: Dachau opened within weeks of the seizure of power, the Gestapo could send a person to a camp without trial, and the People's Court delivered savage sentences. Yet the historian Robert Gellately has shown that the Gestapo was thinly staffed and relied on a stream of denunciations from neighbours and colleagues, which implies a population that largely policed itself and often approved.
What is q1?Show answer
What two measures let Hitler rule by decree in 1933? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
What were the Nuremberg Laws? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
How far did the Nazi regime rely on terror rather than consent before 1939? [20 marks]
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