IB History Hitler: How Did Authoritarian Rule Affect People's Lives? Key Definitions

The forced transfer of Jewish-owned businesses and property to non-Jewish German ownership, typically at unfairly low prices, escalating sharply after the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom.

An economic programme launched under Hermann Göring's direction in 1936 to prepare Germany's economy for war and achieve self-sufficiency, or autarky, in key materials.

The Nazi secret police (Geheime Staatspolizei), responsible for investigating and suppressing political opposition. It operated outside the legal system and used surveillance, informants, torture, and arbitrary detention.

The Nazi Party's youth organization for boys aged 14-18. Boys aged 10-13 joined the Deutsches Jungvolk first. Membership was made compulsory in 1936 and near-universal by 1939. The organization combined physical training, ideological indoctrination, military preparation, and group activities. By 1939, it had around 8 million members. The Hitler Youth emphasized loyalty to Hitler above family or church, racial ideology, discipline, and preparation for military service. Its counterpart for girls was the League of German Girls (BDM).

The Nazi ideological slogan meaning children, kitchen, church, summarising the regime's prescribed domestic role for women.

The "Night of Broken Glass" (9-10 November 1938), a state-coordinated pogrom against Jews across Germany and Austria. Synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses destroyed, and around 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps.

The "Night of Broken Glass," a nationwide pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938. Organized by the Nazi regime following the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a Jewish teenager, the pogrom destroyed around 7,500 Jewish businesses, burned over 1,400 synagogues, killed at least 91 Jews directly, and resulted in the arrest and deportation of around 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. The name refers to the broken glass from shop windows that covered the streets. Kristallnacht marked an escalation from legal persecution to open physical violence against Jews and is often cited as a key step toward the Holocaust.

The Nazi organisation whose membership became essential for anyone wishing to work as a teacher in Germany, used to enforce ideological conformity in education.

A pronatalist policy offering low-interest loans to newly married German couples, with the amount owed reduced for each child born, introduced under the June 1933 Law for the Reduction of Unemployment.

Two laws passed at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in September 1935 that institutionalized racial antisemitism in German law. The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews of German citizenship, making them "subjects of the state" without political rights. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. A supplementary decree defined who counted as Jewish: anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was fully Jewish; those with one or two Jewish grandparents were classified as "Mischlinge" (mixed-race). The laws affected around 500,000 German Jews directly and created a legal framework for systematic persecution.