In the eyes of Hitler and his acolytes, Nazi women were expected to be loyal and subservient breeding machines

According to Joseph Goebbels, “the mission of women” was to be “beautiful and to bring children into the world”. Consequently, in the interests of creating and promoting an ‘Aryan race’ the Nazis dispensed with traditional Christian-based morality and instead focused on ensuring that children were racially pure – regardless of whether their parents were married or not – and encouraging ‘racially unsuitable’ or childless couples to divorce.

Nazi values were instilled in Germany’s female population from a young age, with millions of girls attending the Nazi-run Jungmädelbund (Young Girls’ League) from 10 to 14, before enrolling in the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) until they reached 18, where they were prepared for marriage and motherhood. Adult women continued to be indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda through the women’s branch of the Nazi Party called the Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft (the National Socialist Women’s League). Run by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink – who told her followers that “our weapon is the soup ladle” – the Frauenschaft emphasised the importance of motherhood, running courses on maternal health, cooking and childcare.

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Hitler himself enthusiastically espoused the importance of staying home and raising children, saying: “There is no greater honour for a woman than to be mother to the sons and daughters of a people. This is the highest nobility that she can attain.” Although, of course, the Nazis only wanted the ‘right’ kind of women to be bearing children: ‘Aryan’ women, with blonde hair, blue eyes and, ideally, generous hips suited to childbirth.

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Eugenics: a toxic history

Adam Rutherford discusses the dark – and often surprising – history of the eugenics movement

Eugenics: a toxic history

Episode 1287 • 42 min

The Nazis introduced a host of measures to encourage women to produce lots of children. The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage saw newly married couples receive a 1,000-mark loan, of which they could keep 250 marks for every “pure Aryan” baby they bore. Any mother who gave birth to four children was awarded the Mother’s Cross; if she gave birth to six more, Hitler himself would stand as the 10th child’s godfather. If any ‘Aryan’ woman had an abortion, however, she would be severely punished. Indeed, during World War II, special courts across Nazi Germany could impose the death penalty for any woman who did so.

Feminist associations were shut down by the Nazis – though they did not abolish women’s suffrage. Hitler and the rest of the party were at pains to portray women as still having a vital role in society. He declared: “If we say the world of the man is his commitment, his struggle on behalf of the community, we could then perhaps say that the world of the woman is a smaller world, for her world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. But where would the big world be if no one wanted to look after the small world? How could the big world continue to exist, if there was no one to make the task of caring for the small world the centre of their lives? No, the big world rests upon this small world! The big world cannot survive if the small world is not secure.”

Generally, German women were not required, or encouraged, to work. Nazi ideology was backed up by generous family allowances to enable soldiers’ wives to devote themselves to bringing up their children while their husbands were away, so they saw no need to work outside the home, a decision supported by the Nazi government. Consequently, around seven million forced labourers were transported to Germany from Poland and other occupied countries to keep the German war effort going.

In 1943, German women aged 17–45 were required to register for work, although only around a third of those eligible did so. The 400,000 or so German women who did take on jobs during World War II tended to work in armaments factories, in agriculture or as auxiliaries in the country’s military. Around 3,700 women were guards in concentration camps, with some even working on the Nazis’ secret sterilisation and euthanasia programme – known as Aktion T4. Irmgard Huber, for instance, was the chief nurse at the Hadamar Institute; she was later sentenced as an accomplice to murder in at least 120 cases.

UNNATURAL SELECTION

Obsessed with eugenics, the SS hatched a disturbing plan to preserve ‘racial purity’

To help create a so-called ‘master race’, in 1936 the leaders of the SS unveiled a new, state-sponsored programme: Lebensborn (Fountain of Life). As part of this policy, SS members – married or not – were encouraged to father at least four offspring. The resulting Lebensborn babies were the property of the state, financially supported, cared for in purpose-made institutions or adopted by state-approved couples, with the idea that they would be taught to be supremely loyal to the Nazi Party. Around 20,000 babies were born as a result of this programme, mostly in Norway and Germany.

Hildegard Trutz took part in Lebensborn, and was sent to a Bavarian castle where she lived in luxury and fell pregnant by an anonymous SS officer. She said: “As both the father of my child and I believed completely in the importance of what we were doing, we had no shame or inhibitions of any kind.” Her baby son was taken from her after two weeks to go to a dedicated SS children’s home. She never saw him again.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602157&forum_id=2#48136870)