“Victims or Perpetrators?” - An analysis of the role of women in Nazi Germany

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Extended Essay in History

"Victims or Perpetrators?" - An analysis of the role of women in Nazi Germany

Bita Pourmotamed 3848 words

Candidate code: MAY 2002 - 0511 038

Abstract

The main focus of this essay lies on the much-debated role of women as either "victims" or "perpetrators" in Nazi Germany between the years of 1933 to 1939. During the time Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP (National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) ruled the country, the Nazi party started and continued to consistently emphasize the primacy of motherhood and marriage for a woman, but also altered the role of females according to the needs of the party and the German state.

To be able to reach a final assumption to the research question, this essay firstly examines the situation of women in the Nazi state by primarily establishing an idea about their circumstances before Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933 and then continues with a brief description of the Nazi attitude towards the female population of Germany. This essay later proceeds to depicting the roles of women as mothers and views and as an important source of labour. Then by analysing the differences between male and female education and the Nazi organizations of women, the main body of the essay is completed with a historical debate.

The conclusion reached in this essay is that due to the fact that the majority of the German women experienced a highly complex and ambiguous relationship with the Nazi regime, they can both be classified as both "victims" and "perpetrators" at the same time.

229 words

Table of Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................4

Background..........................................................................................5

Nazi Women and their Roles in the 'Private Sphere' of Life..............................6

Women and the Nazi Population Policy........................................................6

Women in the Different Areas of Work........................................................8

Women and Education............................................................................11

The Nazi Organizations of Women.............................................................12

"Victims or Perpetrators?" A Historical Debate about the Role of Women in Nazi Germany.............................................................................................13

Conclusion...........................................................................................14

Bibliography........................................................................................15

Introduction

As Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP1 came into power in January 1933, a whole new era began in Germany where women formed a vital part of the Nazi state policy. "Nazi attitudes towards women were in most respects extremely reactionary"2 and female emancipation was strongly opposed in the country. Compared to the Weimar Republic and other European countries such as Sweden and Russia, where women had both been given the right to vote and been proclaimed equal to men after World War I, the Nazi ideology was extremely anti-feministic.3

Although Nazis insisted on the fact that women were not inferior to men, they clearly believed that men and women had different roles in life due to their natural differences, and that it thus could be said that "the world of the woman ?was? a smaller world" compared to that of a man, "for her world ?was? her husband, her family, her children and her home."4

This essay is mainly constructed around the treatment of the role of women in Nazi Germany during the period of 1933 to 1939 and will hence analyse her various roles in the different areas of life such as the family domain, work and the social sphere, until the upcoming crisis of war. The aim of this extended essay will be to reach a conclusion to the much historically debated role of women as either "victims or perpetrators" and argue that although many women both supported and praised Hitler and the NSDAP, "they remained only privates in the civilian army commanded by Nazi men."5

Background

At the same time as the Weimar Republic took form after the end of World War I, the situation of women changed drastically in former Imperial Germany. Women were suddenly given the right to vote, stand in elections and the Weimar Constitution recognised sexual equality as a basic right in the country. Although this was a great step towards female liberation, this constitution was never translated into legislation and the very few women that were elected into political bodies were well-kept from high politics.6

Although a woman's traditional domain had been and still was within her family, the many casualties of WWI left a surplus of approximately 2 million women aged over 20 throughout the inter-war years and thus made economic activeness7 both a necessity and a possibility for females. As wage-earners, "an independent income gave ?...? women a bargaining power needed for a greater participation in the decision making in the family and ?...? they also won some freedom from their husbands´ authority, where family law allowed."8

When it comes to education, girls were as before prepared for a future as housewives by learning household and motherhood skills by both family and schools while boys were expected to seek an occupation of their own choice to establish their roles as a future head of a family. 9

During the 14 years of the existence of the Weimar Republic, "more and more people were getting married and they were having fewer and fewer children."10 At the time of the 1933 census 62.8 per cent of all married women had fewer than three children, and the trend was seemingly growing. "Family law, which gave the husband almost exclusive rights over his wife's property and children, remained unchanged and German women were more deferential to their mensfolk than women in for example Britain."11

In summery, it can be said that even though women never experienced equality with men, and many traditional and oppressive rules and regulations still existed in the Weimar Republic, the female emancipation process had slowly but very confidently started after World War I.

Nazi Women and their Roles in the 'Private Sphere' of Life

In the patriarchal society of Nazi Germany, "the ideal Nazi man was a fighter; the ideal Nazi woman, his mother."12 Women were restricted from entering the masculine 'public sphere' which included the worlds of politics, government, industry and the military, and were to instead accept their natural roles as mothers and wives working within their homes. The female domain existed within the 'private sphere' and had a purpose of creating a safe and secure home so the big world, that was the world of a man, could survive.13

Women and the Nazi Population Policy

While Hitler took over the power in the German Reichstag in 1933, one of the major concerns of the Nazis was the declining birth-rate in the country due to the fact that the German birth-rate had declined from over 2 million in the beginning of the twentieth century, to approximately 971 000 in 1933. Since the Nazis feared that the nation was dying out, an urgent promotion about motherhood in 'valuable families' was started and the utmost role of the German woman became the role of a mother. "Essentially, marriage between the 'hereditary valuable' was to be facilitated while marriages were one or both parents were considered 'unfit' to reproduce, according to the regime's 'race and hereditary' criteria, were to be prevented."14
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The major campaign that was launched to encourage couples to have children took many various forms. Firstly, §218 of the Civil Code that prohibited abortion was enforced greatly15, and birth control centres were closed down together with attempts to restrict access to contraceptive information and devices.16

When it comes to economical aid, "financial incentives were given to parents to produce children, previous loans were annulled, maternity benefits were improved and income tax allowances for dependent children were virtually doubled in October 1934 at the expense of single people and childless couples."17 However the most novel financial aid ...

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