In 1934 a list known as ‘The Ten Commandments for the choice of a spouse’ were released. This list was as follows:
- Remember you are a German.
- If you are genetically healthy you should not remain unmarried.
- Keep your body pure.
- You should keep your mind and spirit pure.
- As a German choose only a spouse of the same or Nordic blood.
- In choosing a spouse ask about his ancestors.
- Health is also a precondition for physical beauty.
- Marry only for love.
- Don’t look for a playmate but for a companion for marriage.
- You should want to have as many children as possible.
Adolf Hitler appointed Gertrud Scholtz-Klink as Reich Woman’s leader and head of the Nazi Women’s League. Her main task was to promote male superiority and the importance of childbearing. In one speech she said, ‘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.’
Girls were taught from a young age that ‘all good 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’. They were also told not to smoke or diet, as it would affect their ability to produce health children. From the age of fourteen girls entered the ‘Bund Deutscher Madel’ (German Girl’s League). Here they were taught their role as a good mother and wife and that their place was in the home. It was here they were steered towards the three Ks: Kinder, Kuche, Kirche (children, home, church)
In 1942 G. Zienef wrote:
“I spent an hour with the principal, a very friendly, neat lady of fifty. She explained that every class in school was built around a course called Frauenschaffen, activities of women. This general subject was divided into: Handarbeit (handwork), Hauswirtschaft (domestic science,cooking, house and garden work), and most important, the Pflege course (eugenics, and hygiene, devoted to a study of the reproductive organs, both male and female, conception, birth, racial purity, infant care, family welfare).
She told me that the Fuehrer wanted the girls to feel that their bodies were more important for the State than their minds. He wanted girls to be proud of their bodies. He wanted them to get interested in the bodies of their sweethearts. If a girl had a healthy body, fit for childbirth, she should be proud to display it to advantage.”
Contraception and abortion were all but banned, and unmarried women were encouraged to have children via Lebensborn’s: These were buildings where selected women could go to get pregnant by a ‘racially pure’ SS man. These buildings were not hidden away from the public eye, they were openly publicised by the government. Heinrich Himmler suggested that men should have a girlfriend in addition to his wife, to increase the population at a faster rate. This idea was dismissed as even the Nazi leaders realised that this would create social anarchy. Head of the German Girl’s League, Utta Rudiger, said this after she heard a speech by Himmler in 1939
“He said that in the war a lot of men would be killed and therefore the nation needed more children, and it wouldn't be such a bad idea if a man, in addition to his wife, had a girlfriend would bear his children. And I must say, all my leaders were sitting there with their hair standing on end.”
Women were encouraged to have many children; they were offered rewards such as tax allowances, maternity benefits and health services. Hitler even publicly praised women for their ‘services to the state and race’. Women who mothered 4 or more children were awarded medals, known as The Mother’s Cross, if you had eight children you would receive a gold cross, silver for six children, and a bronze cross for four children. In 1939 three million women had received a Mother’s Cross.
During the years of Weimar Germany there had been a large female workforce, with 100,000 female teachers, 3,000 female doctors and 13,000 female musicians. In 1934 most women doctors and civil servants had been dismissed, this was followed in June 1936 when women were stopped from acting as judges or public prosecutors. Women were also discouraged from entering university with the number of female students falling from 18,315 in the year before the Nazis came to power, to 5,447 in 1939.
During the Second World War there was a shortage of workers as men were now being sent to fight. More women were being employed and in 1937 a law was passed that meant that all women had to work a ‘duty year’. They could work in factories and in other professions previously made unavailable. They were said to be working ‘patriotically’ and to help the Nazi’s ‘Economic Miracle’. By 1944, as more men were called out to join the armed forces, there were 28,378 female students training for better jobs.
With all the policies and laws passed in Nazi Germany it would seem that the Nazis did put their views of women into practice, and did so very well. There is however a darker side to polices made, that did not fit in with their views.
Along side the ban on contraception and abortion there were many women and men who were sterilised because they were not seen as ‘pure’. With Hitler taking steps towards the ‘master race’ anyone who was not a German of good health and with no background history of mental illness was not deemed worthy of reproduction. Some women were forced to abort their babies as they were racially ‘unpure’ and they were then also sterilised.
Liselotte Katscher, a nurse working for the Nazi party, recalled how a sixteen year old girl who deemed unfit for motherhood was sterilised
“Henny was examined by a doctor who diagnosed a slight feeble-mindedness - in my opinion it was only a slight feeble-mindedness, and they decided that she should be sterilized. I thought about it a great deal at the time, and I felt sorry for the girl, but it was the law, and the doctors had decided. I personally took her to the maternity ward in the hospital where it took place. But I never got rid of the doubt in my mind that the decision was too harsh. I formed the impression when dealing with this young girl that she was perfectly capable of leading a normal life. The tragedy was that she was released very soon after this, then got a job and met a nice young man, and was now not allowed to marry him because of her sterilization.”
There were women who opposed the Nazi party and their policies. A large number joined left-wing political groups. In October 1933 the Nazis opened the first concentration camp for women at Moringen. Two more camps were opened up in 1938 and 39 to accommodate the increasing number on women prisoners. The vast majority of women who opposed the Nazis remained unspoken and only showed their opposition by not doing anything to support the party. Those few who did make their opinion known suffered severe consequences, such as exile, death in the concentration camps or they committed suicide.
The efforts of the Nazis to increase the population rapidly were not as effected as hoped. The average family had fallen to 1.8 children in the late 1930s whereas it had been 2.3 in the 1920s. Other policies such as economic recovery and rapid rearmament made it increasingly difficult to keep women out of the workforce and concentrating on raising children. By the start of the war in 1939 there were more women working than in 1933.
The nazi’s very domesticated view of women was put into practice with all the policies and laws that were brought in during the time they were in power. However they did not view all women as equal. They were only interested in the women who could expand the ‘Master Race’, only those who were racially ‘pure’. This left any women who were Jewish, suffered with ill health or had a family history of it. Even those women who were deemed ‘unfit’. This would have been a significant portion of the population. So although their views were important in the creation of the laws these laws only extended to aid the minority of ‘pure’ women of Germany.
Bibliography
Culpin, C & Henig, R (1997) Modern Europe 1870 – 1945, Ch. 18, pp 302 – 303 Longman Advanced History
Websites
, T (1999) German Women and 3 K’s. [online] German Culture, Alex-Designs, Available from: http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa080601b.htm
Simkin, J (1997) Women in Germany. [online] Spartacus Educational, John Simpkin, Available from:
Strange, D (2002) Women in Nazi Germany. [online] SchoolHistory.co.uk, School History, Available from:
Trueman (2005) The Role of Women in Nazi Germany. [online] History Learning, Available from:
