oint out that the increase in women's rights during the Weimar period was only apparent, and that improved economic and political status for women was really a matter of tokenism and rhetoric for all parties. Whatever aspirations women might have had were overcome by a system--German, not specifically Nazi--that was not progressive but that was both romantic in temperament and patriarchal in philosophy. All of Germany's competing political parties appealed to women voters, but none, especially the Nazis, gave women positions of power. In this connection, Koonz (1976b) notes that Nazi women during the Weimar period actually preferred traditional sex roles and took a specifically anti-feminist stance. The result, according to Bridenthal and Koonz (1976) was that women's rights were put into the background in German politics in general and in Nazi politics in particular. Instead, the parties espoused the ideology of the family. By and large, women appear to have
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