Did most Germans benefit from Nazi rule?

Debate

These sources should be used as evidence in support of your argument.

Source A

Why children are important

When an opponent declares, `I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, `Your child belongs to us already.. . . What are you ? You will pass on.   Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp.   In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.

Hitler, speaking in the 1920s.

Source B

Girls from the Jungmadel BdN cheer Hitler.   Girls were always given the front rows in Nazis parades and rallies because they became hysterical and added to the atmosphere of fervour and adulation.

Source C Children were conditioned (brainwashed) into Nazi beliefs from an early age.   Here, a story book for small children stereotypes a Jew as a degenerate pervert.   Anti-Semitism came easily and naturally to children who had been brought up looking at this kind of picture.

Source D

Indoctrination at School

When Klauss got back from school at five o’clock he bullied me into helping him with his homework ...   Here is a maths problem picked out at random: ‘A plane on take off carries 12 bombs, each weighing ten kilos.   The aircraft makes for Warsaw, the centre of international Jewry.   It bombs the town.   On take off with all bombs on board and a fuel tank containing 1500 kilos of fuel the aircraft weighed 8 tonnes.   When it returned from the crusade, there were still 230 kilos of fuel left.   What is the weight of the aircraft when empty?’

A German father describes a question his child had to answer at school.   It is clearly designed to inculcate the Nazi principles of militarism and anti-Semitism as the child works, ostensibly, on his Maths.

Source E Unfit to be parents Children have been deliberately taken away from parents who refused to say they believed in Nazism...   Refusing to let your child join the Hitler Youth is regarded as an adequate reason to take the children away from their parents. Written by a schoolteacher in 1938. Source F A girl's job... `Tell me, Fraulein Liselotte, if I may call you Liselotte, you seem so charming, and kind.   What happens here? I mean, in general.   Naturally, I'm not just talking about the genetic part of it, but . . .' `But you're dying to know how we all go to bed together according to Nazi rules?' she broke in, smiling again. I was rather embarrassed.   I must have blushed. 'That isn't quite what I meant.   I want to know the routine here.' She became more serious. `All I can tell you is that we live in dormitories of six or twelve beds.  The girls who are ... chosen, are moved to another section, which deals with the legal details of the partnership, and of course any births which result from it.   Because we must remember that that's what we're all here for,' she ended quietly, looking away. 'A strange thing for your country to ask you to do, don't you agree?' German girls, meanwhile, had to grow up and become the good mothers of strong, violent Aryan boys.   Suitable Aryan girls were taken away to special camps, where they were married to perfect Aryan boys in a bid to improve the genetic stock.   This amazing passage is from P Neumann, Other Men's Graves (1958). Source G (1) Strength Through Joy statement (2nd August, 1938) As of August 1 (1938), the great savings programme for the People's Car 'Strength-Through-Joy' will begin. I herewith proclaim the conditions under which every working person, can acquire an automobile. (1) Each German, without distinction of class, profession, or property can become the purchaser of a Volkswagen. (2) The minimum weekly payment, insurance included, will be 5 marks. Regular payment of this amount will guarantee, after a period which is yet to be determined, the acquisition of a Volkswagen. The precise period will be determined upon the beginning of production. (3) Application for the Volkswagen savings programme can be made at any office of the German Labour Front and of 'Strength Through Joy', where further details can also be obtained. Factories and shops can submit collective orders. A Volkswagen for every German - let that be our aim. That is what we want to achieve. Will all of you help in that; it shall be our way of saying 'thank you' to the Fuhrer.

Source H

We all felt the same, the same happiness and joy.   Things were looking up.    I believe no statesman has ever been as loved as Adolf Hitler was then.    It’s all come flooding back to me.   Those were happy times.

A German farmer, Luise Essig, remembering life in Nazi Germany.

Source I

The perfect Nazi family

Source J

A Nazi race-hatred poster:

'The Jew - the inciter of war,

the prolonger of war'.