German National Study

Key Terms and Concepts

Vocabulary Taboo Game

Purpose
This activity aims to improve your knowledge of the key
vocabulary required in this national study that you will need to
include in your essays and assessments.
You will both test both your partners and your own knowledge in
this activity

Instructions
You will work in pairs: you will sit facing each other - one person
will face the board, the other person will face away from the
board.
Person 1 (person facing the board) will be presented with a key
term on the board. They will provide a definition or key words
(clues) related to the key term for person 2.
Person 2 (person facing away from the board) will have to guess
what the term is based off the clues provided from person 1.

Instructions
You will have to guess 15 key terms, then you will swap positions
and repeat using a different 15 terms.
You may use the official definition provided on the screen, but you
may also develop your own clues if you partner needs extra
assistance in their guessing.
You will have 10-20 seconds to provide clues and guess each
term

Anti-Semitism
Anti-Jewish attitudes, policies or practices. It refers to hostility or hatred towards
peoples of Semitic origins, but is used to mean anti-Jewish.

Einsatzgruppen
Special units of theSchutzstaffelwhose job it was to go into occupied territories
and suppress opposition

Treaty of Versailles
The peace treaty signed by Germany to end the First World War

Reichstag
The elected lower house of the German parliament; the Chancellor came from
this house

Lebensraum
A German term meaningliving space. InMein KampfHitler wrote about Germany
needing to acquire more territory in Eastern Europe. This territory was to be
Germany's living space orlebensraum.

Gestapo
The secret police of the Nazi state.

Kaiser
The German word forkingoremperor.

Fascism
A form of government that is anti-democratic, anti-communist, nationalistic and
based on a one-party state. National Socialism in Germany was the most extreme
example of fascism.

Conscription
Compulsory military service.

Axis
An alliance formed between Italy, Germany and Japan from 19181945.

Schutzstaffel (SS)
Originally formed as Hitler's bodyguard under the leadership of Himmler, the
blackshirtedSchutzstaffelbecame an elite and powerful force in Germany. It was
responsible for carrying out Hitler's racial policies.

Volksgemeinschaft
The people's community.

Totalitarianism
A system of government in which total power and all aspects of state affairs are
in the hands of one party that tolerates no opposition. The state seeks to gain
complete control over its citizens and does not recognise or tolerate parties of
differing opinion.

Anschluss
Term for the union of Austria and Germany. This union was forbidden by the
Treaty of Versailles, but Hitler carried out the union of these two countries in
March 1938.

Dictator
Ruler with absolute authority without hereditary right, unelected. Hitler's
government was a form of dictatorship.

High command
The highest levels of command in the German Army.

Luftwaffe
The German Air Force. Hermann Goering became its chief officer.

Mein Kampf
Hitler's book written while in prison for his role in the Munich Putsch. The title
meansmy struggle.

Appeasement
The attempt to avoid war by giving in to some of Germany's foreign policy
demands in the 1930s.

Chancellor
Prime Minister of Germany.

Concentration camp
A place of detention for political opponents and those considered undesirable;
including Jews, lunatics and homosexuals; by the Nazi regime.

Lebensborn
A German term meaningfountain of life; a program approved by Himmler to
encourage young Aryan women to have children by selectedSchutzstaffel men.

Nationalism
The desire to be a nation; the belief of people of the same language, culture and
racial background that they should be a nation. The promotion of the interests of
one's own nation above all others.

Sudetenland
A region in the western part of Czechoslovakia, next to Germany and inhabited by
Germans. Hitler demanded the return of the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938.

Young Plan
In 1929, according to the provisions of this plan, reparations were further
reduced and foreign troops finally removed from German territory in the
Rhineland.

Blitzkrieg
Lightning war; the military tactic using tanks and air power to beat the enemy,
which was used very successfully by the Nazis in Poland in 1939.

Final solution
The program begun in 1941 to exterminate all the Jews in Europe.

Hyperinflation
Extreme or rapid inflation that devastated the German economy in the 1920s.

Phoney War
The period between September 1939 and April 1940 when there was no major
military action on the Western Front.

Propaganda Ministry
Led by Joseph Goebbels, this ministry controlled German newspapers, radio and
film, and through theReichChamber of Culture its control extended to German
music, theatre, writing, art, architecture, literature and sport.

The End