Nazi Policy towards the Church (AQA History GCSE)

This lesson is for the AQA History GCSE ‘Germany 1890-1945: Democracy and Dictatorship’ course. It could probably be adapted for OCR/Edexcel too.

It makes reference to the Red Oxford AQA textbook, but the lesson can be done without this as there is an information sheet provided.

Lesson starts by looking at the famous Niemöller poem, asking students to think about what it means, and can they name any contextual examples from prior study that would corroborate with his claims.

There is an introductory video clip for discussion, to get students thinking about why the Nazis would oppose the Church, and then a task to get them to look into why there wasn’t more opposition from the Church itself, as well as looking at the differing points of view from the different denominations, as well as a living graph task to track the relationship between the Nazis and the Church over time.

Finishes with a 4 mark exam practice question which could be planned, written as a group, given for homework, or written up as a plenary activity.