- Kinder (Children),
- Kuche (Kitchen)
- Kirche (Church).
They believed in the qualities of "traditional" German woman. Therefore, women were not allowed to wear make-up or have their hair dyed. They had to wear flat shoes and no trousers were allowed. They were not to slim or diet as this was thought to be unhealthy and upset childbearing. No smoking as this was seen as "unlady-like". Ideal German women had plaited hair or put in buns.
Of course, many German women objected to their role as second class citizens. Large numbers joined illegal opposition political parties or Left wing political groups, to campaign for better status. Some women committed suicide in opposition to the Nazi's, though; they were few and far between.
Hitler’s beliefs and the beliefs of his cabinet were the basis of how German women were treated. However, there were some women that Hitler either Respected or placed above the average German woman.
Eva Anna Paula Hitler, nee Braun. She was the long time companion and, briefly, wife to Adolf Hitler.
She was born in Munich, Germany and was the daughter of a school teacher from a respectable Bavarian family. She was well educated and had worked for several months as a receptionist at a medical office. She then got a job working for Heinrich Hoffmann at age seventeen. She met Hitler in 1929; he was introduced to her as “Herr Wolff”. Both of their families were very much against the relationship. Eva’s father had political and moral objections while Hitler’s half- sister, Angela Raubal, saw her (Eva) as socially inferior.
Hitler saw a lot of Eva Braun in 1931. However, Eva attempted suicide in 1932 by shooting herself and a second time in 1935 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Some people believed, she did this for more attention from Hitler. Once she recovered, Hitler became more committed to her. He bought her a villa in Wasserburgerstrasse, a Munich suburb and also provided her with a Mercedes inclusive of a chauffer. By 1936, she was living in Hitler’s household at Berghof near Berchtesgaden. Her political influence on Hitler is believed to have been minimal if not none existent. By all accounts she lived a very sheltered life and was generally not interested in politics.
Hitler and Eva never really appeared in public together, many believed this was due to Hitler’s fear that he would loose favour and popularity with the female supporters. Albert Speer wrote in his diaries, saying “Eva Braun was allowed to be present during visits from old party associates. She was banished as soon as other dignitaries of the Reich, such as cabinet ministers, appeared at the table………Hitler obviously regarded her as socially acceptable only within strict limits. Sometimes I kept her company in her exile, a room next to Hitler's bedroom. She was so intimidated that she did not dare leave the house for a walk. Out of sympathy for predicament I soon began to feel a liking for this unhappy woman, who was so deeply attached to Hitler.” It was found out by soviet intelligence officials after the war during extensive debriefings with captured Nazis that Eva was at the centre of Hitler’s life for most of his twelve years in power. It was said that “He was always accompanied by her. As soon as he heard the voice of his lover he became jollier. He would always make jokes about her new hats. He would take her for hours on end into his study where there would be champagne cooling in ice, chocolates, cognac and fruit.”
By early April 1945, Eva drove to Berlin to be with Hitler at the Fuhrer-bunker. She stayed with him as the Red Army closed in, insisting that she was one of the people still loyal to him. Hitler and Eva were married on April 29, 1945 at a brief civil ceremony. On the 30th, they both committed suicide together by swallowing cyanide capsule. Eva was only 33; their corpses were burned with gasoline in the Reich chamber.
Helene bertha Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl was a German dancer , actor and film director well known for her advances in film technique. She was Nazi Germanys most famous film maker. In a state were women played second fiddle to men, she was given a free reign by Hitler to produce Nazi propaganda films.
She was born on August 1902 to a prosperous family. At the age of eight, was enrolled at the Berlin Russian Dance School where she became a star pupil. Riefenstahl produced her own film “The Blue Light”. She was appointed – Film Expert to the National Socialist Party. Hitler believed that the image that Leni created for herself in “The Blue Light” showed the “ultimate” German woman.
Leni made a short film in 1933 on the Nazi party’s rally, she then made a much grander one of the rally in 1934. “Triumph of the will” was probably Leni’s best film. It won a lot of awards and accolades, but most importantly Hitler was pleased.
“Triumph of the Will was a totally unique and incomparable glorification of the power and beauty of our movement”
Adolf Hitler
Immediately after the war in 1945, Leni was arrested, “denazified” and not charged of any crime. Although some believed that she could not be as innocent as she claimed she was.
“I am one of the millions who thought Hitler had all the answers. We only saw the good things: we did not know about the bad things to come.”
“What have I ever done? I have never intended harm to anyone. I do not know what I should apologize for. I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film “Triumph of the Will”-it won the top prize. All my films won prizes.”
Leni Riefenstahl
Leni died in her sleep on September 8, 2003 at her home in pocking, Germany a few weeks after her 101st birthday. In her obituaries Leni was said to be the last famous figure of Germany’s Nazi era to die.
Johanna Maria Magdalena Goebbels née Behrend was the wife of Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. Magda was born in Berlin to 20-year-old Auguste Behrend, a servant to a family in the Bülowstrasse. Her father's identity is unknown, but he was likely an engineer known as Oskar Rietschel. When Magda was five, her mother sent her to stay in Cologne. Where she enrolled at a convent school. At ten, Magda is said to have been "intelligent, gifted and precocious," with a taste for Schopenhauer. Magda's mother Auguste may have married Jewish hotel and restaurant worker Max Friedlander (who later died at the Buchenwaldconcentration camp), moving with him to Brussels.
After the war Magda's family moved to Berlin where she attended Kollmorgen Lycée, receiving three hundred marks a month spending money from Rietschel. She then enrolled in the prestigious Holzhausen Ladies' College near Goslar. She met Gunther Quandt, a wealthy German industrialist twice her age on a train coming back from school. She dropped out of college to spend time with him. She changed her name from Friedländer to Rietschel. She and Quandt were married on January 4 1921 and her first child Haraldwas born on November 1, 1921 the only child of hers who survived the war.
Magda is said to have soon grown bored in her marriage with Quandt, who didn't spend much time with her and eventually she and Quandt divorced. Later Magda met Adolf Hitler, who apparently was mutually impressed.
“This woman could play an important role in my life, even without being married to her. In all my work, she could represent the female counterpart to my one-sidedly male instincts.”
Adolf Hitler
Magda's social connections and upper class bearing may have also influenced Goebbels's own enthusiasm in her.Magda, eventually, married Goebbels on December 19, 1931 at Günther Quandt's farm in Mecklenburg with Hitler as their witness. They subsequently had six children: Helga Susanne, Hildegard (Hilde) Traudel, Helmut Christian, Hedwig (Hedda) Johanna, Holdine (Holde) Kathrin, Heidrun (Heide) Elisabeth
By late April 1945 the Red Army was entering Berlin and the Goebbels family moved into the Fuhrerbunker beneath the bombed outReich Chancellery. By all accounts, the children were optimistic and playful. On the 28th of April Magda wrote a farewell letter to her son Harald Quandt, who was in a POW encampment in North Africa.
The following day, on May 1, 1945 the Goebbelses' six children were drugged with morphine, and killed with cyanide capsules broken in their mouths.After their children were dead, Magda and Joseph had walked upstairs to the bombed out garden , avoiding the need for anyone to carry their bodies. The details of their suicides are uncertain.. The charred corpses were found on the afternoon of May 2, 1945 by Russian troops and a photograph of Joseph Goebbels' incinerated face was widely published. Their remains and those of their children were later secretly buried by the Soviets, and in April 1970 all were reburned and scattered in the Elbe river.
Gerhardine Gerdy Troost was born on 3rd March 1904 in stuttgart. she was the wife of the Speer predeccessor Paul lydwig Troost. She was also a German Architektin.
After she completed her school years, she worked in the paternal enterprises, which is were she became acquainted to Paul Lydwig Troost. They both relocated to Munich in 1924 and finally married in 1925. She got to know hitler through her husband.
Her husband died in 1934, she continued his architects office. She received a lot of support from Hitler. She died in 1993.
“I had four parade women: Mrs Troost, Mrs Wagner, Mrs Scholtz Klink and Leni.” Hitler
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink nee Treusch was born, Feburary 9, 1902. She was a fervent Nazi Party Member and Reichs Women’s leader.
She had married a postal worker at the age of eighteen and had had six children with him before he died. Her plain Germanic Looks and her ideal home life made her a perfect candidate of the Nazis.
Adolf Hitler appointed Scholtz-Klink as the Reich Women’s Leader and head of the Nazi Women’s League. She was an excellent orator, her main task was to promote the importance of chiild-bearing and the superiority of men. she once said “The mission of a woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man’s existence.”
In 1934, she was appointed as the head of the Women’s Bureau in the German Labour Front. She had the responsibility of persuading women to work for the good of the Nazi Government. As she was a woman, she was usually left out of the more important meetings in the male dominated society of the Third Reich. By 1940 she was married to her third husband, SS Obergruppenfuhrer.
When the war ended, she went into hiding and wasn’t found until 1948. Once found she was arrested, later in the year she was sentenced by a french military court to eighteen months in prison. She was interviewed in the early 1980s by Claudia Koonz and she was found to be unrepentant of her Nazi past.
