EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE IN NAZI GERMANY
Q: When we talk about Nazi Germany, what timeframe does this cover and what events bookend that period?
A: Well, it officially begins on 30 January 1933, which is when the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (the Nazi Party), Adolf Hitler, was appointed chancellor of the Weimar Republic. That’s to say, the head of the government under its president, Field Marshal von Hindenburg. There’s then about six months where the Nazis turn their position as head of a coalition government with conservatives – in which they [the Nazis] were a minority – into a one-party state and dictatorship with Hitler as its head. At the other end, I would say Nazi Germany can be seen to end either on 30 April 1945, when Hitler, faced with Soviet troops entering Berlin, took his own life in his bunker underneath the Reich Chancellery, or on 8 May 1945, when what was left of the German army surrendered to the Allies.
Q: What was life like for children in Nazi Germany?
Hitler said that the aim was to bring up children as physically fit and healthy – if they were so-called Aryans, that is, not if they were of mixed origin, with Slavic blood, or least of
