Nazi Policies - Women

What was the Nazi view on women?

The Nazis viewed women as important as men, but in a subservient role. They believed it was a woman's role to be a housewife and mother. Women should not work but stay home, and their lives should revolve around 'Kinder, Kűche, Kirche', or 'children, kitchen, church'.

What were the aims of Nazi policies towards women?

The Nazis had 3 main aims for women:

• ❖ To give up their jobs.
• ❖ To stay at home.
• ❖ The most important aim was to have children and raise a 'master race' which would make Germany stronger.

How should a women look according to the Nazis?

The Nazis believed women should look natural and the ideal woman would be Aryan. This meant they should wear simple, practical clothes, have their hair in plaits or a bun, and wear flat shoes. Women should not wear makeup or smoke.

How did Nazi propaganda target women?

Nazi propaganda targeted women by promoting the message that a women's role was that of a housewife and mother. The perfect women would look natural and have a large family.

Who was in charge of Nazi policies towards women?

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was appointed national women's leader of Germany in 1934. She was responsible for implementing the government's policies on women.

What organisations were set up by the Nazis for women?

The German Women's Enterprise would control the 230 women's organisations that existed in Germany by uniting them into one group. The women's organisations would have to join the German Women's Enterprise or be shut down. The new organisation gave classes on household topics and the skills of motherhood.

How did the Nazis encourage women to marry?

Women were encouraged to marry by the Nazis. The party introduced the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage in 1933. This offered loans of 1,000 marks to couples. For each of the first four children, the couple could keep a quarter of the loan.

How did the Nazis encourage women to have children?

There were 4 key ways in which the Nazis encouraged women to have children:

• ❖ Family allowances were made available to those on low incomes.
• ❖ The Nazis set up the Lebensborn, or Fountain of Life, programme. This involved women having a child with a member of the SS.
• ❖ Rewards were given to women that had large families. The Mother's Cross was awarded on Hitler's mother's birthday, 12th August. A bronze medal was awarded for four or five children. If a women had six or seven children, she received the silver medal. Gold was reserved for eight or more.
• ❖ The law was changed in 1938 to allow divorce if a husband or wife could not have children. This led to an increase in divorce rates by 1939.

How did the Nazis encourage women to stay at home?

There were 3 main different ways in which the Nazi regime encouraged women not to work:

• ❖ They banned women from entering certain professions. For example, women were forbidden from medicine, working as a civil servant and teaching from 1933 and banned from the legal system from 1936.
• ❖ They used propaganda to persuade women to stay home and focus on 'Kinder, Kűche, Kirche', or 'children, kitchen, church'.
• ❖ Educational opportunities were restricted by controlling the curriculum at school and universities were restricted in how many women they could accept. Only 10% of the enrolled students could be women.

How effective were Nazi policies towards women?

The Nazi policies had varying degrees of effectiveness:

• ❖ Many women did respond positively to the policies, giving up their jobs and having more children in order to be awarded the Cross of Honour of the German Mother.
• ❖ Other women were not entirely convinced, and missed their jobs and other aspects of their pre-Nazi lives.
• ❖ However, the effectiveness was nevertheless short-lived when the war broke out in 1939, as there became the need for women to return to work.
• ❖ The number of female workers increased from five million in 1933 to seven million in 1939.

Did the role of women change during the Second World War in Nazi Germany?

The Second World War had a significant impact on the role of German women in 6 main ways:

• ❖ Although the Nazis believed a woman's place was in the home, women were needed in industry to fill the shortages left by men joining the armed forces.
• ❖ There were two ways the role of women changed during the Second World War.
• ❖ From June 1941, women who had previously been in paid work and had no children were ordered to register for work.
• ❖ From 1943, with the introduction of 'total war', all women aged between 17 and 45 had to register. This brought half a million women into the workforce.
• ❖ By 1945, women made up 60% of the workforce.
• ❖ It also affected them psychologically, such as living with the constant fear of hearing a loved one had died or dealing with food shortages.