Women Historiography

Question 1

Wolfgang Benz

Answer 1

The image of women was shaped by the idealisation of a women’s role as a mother and keeper of the house, educator of the children and wife under her husband’s authority. Women were expected to procreate for the regime and the upbringing and education of girls was orientated twoards the ideal of future motherhood

Question 2

Lisa Pine

Answer 2

Marriage and childbirth became racial obligations rather than personal decisions, as the National Socialists systematically reduced the functions of the family to the single task of reproduction. They aimed to shatter the most intimate group, the family, and to place it as a breeding and rearing instituiton completely at the service of the totalitarian state. According to this view, the status of women was seriously diminshed by Nazi policies.

Question 3

Alexander De Grand

Answer 3

Puts forward the view that the facist position had always been that class distinctions were artifical and superficial but that biologically determined gender roles were immutable. The conservative and stabilising elements of Nazi ideology - to keep women in their place and maintain them as pillars of traditional hierarchial society - could not be reconciled with the political, social and racial ambitions of the regime.

Question 4

Tim Kirk

Answer 4

Suggests that in the Nazi regime the status of weomen were markedly diminished by marriage policies. These policies made women more dependent on marriage economically. Women stood to lose further from such legislation, which enabled judges to free men of the obligation to pay maintenance. In practice then, new marriage laws shifted the balance sharply in favour of men.

Question 5

Bridenthal

Answer 5

States that “many women remained resourceful and resistant to state efforts to shape their behaviour”.