Explain the reasons for Nazi policies towards women?
The main objective for the Nazi’s with regards to women was to use them to help with increase the population, as Germany had a declining birth rate, the Nazi’s heavily promoted higher birth rates among the Aryan race. One reason for the Nazi policies was to increase pure Aryan German births; one major factor for trying to get women to have more children was the financial incentives like birth grants and marriage loans, the more children they had, the less money they had to pay back. Hitler believed he could women to produce and care for his next generation of strong Aryan fighters, and women were tempted to have more children in different ways, for example women with large families were awarded the motherhood cross. Younger women were also encouraged to take motherhood and homecraft classes. Unmarried women were still expected to have children; even if they were not married, the Nazi’s even went as far to introduce Lebensborns, where unmarried women could go to get pregnant by a ‘racially pure’ SS man However, only racially desirable in the view of the Nazi’s, pure Aryan women were encouraged to have children, mentally or physically disabled women were classed as ‘unfit’ to have children and were sterilised as were Jews and ‘racially undesirable’ women. Hitler was determined to build a strong Aryan army and minimised the amount of disabled and racially undesirable births as they didn’t fit in with the Nazi image of a ‘perfect’ Germany.
