8 Marry only for love.
9 Don't look for a playmate but for a companion for marriage.
10 You should want to have as many children as possible.
SOURCE 6 From the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter
The most unnatural thing we can encounter in the streets is a German woman, who,disregarding all laws of beauty, has painted her face with Oriental war paint.
SOURCE 7 Hess, in a newspaper article, 1939
As all National Socialists know, the highest law in war, as in peace, is the preservation of the race. An unmarried mother mayhave a hard path. But she knows that when we are at war, it is better to have a child under the most difficult conditions than not to have one at all ... the family is the basis of the country, but during a war the highest service which a woman may perform for the continuation of the nation is to bear racially healthy children. Be happy, good women, that you have been permitted to perform this high duty for Germany.
SOURCE 8 Himmler
With bigamy, each wife would act as a stimulus to the others so that both would try to be their husband's dream woman.
SOURCE 9 From an NSF (National Socialist Women's Organisation) publication during the war
It has always been our article of faith that a woman's place is in the home but since the whole of Germany is our home we must serve wherever we can best do so.
Nazi policy towards women was largely reactionary. The Nazis wanted to reverse many of the recent trends that had increased opportunities for women throughout Europe, such as increased female employment in the non-agricultural sector and a declining birth rate that was partly due to wider access to contraception. These trends had been present in Germany under the Weimar
Republic, many of whose supporters advocated further EMANCIPATION. Women had been given the vote and experienced greater cultural freedom, and the growing gender imbalance (considerably increased by war casualties, with an estimated 2.8 million surplus women in 1919) had created further opportunities.
A reaction against these trends had set in during the Depression with some moves to discriminate against women in work, and there was an inevitable fall in female employment. Into this context came the Nazis who had a clear vision of women performing what the Nazis considered to be their traditional role as homemakers and child bearers. In the national struggle for survival, women had a vital, if different, role from the warrior men: to breed genetically pure Germans to ensure German supremacy. The Nazis also emphasised the role of the family as the 'germ cell of the nation', and this had clear implications for the position of women in the state.
However, as in other areas of policy, Nazi ideology came into conflict with broader trends and other economic priorities. The early years of the regime saw the forcing of women out of employment and the encouragement of traditional family structures. However, during the war, because of the need for more workers and more soldiers, the government encouraged the utilisation of female labour, and also childbirth outside marriage. These were just some of the several contradictions you will find within Nazi policy towards women.
How did the Nazis try to implement their ideas?
SOURCE 10 In 1943 a Marriage Law was drawn up but not enacted
A11 single and married women up to the age of 35 who do not already have four children should be obliged to produce four children by racially pure German men. Whether these men are married is of no significance. Every family that already has four children must set the
husband free for this action.
Soon after the Nazis came to power, women who had experienced new freedoms under the Weimar Republic began to feel the Nazi backlash. In 1933 the Law for the Reduction of Unemployment cleverly linked the fight to reduce unemployment with the introduction of Nazi policies towards women. Marriage loans were granted to women who gave up their jobs. This was soon followed by restriction on women's employment in the Civil Service. Thus in October 1933 the official is guidelines for recruiting civil servants and teachers stated: 'In the event of males and females being equally qualified for employment in public service, the male applicant should be given preference.' In the dire conditions of high unemployment at the time there was not a strong reaction against such a policy.
Marriage too became increasingly influenced by legal changes that both threatened and encouraged German married couples to produce the right racial stock and plenty of it! Divorce became easier, but this was not inspired by cone for women's rights: it was in order to boost the birth rate by ending unproductive marriages that were deemed 'worthless' to the national community. A further example of the Nazi perception of the need for children is shown in Source 10
To help inculcate their values, the Nazis created a series of organisations for girls and women, membership of which eventually numbered millions. However, the Nazi belief in a national community was not mere propaganda. They implemented welfare schemes that supported women and their children
Thus in the Gau of Munich-Upper Bavaria, Nazi organisations in one month in 1934 distributed 25,800 litres of milk, 1,500 grocery parcels and 172 sets of baby clothes and linen. Nationally, the number of women attending recuperation homes after childbirth rose from 40,340 in 1934 to 77,723 in 1938. Harvest kindergartens to look after children when their mothers were working in the fields increased from 600 in 1934 to 8,700 in 1941. Prolific mothers were awarded medals in recognition of their contribution to national objectives.
SOURCE 11 The Honour Cross of German Motherhood, an award given to women for bearing children. It was modelled on the military cross for men. Bronze crosses were given to mothers of four or five children, silver for six or seven, gold for eight or more. Cross bearers were also entitled to a special salute from the Hitler Youth
Nazi organisations for women
10-14 Jung Madel (Young girls)
14-18 BDM (League of German Girls)
18-21 Glaube und Schonheit (Faith and Beauty)
NSF (National Socialist Women's Organisation): an umbrella organisation co-ordinating existing women's organisations to bring them into line with official ideology. It ran the Reich Mothers' Service, which trained housewives and midwives
DFW (German Women's Enterprise): set up to develop an elite of women committed to Nazi ideology
RAD and DAF women's sections
The welfare organisation NSV (National Socialist People's Welfare) relied greatly on, and volunteer female labour
How effective were Nazi policies?
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (1902- ): the ideal Nazi woman Scholtz-Kiink initially worked for the Berlin Red Cross. Her SA husband died of a heart attack during a demonstration and this inspired her to carry on his work. In 1929 she became the leader of the NSF in Baden and later deputy leader of the Nazi organisation nationwide. In 1934 she was promoted to ReichsfrauenFührerin (women's leader) of all Nazi women's organisations (Frauenwerk, Woman's League of the Red Cross, Women's Bureau of DAF, Women's Labour Service). Her leadership was, however, in fact token; although she fronted the organisations, she was subordinate to the top male Nazis.
She was a great supporter of Nazi views on women's role, exhorting women to be enthusiastic breeding machines and beasts of burden for the greater glory of the Reich. She was a good speaker, and was sent abroad to win admiration for the new Germany. Unlike many Nazi leaders, she did actually conform to Nazi ideals: she was blonde, healthy and had four children.
In 1945 she hid from the Allies but was eventually arrested in 1948. She was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment for being a 'major offender' as a diehard Nazi, but was acquitted of war crimes. She remained a strong supporter of the Nazi regime whose good she believed outweighed the bad.
SOURCE 12 Advertisement in a German newspaper
52-year-old doctor. Fought in World War One. Wishes to settle down. Wants male child through marriage to young, healthy Aryan woman. She should be undemanding, used to heavy work, not a spender, with flat heels, without earrings.
SOURCE 13 Advertisement in a German newspaper, 1939
Two vital, lusty, race-conscious Brunnhildes with family trees certified back to 1 700 desiring to serve their Fatherland in the form most ennobling to women, would like to meet two similarly inclined Siegfrieds. Marriage not of essential importance. Soldiers on leave also acceptable.
SOURCE 14 Letter to Hitler from several women published in a Leipzig newspaper in 1934
Today, man is being educated not for, but against marriage. Men are grouped together in clubs and hostels ... Woman stays back further and further in the shadow of loneliness ... we see our daughters growing up in stupid aimlessness living only in the vague hope of perhaps getting a man and having children ..., A son, even the youngest, today laughs in his mother's face. He regards her as his natural servant, and women in general as merely willing tools of his aims.
SOURCE 15 Letter of thanks from a woman in a recuperation centre
I would like to thank the Führer heartily with the assurance that I am aware as a German woman and mother of my responsibility to look after my children ... and to educate them into being fit, useful people.
[Note by husband] She has put on 141b, and the strength she was lacking before her trip has considerably come back again ... March forward, NSV, flourish, prosper and the nation will be healthy.
SOURCE 16 American journalist, 1937
How many women workers did the Führer send home?, According to the statistics of the German Department of Labour, there were, in June 1936, 5,470,000 employed women, or 1,200,000 more than in January 1933 ... The vigorous campaign against the employment of women has not led to their increased domesticity and security, but has been effective in squeezing them out of better paid positions into sweated trades. Needless to say, this type of labour, with its miserable wages and long hours, is extremely dangerous to the health of women and degrades the family.
SOURCE 17 A joke told at the time
The father is in the Party; the mother in ftauenschqft [NSU; the son in the Hitler Youth; the daughter in the BDM. So where does the ideal National Socialist family meet then?, At the Reich Party Day in Nuremberg!
SOURCE 18 V. Ziemer, Education for Death, 1941. An American teacher describes a visit to a Berlin clinic
Hospital beds came and went with methodical precision. The doctors made quick, deft incisions in white abdomen walls. 'What are they doing?' I asked. 'These doctors' he said, 'are sterilising women .'I asked what type of women ... and was informed they were the mentally sick, women with low resistance, women who had proved through other births that their offspring were not strong... 'We are even eradicating colour-blindness,' my SS guide told me. 'We must not have soldiers who are colour-blind. It is transmitted only by women
The Nazis' policies towards women suffered from several contradictions, for example over their attitude to marriage and the family. The main burden of their propaganda was to encourage the healthy Aryan family, as a small unit of the Volksgemeinschaft. However, several of their policies undermined the family. The demands of the Hitler Youth took youngsters away from the family and encouraged them to challenge any non-Nazi attitudes of their parents. The quest for a genetically pure race led to the encouragement of divorce and sterilisation for those 'unworthy' of marriage: an approach that aroused the anger of the Catholic Church, as did later the policy of 'euthanasia'.
During the Second World War the quest for a larger population of genetically pure Germans led to encouragement of procreation outside marriage, as in the Lebensborn (Life Springs) programme. In what were, in effect, state run brothels, 'Aryan' women had babies by SS men. The programme was set up in 1935 and by 1944 nearly 1 1,000 children had been born in these special homes.
The Nazis' attempts to drive women back into the home were even less successful. The number of women in all types of jobs increased, mainly due to the economic recovery. By 1936 the economy was suffering from a labour shortage in key areas, and by 1939 this had become acute. Here ideology conflicted with economic need. Increasing numbers of women were attracted back into work, but the government did not encourage this. When war broke out, several Nazis advised Hitler to introduce female conscription, but he rejected this, partly on ideological grounds, but probably mainly because he was concerned at the effect on soldiers' morale of drafting their wives into factories. Not until 1943 were women aged 17-45 compelled to register for state allocated work. The 'totalitarian' Nazi state was thus far less effective in utilising its resources than the liberal regimes in Britain and the USA.
The extent to which women absorbed Nazi propaganda is hard to judge. Mason has argued that the regime was more popular overall with women than with men, and that most women preferred to stay at home than work in factories. This was one factor increasing Hitler's reluctance to impose conscription. Middle-class women, who suffered greater restrictions on their careers, were probably less enthusiastic.
One must also remember to study the regime in context. Many of the Nazis' ideas were just more extreme or explicit versions of views that were widespread well before the Nazis gained power. Thus the Catholic Church and conservative organisations advocated the separate spheres view of women's role and stressed the importance of procreation.
There is considerable debate amongst the growing number of historians of women's history about the impact of Nazism on women. Initial stress by radical feminist historians on the evil impact of Nazi policies has been challenged by other historians arguing that even if for questionable reasons, there were advantages for women in Nazi Germany. They argue that the benefits of a policy should not be cancelled out by its unattractive aims. In some areas, such as women's organisations and youth groups, the Nazis widened experiences for women. Social services improved. Opportunities to avoid the drudgeries of paid employment had advantages. Furthermore, several historians now stress the ineffectiveness of many Nazi restrictions. This is not to deny that for many women (though proportionately a small number) as well as men their experience of the regime was horrific.
In many ways this account of Nazi policies towards women illustrates some of the limitations on the totalitarian nature of the regime. The Nazis adopted a fairly cautious approach; thus only a few women were actually forced out of jobs; the regime relied more on financial and moral pressure. When in 1939 the Nazis needed female labour contrary to their previous policies, they proceeded very cautiously, partly because they were afraid of the reaction from women and men.
Review: How successfully did the Nazis impose their ideology on German women?
We conclude by studying some of the views of historians who have analysed the position of women in Nazi Germany.
SOURCE 19 Alexander De Grand, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, 1995, pp. 57, 63
The fascist position had always been that class distinctions were artificial and superficial but that biologically determined gender roles were immutable [unchangeable] ...
The conservative and stabilising elements of Nazi ideology - to keep women in their place and maintain them as a pillar of the traditional, hierarchical society could not be reconciled with the political, social and racial ambitions of the regime.
SOURCE 20 Tim Mason, 'Women in Germany 1925-1940', in Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class, 1995, p. 132
In respect of its attitudes and policies towards women, National Socialism was the most repressive and reactionary of all modem political movements. And yet it seems that the overtly [undisguised] anti-feminist policies of the regime after 1933 were at least partially successful, in that they secured the approval, perhaps gratitude, of many German people, men and women alike; partially successful too in blocking and turning back the social, economic and educational pressures which had been conducive fled] to gradual progress towards emancipation in the preceding decades. At the very least, there is scarcely any evidence that the policies adopted on the family and on women's work were unpopular, despite the fact that they ran directly counter to basic liberal, democratic and socialist principles, principles which seemed to have been widely accepted during the 1920s.
SOURCE 21 Ute Frevert, Women in German History, 1988, pp. 248,250
Even if most of the twelve million women in the numerous Nazi organisations of 193 9 were not themselves ardent National Socialists, twelve years of being educated and bombarded with propaganda by the Volksgemeinschaft cannot have left individual consciousness and collective memory unmarked. In addition the impact of welfare measures... reinforced popular loyalty...
National Socialism ... was... a highly ambiguous period in history which witnessed a unique confluence of 'modernist' and 'traditionalist' tendencies. In a few areas, such as voting rights, access to the upper echelons levels] of the civil service, and family planning, the fruits of hard fought battles were destroyed,. in many areas (most notably with respect to the labour market, the Nazi state represented but a smooth continuation of existing structures and processes, together with all their unfavourable aspects (lower wages and less upward social mobility). By contrast, where youth policy, divorce laws and social organisation were concerned, the Third Reich offered women novel opportunities for participation and recognition in public life, and, indeed, many women benefited in an unprecedented fashion from such socio-political innovation ...
The actual outcome of policy was sometimes different, and often diametrically opposed, to its intended effects ...
The immense ability of the regime to mobilise the population, and rarity of deliberate acts of political resistance, however, suggest that satisfied the political, racial and social requirements - and the vast 1 did not perceive the Third Reich as a women's hell. Much of what it introduced was doubtless appealing, the rest one learned to accept.
