The decline in unemployment after the Nazis gained power meant that it was not necessary to force women out of manual work. However, action was taken to reduce the number of women working in the professions. Married women doctors and civil servants were dismissed in 1934 and from June 1936 women could no longer act as judges or public prosecutors. Hitler's hostility to women was shown by his decision to make them ineligible to jury service because he believed them to be unable to "think logically or reason objectively, since they are ruled only by emotion.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he appointed Gertrud Scholtz-Klink as Reich Women's Leader and head of the Nazi Women's League. A good orator, Scholtz-Klink's main task was to promote male superiority and the importance of childbearing. In one speech she pointed out that "the mission of 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 1929 Josef Goebbels stated that the mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring up children into the world. The Nazis policy towards women and the family was based on two fears. First, the fear that the German population was growing too slowly as the birth rates fell and that the fear that the German people were becoming racially impure due to intermarriage with ‘inferior’ groups like the Jews and the Slavs they had these fears as they thought that if war ever started again then wouldn’t have a strong enough army to fight or a big enough army to fight as there were hardly any births going on.
From 1933 women were encouraged to give up their jobs and be housewives and to look after the family and to have a bigger family then they already had, after a while many women were forced out of their jobs so the rate of women workers went down and there was little people working in the hospitals and professional jobs, these people were targeted first. Generous social security benefits and interest-free marriage loans were offered as an incentive to women to stay at home and raise families. The law was that each time they had a child the loan was cut by a quarter so by 1939, 42% of all marriages were loan assisted.
There were also a number of strategies that were used to encourage more births. Laws against abortion were strictly enforced. Between 1934 and 1938 the conviction rate for crimes associated with abortion rose by 50%.
The Birth-control clinics were closed down and access to contraceptive advice and devices were severely restricted.
These were just some of the things that were used to help encourage women to have more children.
These were quite successful as between 1933 and 1939 the rate of marriage increased and there was a sharp rise in birth rate however these increases cannot be linked to Nazi population policy with any certainty. However in some respects Nazi policies acted against the interests of the family. The shortage of affordable housing and resulting in high rents created by the priority given to rearmament meant that couples found it difficult to find accommodation suitable for having a large family. This was a downside. In addition, Labour Services and conscription made it less likely that young men would be able to marry and have children. In 1933 there were 4.85 million women in paid employment, this increased to 7.14 million by 1936 and the government looked to women to plug the gaps. In 1937 the Nazis overturned a clause in their marriage loan scheme to permit married women who had a loan to take up employment. This reversed policy, however, was not very successful.
A Nazi Party pamphlet said that German women wish in the main to be wives and mothers. They do not wish to be comrades… They have no longing for the factor, no longing for the office. A cosy home, a loved husband and a multitude of happy children are closer to their hearts. This was the 1930’s.
From 1929 to 1939 the marriages, live births and deaths rose. By 1939 the death rate was at 853,410 that is 119,245 more deaths then in 1929.
