Nazi Ideology & Women in Germany

The purpose of this research is to examine various issues surrounding the fact that fascist ideology in Third-Reich Germany honored mothers in a particular way. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which Nazi ideology penetrated the social and cultural position of women in Germany when Hitler came to power, and then to discuss how the policies that flowed from such ideology actually affected women's status in the Third Reich.

Koonz and Bridenthal (1977) note a gradual ideological shift in Nazi Germany's treatment of the idea of motherhood. They say that Nazi ideologues saw women as the anchor of highly traditional family values from the beginning of their quest for political power in Germany, but that official policy toward women in general and mothers in particular changed to fit political fashion and expediency. Their review of government sources and histories of women's organizations in Europe shows that, before 1933, the Nazis admitted women inside the struggle for power, and gave them organizational and ideological autonomy, particularly when organizing other women into the party. But when Hitler finally came to power, the Nazi leaders replaced the autonomous organization women with others who followed the highly traditional family-virtue party line. Marriage and childbirth were emphasized at the expense of intellectual contributions, although as Germany moved toward war, large numbers of women were allowed to have civil service and factor

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olicy aspect of this for the Nazis was to give women's employment the label of self-sacrifice on behalf of family, country, people. Further to this point, Hermand (1984) points to a modern German novel that takes as its theme the Nazi concepts of idealized motherhood as an extension of the romantic German myth of matriarchy. Riemer and Fout (1980) reproduce a 1933 document written by a Nazi woman, Guida Diehl, Die deutsche Frau und der National Sozialismus, which illustrates how deeply ingrained Germanic myth was when Hitler achieved power, and to what extent apologists for Nazism were willing to manipulate logic and idealism for Hitler's sake. A new type of woman must be created through Germany's struggle for freedom. She must combine the features of the old [pagan] Germanic woman with those of the Christian German woman . . . Let us remember that our two epic poems, the Nibelungen and the Song of Gudrun, depict types of women which no other nation can boast. In the powerful Brunhilde we have a heroic woman who fights a life-and-death struggle . . . or let us take a look at the powerful women in the Norse legends with their chastity, their unshakable fidelity, their respected and equal position in the fighting peasantry . .

Category: Psychology - N