Nazi Sourcework

(c)                Sources D and E are useful as evidence about Nazis policy towards women because they both imply that women should have children for their hard working men. Source D is a propaganda poster showing a woman holding and looking down on lovingly her child while the men are working hard in the fields. Source D shows that the Nazis expected women to nurse their children while their German men were working hard in the fields or protecting them. The Nazi targeted women during their rule because to achieve his goals Hitler needed to have vast numbers of loyal Germans prepared to fight for him, therefore, women were an important part of his plan because he needed to increase Germany’s population. The propaganda poster in Source D is aimed at women and shows that the Nazis wanted German women to be lead by their pride in their children and to repopulate Germany. The Nazis did not include any women working in the fields because they were discouraging women from working. Source E is an extract from the writings from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda designer and an important Nazi. Goebbels wrote that women should breed and in addition to that they should pretty themselves for their husbands. Therefore their husbands will gather food, stand guard and fight of enemies. Source E states that Goebbels wrote that men would take care of the gathering of food, standing guard and fighting off enemies, this shows that Goebbels, a leading Nazi, believed that the men would take care of the important issues and leave raising the families to the women because the Nazi’s policy was to encourage women to stay at home and raise families.

(d)                “The Nazi regime turned women into second-class citizens”, I agree with this view because they were used by the Nazis only to repopulate Germany and were obliged to become housewives by Nazi policies. During Nazi regime women in reasonable professions, excluding a few who were very talented and could be useful to the Nazi regime, were demoted, received less wages and were placed in uncomfortable jobs where their health was placed in jeopardy. These factors discouraged women from seeking work and most of them settled into the Nazi policy. According to Source B during the time of the Weimar Republic women had more rights, they were able to vote, many could earn the same wages as men for the same job and they were employed in various professions. Source B states that under the Nazi rule they lost most of these rights due to new policies restricting what they could do. Women were controlled by the Nazi regime and manipulated into doing what the State wanted them to do through propaganda like in Source D, influencing women to have children so to help their nation. Women had only one purpose in Nazi Germany and that was to breed as much as possible in order to create vast numbers of Germans. This meant that women were unable to do things of self interest by having careers making them slaves of the State living to serve Nazi Germany until she was not needed. In Source F, a speech from Adolf Hitler to the National Socialist Women’s Movement, September 1934, he stated that if a man world was the state, then a woman‘s is her husband, her family, her children and her home. It is not correct for women to interfere in the world of men. Source F states that Hitler believed that women had no place in economics or politics but should be committed to other aspects of life that involved domestic work and raising children, in this way women were not regarded as second class citizens but they were given different roles in the Nazi regime that meant that not all of them could have the freedom to do what they wanted. Women were given medals for the number children they had and money, which compelled them to become housewives. Women would have been revered because they were caring for a child to given to the Fuhrer.

B4- Nazi Germany, c 1930-39

1. By Studying Source A we can learn that the government took an aggressive stance to their political opponents in Nazi Germany. The government created concentration camps in Nazi Germany essentially to hold the Communists and Social Democrats that opposed them. The government during the time of Nazi Germany want to rule unopposed with no opposition who would question their regime. The government stated, in the extract from the official Nazi paper, that their opponents, the Communists and Social Democrats were endangering the country and were trying to harm the nation. The government was turning the people away from the Communists and Social Democrats by using their public newspapers. The government wanted to dispose of any party which they believed could trouble them in the future by placing them in new prisons, consequently resulting in the Communists and the Social Democrats living in fear and stopping them speaking against the government.
2. Source C is supported by the evidence presented by Sources A and B because Sources A, B and C all give evidence discouraging other parties. Source is a law passed in July 1933 which ended the existence of opposition parties in Germany, the law states that the National Socialist German Workers’ Party should be the only party in Germany and that anyone who starts another party shall be imprisoned and serve between six months and six years in prison. Source C is a law which retrained other parties interfering with the Nazis plans in government. The Nazis wanted a complete and utter control in German politics and this law meant that this goal could be accomplished. Article 2 in Source C, which meant that you could be arrested for organising a political party, created a fear and silenced the voices of those who would still oppose the government. Source  A is an extract from  the Volkische Beobachter, the official Nazi newspaper in March 1933, it supports the evidence presented in Source C because it is a Nazi newspaper which promotes the laws passed by the Nazi government. The newspaper extract comments on the rival parties who could become a danger to Germany which Source C reports