History A-level

1. Learning Intention: - to understand Nazi policy towards
women 1933 – 1945.
Key questions:1 – What role did the Nazi party envision for women?
2 - How did the Nazis try to implement their ideas?
3 - How successful were these policies?

2. The Weimar Republic 1919 - 1933
Women made considerable social and economic advancement during this period of time:  Article 109:- ‘Men and Women have the same fundamental civil rights and duties’
 Women received the right to vote in the new republic in 1919, a year before the
women of the United States of America received the same right.
Between 1919 and 1932 112 German women were elected to the Reichstag – a total of
between 7 and 10%
They represented 16-17% o the student population in Higher Education and entered the
professions.
By 1933 there were 100,000 female teachers and 3,000 doctors.

3. The New Woman
Relative prosperity of period after 1923 encouraged women to wear more adventurous
styles.

4. What role did the Nazis envision for women?
Nazi policy towards women was reactionary with the desire to reverse
many of the recent trends that had increased opportunities for women
throughout Europe such as increased female employment in the nonagricultural sector and the declining birth rate.
Kinder, Kuche,
Kirche
The germ
cell of the
nation.

5. The Nazi Ideal.
‘The most unnatural thing we can
encounter in the streets is a German
woman, who disregarding all laws of
beauty has painted her face with
Oriental war paint.’
From the Nazi newspaper ‘Volkischer
Beobachter.’
The guidelines for being an ideal woman in Nazi
Germany were as follows:
Women should not work for a living
Women should not wear trousers
Women should not wear makeup
Women should not wear high-heeled shoes
Women should not dye or perm their hair
Women should not go on slimming diets

6. Hitler: - ‘I am no friend of female
suffrage. If however we must continue
with this tomfoolery then we should
draw what advantage we can. Women
will always vote for law and order and a
uniform, you can be sure of that.’
However, as women outnumbered
men in the electorate by 2 million
they were not to be ignored and so
their vote was to be courted.
Two women declare that:
"We women are voting for List
2/National Socialist" on this 1932
election poster.

7. Equal Rights according to Hitler: In a speech given on September 8,
1934, to the National Socialist Women's Section of the Nazi
party, Hitler insisted that : -
If the man's world is said to be the State, his struggle, his readiness
to devote his powers to the service of the community, then it may
perhaps be said that the woman's is a smaller world. For her world
is her husband, her family, her children, and her home. But what
would become of the greater world if there were no one to tend
and care for the smaller one? How could the greater world survive
if there were no one to make the cares of the smaller world the
content of their lives? . . . The two worlds are not antagonistic.
They complement each other, they belong together just as man
and woman belong together. . .

8. Anti-Feminist not Anti-Woman.
So why did women vote for the NSDAP with its overtly anti-feminist stance?
 In 1932 Hitler’s promise to restore order and end unemployment had a strong
appeal.
 Women were fed up with street fighting between rival political gangs and
unemployment
 Early women converts to Nazism tended to be conservatives and nationalists who
welcomed the Nazi’s revival of esteem for traditional female values For them
women’s emancipation had brought little benefit.

9. Lebensraum

10. An increased childbirth rate would provide the justification for Lebensraum.

11. The political basis for the role of women.
Nazis believed the German population was growing too slowly. Germany’s
birth rate had fallen from 2 million to 1 million births a year, mainly due to the
number of young men who had died in the First World War. This was a major
problem for the Nazis as the expansion of the Master Race was one of their
main ideas, and would provide the justification for their policy of
‘Lebensraum’, conquering new lands because the Master Race needed more
living space. Women, as child bearers, were the key to these two main Nazi
ideas.

12. Women and the Volksgemeinschaft.
• Role of women as mothers
vital in securing this
Volksgemeinschaft.
• Women to provide the
foundations for a racially
pure community.
• Class divisions and elitism
to be eradicated as
everybody would be equal
in race.

13. Women and the Volksgemeinschaft.
Women were seen as fundamentally important in
Hitler’s desire to establish the Volksgemeinschaft. The
Volksgemeinschaft centred on the belief that Germany
was still a divided nation in the aftermath of World War
One and that Nazis could unite the nation by making
people feel as though they were part of a very
important community. In the idea of the
Volksgemeinschaft the role of women as mothers was
seen as one of the most valuable contributions to
society.

14. Timeline of Nazi Policy towards women

15. January 1921 – Party ruling banned all women from leadership positions of the NSDAP. Later
on party would not allow female Nazi members of Reichstag.
May 1933 – Hitler institutes May 10th – his mother’s birthday – as Mother’s Day.
June 1933 – The Law for the Reduction of Unemployment. Restricted female employment in
the civil service to unmarried women over 35.
June 1933 – Marriage loans were granted to women who gave up their jobs. These were
offered on condition that the woman left the workplace.
October 1933 – the official guidelines for recruiting civil servants and teachers stated: ‘In the
event of males and females being equally qualified for employment in public service the
male applicant should be given preference.’
December 1933 - Limited university enrolment of women to 10% of total.

16. 1933 onwards – All women’s associations had to submerge themselves under
overall control of Nazi Women’s Organisation. They were dissolved if they
resisted.
February 1934 – Programs such as Muter und Kind were rolled out which as to
set up homes for women who had recently given birth, where nurses would take
care of them and their needs.
Abortion was outlawed and from 1935 onwards Doctors and midwives were
required to notify every case of miscarriage to the health authorities and police
would investigate if they suspected a potential abortion.
1936 – Women banned from being judges and lawyers
1938 – Marriage Law extended to make Divorce easier in order to boost the birth
rate by ending unproductive marriages.

17. December 1938 – Mother’s Crosses introduced to honour Nazi German Motherhood.

18. For 10 to 14 year olds – Jung Madel (Young Grls)
For 14 to 8 year olds – BDM (League of German Girls)
For 18 to 21 year olds Glaue Und Schonheit (Faith and Beauty.
NSF (National socialist Women’s Organisation): an umbrella organisation co-ordinating
existing women’s organisations to being them into line with official ideology It ran the
Reich Mother’s Service which trained housewives and midwives.
DFW (German Women’s Enterprise): set up to develop an elite of women committed to
Nazi ideology.
RAD and DAF women’s sections
The welfare organisation NSV (National Socialist People’s Welfare) relied greatly on paid
and volunteer female labour.

19. The Faith and Beauty movement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z95gknc172M

20. A Nazi recruitment poster encourages young women to join the
League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Maedel). Germany,
date uncertain

21. Members of the Nazi girls' organization, the
League of German Girls (BDM), do a group
exercise. Dresden, Germany, December 1936

22. Contradictions in Nazi policy.
The introduction of conscription and the rearmament declaration of 1935 led to an
increasing shortage of labour as Nazi economy continued to grow.
1937 – 1939 – Female employment rose from 5.9 million to 6.9
million.
Even though no general conscription of female labour was introduced the number of
female workers continued to rise because of the demands of war.

23. Hitler was strongly resistant to Albert Speer’s
plans to mobilise the economy on a total war
footing believing it would damage civilian morale
and so women were never extensively
mobilized.
Unmarried women did serve as auxiliaries in the
military, especially in signals and air defence
services, however, these were non-combat roles
except for manning anti-aircraft batteries

24. Contradictions in Nazi policy
‘The father is in the Party; the mother in Frauenscchaft (NSF; the son in the Hitler Youth;
the daughter in the BDM. So where does the ideal National Socialist family meet then?
At the Reich party in Nuremberg!’
A joke told at the time.

25. 
In 1936 the Nazis began a breeding experiment called Lebensborn. Fit,
healthy, single Aryan women were encouraged to visit the Lebensborn
centres where they could meet with SS soldiers in a bid to encourage
couples to have more ‘Aryan’ children

27. How many women workers did the Fuhrer send home? According to the statistics of the
German Department of Labour; there were in June 1936, 5,470,000 employed women, or
1,200,000 more than in January 1933…..The vigorous campaign against the employment
of women has not led to their increased domesticity and security, but has been effective
in squeezing them out of better paid positions into sweated trades. Needless to say, this
type of labour with its miserable wages and long hours is extremely dangerous to the
health of women and degrades the family.
American journalist, 1937

28. In respect of its attitudes and policies towards women, National Socialism was the most
repressive and reactionary of all modern political movements. And yet it seems that
the overtly anti-feminist policies of the regime after 1933 were at least partially
successful, in that they secured the approval, perhaps gratitude of many German
people, men and women alike………………………. At the very least there is scarcely any
evidence that the policies adopted on the family and on women’s work were unpopular
despite the fact that they ran directly counter to basic liberal, democratic and socialist
principles, principles which seemed to have been widely accepted during the 1920’s.
Tim Mason, ‘Women in Germany 1925-1940’ in Nazism, Facism and the Working Class
1995, p132

29. ‘The immense ability of the regime to mobilise the population and the relative rarity of
deliberate acts of political resistance, however, suggest that women who satisfied the
political, racial and social requirements – and the vast majority did – did not perceive the
Third Reich as a women’s hell. Much of what it introduced was doubtless appealing, the
rest one learned to accept.’
Ute Frevert, Women in German History, 1988, pp248,250

30. Welfare measures:
Recuperation centres for women after
childbirth were established and numbers
attenditn rose rom 40,340 in 1934 to
77,723 in 1938.
Harvest kindergartens were also
established and from 1934 to 1941 the
number of such kindergartens rose from
600 to 8,700.
Mothers who have given birth in a National Socialist maternity
home wait to have their babies examined by a doctor.
Fuerstenberg, Germany, March 28, 1937.
In the Gau of Munich – Upper Bavaria Nazi
organisations in one month distributed: 25,800 litres of milk,
1,500 grocery parcels and
172 sets of baby clothes and bed-linen.

31. Potential Classroom Tasks
 Additional reading to be set and the pupils’ answers to specific research questions discussed in class.
 Pupils will be provided with a suitable reading list which will include material recommended by CCEA which
includes textbooks such as …………… and use of articles from publications such as ‘History Review’ and ‘History
Today’.
 Pupil-led presentations.
 Examination practice. Discussion and guidance provided on how to target the assessment objectives of the paper.
Close analysis of both primary and secondary sources. Use of the support and guidance provided by CCEA to
target both AO1 and AO2.
 Work on examination technique. Pupils to be provided with exemplar material and where appropriate skeleton
sentences which will be of specific help to those pupils finding it difficult to access the higher levels responses.

32. The End!!!!!

33. Nazi policy encouraged racially "acceptable" couples to have as
many children as possible. Because of the number of children
in this Nazi party official's family, the mother earned the
"Mother's Cross." Germany, date uncertain

34. An ideal Aryan mother displays her
eight children. For this service to the
"racial community," she was awarded
the Mother's Cross, which she wears
around her neck. Women received a
bronze cross for four children, silver for
six, and gold for eight or more.

35. Mothers who have given birth in a National Socialist maternity
home wait to have their babies examined by a doctor.
Fuerstenberg, Germany, March 28, 1937.

36. This poster advertises a county rally of the Nazi Party from
1941 (a miniature version of the Nuremberg rally). A woman
plows the field while her husband fights on the front

37. In 1939 35% of women were combining home and family duties with full
employment. The figure in 1933 was 32%.

38. Frauenwerte

39. Despite much rhetoric about the rights of women Germans did not envisage
a change in the traditional role of women. Without an appealing alternative
women persisted in their loyalty to the familiar Kinder, Kuche, Kirche ethos
and saw emancipation as more of a threat than as a blessing
However as women did outnumber men in the electorate by 2 million the
NSDAP had to consider this influence.

40. Print off a copy for myself and write additional notes beside each slide