Lesson video

Hello everybody and welcome back to your history lesson at Oak National Academy with me, Miss Porter.

This is our third lesson of four of our enquiry, looking at how people were controlled in totalitarian states.

For today's lesson, please make sure you have a pen or a pencil to write with and some paper to write on, and just to make sure that you've made yourself away from any distractions so that you can focus on today's lesson.

Once you've done that, you'll be ready to get started and you can do so by writing today's title which is "Persecution in the Soviet Union and Germany." So to recap your knowledge from the previous two lessons, I'd like you to take a look at these statements to decide whether you think they are true or false based on your knowledge so far.

So, first statement is Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953.

The second, Hitler was the leader of the Communist Party in Germany.

The third, in a police state, the government uses the secret police to control what people say and do.

And the last statement is Hitler introduced collectivization to force peasants onto large, state-owned farms in the 1930s.

Now, I'd like you to pause the video here and write down for each statement whether you think is true or false.

To challenge yourself, I'd like you to see whether you can correct the statement or statements you think are false.

So pause the video here and resume when you're ready to check your answers.

Okay, welcome back everybody and well done.

I will now go through the answers with you.

So, the first statement is true.

Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953.

The second statement is false.

Hitler was not the leader of the Communist Party in Germany.

He was, in fact, the leader of the Nazi Party in Germany.

Statement three is true, in a police state, the government uses the secret police to control what people say and do.

And lastly, statement four is false.

Hitler did not introduce collectivization.

Stalin introduced collectivization to force peasants onto large state-owned farms in the 1930s.

Great work if you've got some or even all of those correct.

If needed, you can now pause the video here to make any changes to your work.

Today's lesson from part of our enquiry into how people were controlled in totalitarian states.

Previously, with the development of a police state and economic policies to see how these have provided Hitler and Stalin with greater control over their countries and people's lives during the 1930s.

To start today's lesson, we're going to hear about individual living in Germany during this period.

The child in this image is Ruth Winkelmann.

She was born in the late 1920s in Germany and was only around five years old when Hitler came to power.

Ruth's father Jewish and her mother was Protestant, but she converted to Judaism to marry Ruth's father.

Growing up, Ruth attended a school for Jewish children, and was unable to attend a school with non-Jewish children.

Her school was not paid for by the state because the Nazis did not want to provide Jewish children with an education.

Growing up, Ruth may have seen shops graffitied and a family being treated differently to non-Jewish families.

However, one day in November, 1938, when Ruth was just 10 years old, she saw that things got worse.

She saw Jewish places of worship and shops being attacked.

On her way to school, she saw the word G painted on shop doorways and on her school doors and members of the police beating a man and painting the star of David on his coat.

Ruth saw shop window smashed and a synagogue on fire, when Ruth arrived at school, she learned this violence had taken place against Jewish people, terrified she was told to go home.

The destruction Ruth witnessed was only a very small percentage of the destruction that took place over that day in November, 1938.

Several hundred places of worship were attacked along with over 7,000 businesses and almost 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration or labour camps.

This event is known as a November Pogrom or Kristallnacht.

Ruth story provides you have one example of an individual who was persecuted in Germany under the Nazis.

However, Ruth had a normal childhood.

She had grown up in Berlin with her family.

Her grandparents had owned a scrap metal business that her father had worked for.

However, after Hitler became the leader of Germany in 1933, things began to change.

Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party a party that hated Jewish people.

From this point on the Nazi Party, persecuted people including Ruth's family, simply because they were Jewish.

So today we going to look how Hitler and Stalin use persecution such as that, which I just mentioned to gain great to control.

Persecution means to pursue someone unfairly or cruelly because of their race, religion, nationality political opinion, or beliefs.

Both Hitler and Stalin persecuted multiple groups during their dictatorships.

We are going to learn more about the persecution of two of these groups of people in today's lesson.

But briefly check your understanding of the lesson so far.

I'd like you to answer the following question, which of the following best defines persecution? So pause the video here select your answer and resume when you're ready.

Okay, welcome back everybody.

The answer is option D, to pursue someone unfairly or cruelly because of their race, religion, nationality political opinion, or beliefs.

Well done if you got that correct.

If you felt uncertain about the answer I'd recommend now pausing the video to copy the definition down onto your paper before continuing as it would be referring to persecution for about today's lesson.

The question we're going to looking at throughout today's video is how was persecution used to gain greater control? Meaning how did the persecution of minority groups in the Soviet union and Germany allow Stalin and Hitler to gain greater control over people's lives.

We'll be breaking this down into two key areas.

So firstly, how excluding some groups and society allows the leader to have greater control.

And secondly, how including people from outside of those persecuted groups can give their leader greater control over people's lives.

Firstly, we are going to focus on persecution in Nazi Germany and how it was used by Hitler and the Nazi Party to gain greater control.

Between 1933 and 1945, Hitler and the Nazis persecuted certain minority groups.

The minority group that the Nazi singled out for particular persecution were Jewish people.

Hostility or prejudice towards Jewish people is referred to as antisemitism.

Now, Hitler was highly antisemitic and had firm views on race.

This informed the Nazi racial philosophy that certain groups were in ferrets what Hitler referred to as the alien race.

From 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor, there was a gradual increase in levels of exclusion towards Jewish people because of these antisemitic views.

This diagram here show you the increased levels of exclusion of the Jewish people in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s as a result of this racist policy.

After coming to power in 1933, Nazi policy focused on the legal discrimination of Jewish people aim to excluding them from society and encouraging them to leave Germany.

Jewish businesses were boycotted and people such as Jewish civil servants and teachers were dismissed from their jobs.

In 1935 the Nuremberg laws were passed which stated that Jewish people when longer German citizens, and they therefore lost their civil rights.

They were not protected by the police and the legal system.

And they were forbidden from marrying Germans.

There was a turning point in November, 1938 when an organised attack on Jewish homes, property and places of worship took place, known as the November Pogrom or Kristallnacht.

This was the event, Ruth Winkelmann, the girl whose story we had at start of the lesson witnessed at just 10 years old.

Whereas previous state, the Jewish people had been excluded through legal discrimination, this event shared that the state was willing to use violence against Jewish people.

From this point onwards the levels of exclusion continue to increase as Jewish people were evicted from their homes and forced to wear a yellow star of David.

Large-scale deportations took place as thousands of Jewish people were forced to enter concentration camps.

During the second World War, and particularly from 1941 onwards, the Nazis attempted to destroy the European population of Jewish people and estimate that 6 million Jewish people died at the hands of the Nazis in concentration and death camps by the end of the war in 1945.

These horrific methods of exclusion aimed at Jewish people provided Hitler and Nazi Party with greater control over people's lives.

These racist and violent policies caused many people in Germany to live in fear of what the regime was capable of and what could happen to them, should they oppose Hitler's policies.

This severely reduced the number of people willing to oppose the Nazis and thus gave them greater control.

Alongside such exclusionary policies Hitler and the Nazi Party also ensured people outside of those persecuted groups were included in society to unite them as a method of control.

For example, the Nazis used propaganda to make people feel included in their mission of building a stronger nation.

Benefits such as cause leisure activities and holidays, such as those pictured in the photo above.

What offer through to Strength Through Joy programme to make workers grateful to the state.

It also ensured the state control what workers were doing in their free time.

This also made people feel included and that they were working with the Nazis to make Germany stronger therefore encouraging people to support Hitler and the regime.

The benefits for those people who are included in society including jobs, houses, leisure activities and cars let people to feel that they belonged.

That's in sharing that loyalty and obedience to the state giving him greater control over people's lives.

With Nazi and Hitler on the left used persecution to gain greater control over Germany.

We're now going to look at how persecution was used as a method of control by Stalin in the Soviet Union.

Stalin persecuted multiple groups of people throughout his leadership of the Soviet Union.

One group of people that he singled out for persecution were those he referred to as class enemies.

And these were people who opposed Stalin's policies.

Now class refers to a collection of people who share a common characteristic such as their rank or economic status.

Therefore class enemies had traditionally been people who opposed the communist revolution in Russia, including more wealthy, landowning individuals.

However, Stalin adapted this phrase to affect anybody who opposed him or his policies, therefore trying to justify his actions against them.

By excluding this group, he gained great to control.

In this lesson we're going to fix on a particular class enemy identified by Stalin during the process of collectivization.

So we have studied collectivization previously in our economic policies lesson.

Collectivization was the process of forcing peasants in the Soviet Union to move onto large state-owned farms. Stalin ordered for any wealthier peasants who refused to move on to collective farms to be arrested.

He referred to these wealthier peasants as kulaks.

In 1929 through a policy known as dekulakisation, Stalin declared that the Kulak should be removed as a class of people.

As a result thousands of peasants were arrested and sent to labour camps or killed.

In reality, Stalin had labelled anybody who refused to follow his policy of collectivization as a Kulak or class enemy meaning anybody was at risk of being targeted by Stalin and his police force.

One example of somebody who was excluded and labelled as a class enemy was Lev Kopelev.

Lev was initially a supporter of Stalin and the Communist Party and was an activist who was sent to the countryside during collectivization drive in the 1930s.

Although had supported the forced removal of peasants onto collective farms and the removal of the kulaks, he laid to recounted the horrors he witnessed, including the arrests, violent treatment and deportations of peasants.

Lev Kopelev fought for the Red Army during the Second World War, but criticise the Soviet treatment of German citizens during this time and spoke out against the state.

For this he was labelled as a class enemy and arrested in 1945.

He was sentenced to 10 years in the gulag the Soviet labour camps, where prisoners were forced to work in extremely harsh conditions.

Lev Kopelev was seen as a class enemy for showing compassion towards the German people and was persecuted for his actions.

So this method of persecution of excluding people from society provided Stalin with much greater control over people's lives in the countryside.

By labelling those who opposed his policy of collectivization as a Kulak or class enemy, Stalin could have them arrested or sent to a labour camp.

This in turn created fear amongst the population as the population too could be labelled as a class enemy if they did not follow Stalin's orders.

As a result of this bit most people did not oppose Stalin's policies, therefore giving Stalin greater control.

As Hitler and the Nazis, Stalin and the Communist Party also ensured that people outside of those persecuted groups felt united and were included in society.

One example of this can be seen in this painting.

And now I'd like you to look at a painting and think about what you can see, what might this painting be off and how do the people in this painting look? Pause the video here and write down what you can see in this image.

Okay, welcome back everybody.

So this is an artist's impression of a national holiday being celebrated at a collective farm in 1937, with an abundance of food and happy group of people of all ages celebrating.

You can see a banner in the background of a portrait of Stalin attached.

Well done if you wrote down any of those things.

Now this image was actually majoring a famine in Russia when thousands of people were starving and collectivization was still being enforced.

However, the artist had been instructed by the state to paint an optimistic view of the collective farm to present the process of collectivization in a positive light and to encourage people to see that life was better under Stalin's rule.

The banner reads life has become better, life has become happier.

Images such as these were used to unite people.

And to make those people living on collective farms feel included and that they were working towards a better future for the Soviet Union.

Therefore, we can see that Stalin also use the method of uniting people against class enemies.

He liked to portray the benefits of following his policies and paintings such as this to encourage people to show loyalty and obedience to Stalin.

These methods into gave him much greater control.

In a minute also you'll be able to complete today's reading to answer the following comprehension questions.

So firstly, I'd like you to name one group who were persecuted by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

Second question, why about the kulaks viewed as a class enemy by Stalin in the 1930s? The third ask you to describe one reason why totalitarian leaders use persecution.

So why did Hitler and Stalin use this as a tool? Describe one method you used by Stalin to persecute the kulaks in the Soviet Union.

And your fifth question, your challenge question today is why did ordinary citizens denounce their neighbours in the Soviet Union? So I'd like you to now pause the video, complete the reading and answer the questions at the end.

There was a glossary to provide you with some definitions of the key words, if you need it.

but once you're finished, you can return to the video to check for your answers.

Okay, welcome back everybody and great work for completing those questions.

So now we'll go through these answers together once I do say, just remember that my answers may be slightly different to yours which is absolutely fine.

You may want to pause the video after each question to take for your work or to make any changes.

So the first question asks you to name one group who were persecuted by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

The acceptable answer could be Jewish people.

The good answer we'll try and put this into a full sentence such as the Jewish people were persecuted by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

So using the word in the question to help create that full sentence.

The second question asks why the kulaks viewed as a class enemy by Stalin in the 1930s? So you could have as your acceptable answer, they refuse to follow his policies or they didn't do what he had told them to.

A good answer is going to add more detail.

So the kulaks with you does class enemies by Stalin in the 1930s, because some of them were wealthier peasants who refused to give up the land and move to the collective farms. Therefore the kulaks did not obey Stalin's order, in reality, anybody in the countryside who refuse to follow Stalin's policies could be branded as a class enemy.

The third question asked you to describe one reason why totalitarian leaders used persecution.

So you could have had as an acceptable answer to create fear across the whole population or to make people afraid, good answer, I've got a couple here.

So you could have had one reason why totalitarian leaders used persecution was to increase that control by creating fear across the whole population.

So remember when looking at persecution as a method of control in today's lesson, or you could have had one reason why totalitarian leaders used persecution was to increase their control by uniting people who were not part of the persecuted group.

So we can see how you could reference excluding people to gain control or including other people outside of those groups to gain control.

Your fourth question asks you to describe one method used by Stalin to persecute the kulaks in the Soviet Union.

So you could have had that they were arrested and sent to the gulag.

A good answer is going to get this into full sentence such as one method used by Stalin to persecute the kulaks was to arrest them and send them to the gulag for refusing to cooperate with collectivization.

This was often carried out by the police or party activists who was sent to the countryside to enforce Stalin's orders.

You can see we're using some of these key terms as well, collectivization and gulag in this answer as well.

And your challenge question was why did ordinary citizens denounce their neighbours in the Soviet Union? So you could have had, as Stalin united the peasants against the kulaks.

A good answer here is again going into full sentences such as one reason why some ordinary citizens denounce the neighbours in the Soviet Union was because Stalin had united them against the kulaks.

This meant that they would inform against the neighbours to the police or party officials.

Some citizens may have denounced the neighbours to show loyalty to Stalin as they feared being arrested themselves.

So you may want to spend a few minutes now adding some extra details to your answers or taking through your work.

If so pause the video here and again very well done for completing those questions.

Your next task today is to read part of the speech made by Stalin and answer some questions based on your reading and your own knowledge.

So firstly, I'd like you to look at this source which is an extract from a speech made by Stalin to students in December, 1930, within which he's stating that the kulaks must be removed.

There were some more difficult words in here.

So in brackets, I've given some alternative words to help you understand those if needed.

I'd like you to read through the source and answer the questions on the next slide.

So you can pause the video here to have a read through and then I'll talk you through the questions I'd like you to answer.

Okay, so the questions I'm looking for you to answer are, firstly using the source quote a short extract which tells us who Stalin wanted to remove as a class in the countryside.

So taking a short part of that source and writing it down to show who Stalin wanted to remove as a class in the countrysides to a short quotation.

Secondly using your own knowledge, so the knowledge you've gained from today's lesson why does Stalin create a class enemy in the countryside? And your final question is using your own knowledge and the source and the speech on the previous slide.

Describe how Stalin treated his class enemies.

And as a reminder of disclosure class enemy written down there is a term used to describe people who oppose Stalin and his policies.

So you can now pause the video and complete today's questions.

Okay, welcome back everybody and very well done for completing the source activity and those tasks.

You've now completed today's lesson.

Thank you so much for your hard work.

Next lesson will be a final lesson of this enquiry and you'll be looking at something called the cult of personality.

Please now complete the end of lesson quiz to check your understanding from today's lesson.

And I look forward to teaching you in your next lesson C.