Women in Nazi Germany

Question 1

What was the Nazi view on the role of women?

Answer 1

• Hitler considered them of equal importance to men.
• Nazis believed women should adopt the traditional roles of mother + housewife, devoting their lives to feeding and rearing their familes.

Question 2

What was the “look” that women were expected to adopt in Nazi Germany?

Answer 2

The natural look:

• Long skirts
• Tied/plaited hair
• Strength so that hips could sustain multiple births
• Make-up + died hair = no go

Question 3

Who was a key individual in shaping the role of women in Nazi Germany?

Answer 3

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, Reich women’s leader from 1934.

Question 4

What role did Gertrud Scholtz-Klink play in shaping the role of women in Nazi Germany?

Answer 4

• Set out to make women “servants” of the state.
• Insisted that all women’s organisations join to form the German Women’s enterprise, so that the Nazi message could be easily propogated.

Question 5

What was the Nazis’ view on women and work?

Answer 5

• Men = main breadwinners
• Women in work = taking a man’s job
• Disapproval of women in professions like medicine + law
• Women told to focus on 3 Ks: “Kinder, Kuche, Kirche” (“children, kitchen, church”)

Question 6

How did the role of women in work change in the 1930s?

Answer 6

• 1933: women banned from proffesional jobs (education, medicine, civil service)
• By end of 1934, ~360,000 had given up work
• 1936: women couldn’t worl in law or even do jury service

Question 7

How did education change for women in Nazi Germany?

Answer 7

• Girls in school trained for motherhood over work, e.g. ironing, cooking
• 1932-39: number of girls in higher education decreased by 65%
• 1937: girls’ grammar schools banned

Question 8

Not all women were persuaded by the Nazi ideal. What did these women think?

Answer 8

• They believed the ideas degraded them, making them inferior and damaged families.
• They thought Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was a slave of the Nazi state who didn’t represent the true spirit of womanhood.

Question 9

Name 2 programmes and 4 laws which were targeted towards women in Nazi Germany.

Answer 9

• The Mother’s Cross (MutterKreuz)
• Lebensborn (Fountain of Life)
• 1933 law for the encouragement of marraige
• 1933 Sterilisation Law: non-Ayran women sterilised
• 1938 change in divorce law
• 1943: providing abortions to Ayran women made an offence

Question 10

What was German name for the Mother’s Cross?

Answer 10

Mutterkreuz.

Question 11

What was the Mother’s Cross?

Answer 11

• A programme where a cross would be awarded to mothers for exceptional merit to the German nation (having children).
• 4 = bronze, 6 = silver, 8 = gold

Question 12

What was the German term for the Fountain of Life association?

Answer 12

Lebensborn.

Question 13

What was the Fountain of Life?

Answer 13

• An association with the goal of raising the birth rate of racially pure Aryan children.
• Women were encouraged to reproduce with SS guards to create the purest possible gene pool.
• They received money + support for doing this.
• Only 40% of women who applied passed the racial purity test and were granted admission to the program.

Question 14

How was the divorce law changed in 1938?

Answer 14

It was made easier for a man to divorce a woman if she was unable to have children.

Question 15

What did the 1933 law for the encouragement of marraige do?

Answer 15

• Loaned women up to 1000 marks (8 months’ wages) for marrying.
• For each child born, 1/4 of the loan was wiped out; 4 or more children was seen as optimal.
• Women encouraged to stay at home.