Oklahoma Social Studies TOT.C.4.5.A
The Standard
- TOT.C.4.5
- Explain how the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and maintained power through totalitarian means, including the
efforts of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Wehrmacht, and the Gestapo to assist Hitler in gaining and maintaining power
Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies (2026) · TOT.C.4.5
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify what each group did to help Hitler gain or keep power. They explain how street violence, secret arrests, camps, and military force served different purposes.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can explain how SA attacks on opponents differed from Gestapo arrests. They can distinguish the SS role in running camps from the Wehrmacht's military campaigns and its role in occupied areas.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often mix up the SS and Gestapo or treat both as regular police. Some think the Wehrmacht only fought battles and had no role in Nazi rule over occupied areas. Others assume the SA stayed powerful throughout the war, despite its decline after 1934.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Match SA, SS, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht to street attacks, camp administration, secret arrests, and military campaigns. Explain how two of those methods helped Hitler keep power.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Print four event cards, 1933 SA assaults, 1934 SS purge, 1936 Gestapo arrests, and 1939 Wehrmacht invasion, for pairs to sort by group.
Ask students to write two sentences: Why did SA street attacks matter before 1933, and how did Gestapo arrests help afterward?
Give students eight short scenario slips, including an SA rally attack and a Wehrmacht invasion, to label by group and explain their clues.
Compare due process protections in the Bill of Rights with a short account of Gestapo arrests, then write one consequence of losing those protections.
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Related Standards
- TOT.C.4.5.B
use of various forms of propaganda to indoctrinate the German population
- TOT.C.4.4
Trace the significant events that led to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
- TOT.C.6.3
Identify Hitler’s motivations for the annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland, as well as the invasion of Poland.
- TOT.C.4.5
Explain how the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and maintained power through totalitarian means, including th...
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