A German woman does not use make up!
A German woman does not smoke!
A German woman has a duty to keep herself fit and healthy!
These laws were passed to show how women, were wanted to be looked like by Hitler. However, some German women did not appreciate Hitler with his laws of not being able to wear make up and not allowed to be able to smoke. So now and then the laws were broken especially when Hitler encouraged women to marry, women wanted to look good so they put make up on and also died there hair blonde.
Women in Nazi Germany were to have a very specific role. Hitler was very clear about this and it was what changed there lives. This role was that they should be good mothers bringing up children at home while there husbands worked. Hitler saw no reason why a woman should work. He passed a law which gave loans of 1000 Reichsmarks to women who got married, as shown in source 8. The whole point if that was to encourage women to marry and give up her job. Women were respected if they had four children, six children or even eight children. Mothers got rewarded bronze if they had four children, silver for six children and eight for gold as shown in source 3.
Mother craft classes that helped mothers cope with children and taught how to look after there children were introduced. Homes for unmarried mothers were set up to allow unmarried women to become pregnant often by a ‘racially pure’ member of the SS. Despite Hitler all of a sudden wanting women to produce babies but he does not explain why? I think the reason behind this is that Hitler probably wanted Germany to be racially pure (Aryan) populated place so that other countries would respect the Germans and not the Jews, gypsies and many more.
German women had to stay home and look after the children as the men worked. Source 5 clearly shows a German rhyme for women. ‘Take hold of kettle, broom and pan’ that line means to say that a German woman should cook and clean. ‘Then you’ll surely get a man!’ that means if you do cook and clean you’ll surely get a man. ‘Shop and office leave alone’ that means you don’t go to the shops or an office. ‘Your true life lies at home.’ And finally that means you don’t work in the office but at home cleaning and tiding up. On the contrary, women did not want to just stay home and look after the children, clean up. They wanted to be employed (job).
From the earliest of years, girls were taught in their schools that all German women married at a young age to a proper German and that the wife’s task was to keep a decent home for her working husband and to have children. Source 9 shows a German girl’s timetable. In history, the girls were taught about failures of the Weimar republic and its betrayal of Germany. The Nazi party was shown as saving Germany. Biology was taught to explain Nazi ideas on race and that Germans were the ‘master’ Aryan race and that others were inferior. P.E was essential because it was important to have fit healthy young people. Some subjects were taught to girls only to prepare them for a role of wife and mother. Even so children’s mind were being brainwashed from the subjects like race studies.
Propaganda was also at hand. Source 1 shows a poster published in Germany showing the idea Nazi family and source 6 shows an advertisement in the German newspaper. Propaganda was mainly in use so that the Germans stayed loyal to Hitler, by having the same ideas and beliefs. They used propaganda in many ways like on posters, on local radio stations, on cinemas etc.
Having examined all the evidence I believe that the Nazis thought men were better then women because all German women did were all lower class things e.g. no German woman had a job and only had to clean the house and stuff but the men worked and earned money. On the other hand I think that men were not better than women because it was the men that made all the women stop and leave their jobs to looking after children and cleaning up. Even when the women were equally qualified they would not allow them to be employed.
However, it was difficult to make a decision because the sources focused on the changes the Nazis made to women’s lives but not what the women felt about them. But looking at sources and information gathered from libraries and the internet I think you can make out what German women really felt. They felt unworthy one reason because they were told to leave there jobs. One of the problems I had making this decisions was that there was many sources to look at. I think women in Nazi Germany did not have many rights.
