Nazis Mind Control

‘The Nazis tried to control every aspect of life -including the mind’ Do you agree?
In this essay I am going to be discussing my opinion on the statement, ‘The Nazis tried to control every aspect of life including the mind’. I am going to include aspects such as: Family life, jobs, education, leisure time, and socialisation, by countering factors such as mind control and behaviour control.
I am going to start with ways in which I agree that they were trying to control the mind. They used 3 main areas of this: Propaganda, censorship and terror/re-education.
Propaganda is the use of biased information that is publically displayed that gives out certain perspective of a party. Nazis used propaganda in forms of: posters, speeches, rallies and newspaper adverts/interviews. This shows they were trying to get into people’s minds because the posters were placed everywhere and had really strong messages aimed to each main group in society. They would get into people’s minds because you couldn’t escape them. A strength of propaganda is that it is repetitive and it may get people that can’t read due to the pictures.
Censorship is the way in which the Nazis covered up the information they didn’t want people to hear. They closed down all opposing newspapers and radio stations so they could not spread negative
stories related to the Nazis. This would get into people’s heads, especially the younger generations, as it is subtle and as they hear no different they won’t expect any different. A strength of censorship is that it is easy to do and very effective. However, a weakness is that some people may question gaps in the information and they can’t cover everything.
Terror is the way that Nazis controlled the strong willed people who would not conform to any other type of control. An example of this is the night of the long knives. This was when the SS were sent to kill members of the Nazi party as they didn’t agree with the Nazi views. A strength of this is that it’s very direct to the individual and that people may behave just to avoid it. A weakness is it may not work on some people so you may end up killing them and also the people affected may start a rebellion.
Now I will discuss how they attempted to control aspects of life.
Firstly, I will discuss ways in which they controlled socialisation between neighbours, friends and strangers. They Nazis terrified many Germans through the use of the Gestapo (secret police). The Gestapo were sent out to take anyone of opposing views to the Nazis to a concentration camp for re-education. The Germans did not want to be taken to these camps so this was effective. People would not say a bad word about the leaders in fear of being taken away. This helped the Nazis control aspects of socialisation because people would be more wary about what they say and have no trust towards their neighbours. Many people believed it was a good thing to turn their neighbours and family in so you could not trust anybody.
Also they attempted to control education.
They did this by burning all 'banned books', such as Jewish bibles and books containing opposing views and events to Nazi attitudes. They also learnt what a typical Jew looked like and what a typical Aryan looked like so they could easily identify 'the enemy'.This meant that the younger generations will only know what the Nazis want them to, this is also a form of censorship. This shows they are trying to control aspects of life because they are 'breeding' the younger generations into agreeing with the Nazis, this may mean they are hoping to breed it into the younger ones and eventually outgrowing the older generations
views.
A further point that they were trying to control aspects of life is the ways in which they manipulated jobs and work-life. The Nazis had a very strong negative views towards Jews and communists and so boy-cotted their shops and businesses as a subtle form of punishment. This meant that most of the shops are German run and will be easy controlled by the Nazis and also show that the Jews are bad as they have no shops or businesses. This will help them control the business/jobs aspect of life as they are forcing Jews to be poor if they lose their companies. Also employers will be less likely to hire them as there is a bad light on them.
My final point that they are trying to control aspects of life is that they effected the way in which people spent their free time. Hitler created 2 youth groups in which most 10 year old+ joined; the Hitler youth and the DBM. These were groups where children were trained in areas they may need in future life; boys in army skills and girls in home economics. Jews and communists weren’t allowed to join these groups and so were easily identified. This meant that they would be very outcast and in turn bullied or picked on for being different by peers. This would teach the young ones to discriminate against the Jews because they're different.

Now I am going to move on to ways that I disagree with the statement ‘The Nazis tried to control every aspect of life -including the mind’.
One way in which I disagree is that they were maybe trying to use only force and that the mind control came as a bi-product of this. This would mean that they were not as forceful as people think.
Another way that I disagree is that they would not have to control every mind in Germany to make an impact. They would simply have to convince a group of people and for them to be in higher powers so they could stop people objecting or maybe even convince them also.
My final disagreement to the statement is that the people of Germany still had some freedom. The use of the word 'every', in this case, I think, is too powerful. They didn’t control all the little things in life like: what you wear; what you buy; what you eat; etc. this means that they didn’t control every aspect, just the main ones.

In conclusion, I mainly agree with the statement, however I don’t think they were controlling every aspect, just most. And I also think they were trying to use force and persuasion, rather than mind control.