Women and the Family in Nazi Germany

Women and the Family in Nazi Germany

1. Aims of Nazi Policies:

   • Wanted German families to have more children, seeing as this would give Germany a larger army and help it to become world power
   • The Three K's
     • Kinder (children), Kueche (kitchen), Kirche (church)
     • Believed women belonged in the home
     • Wanted women to fulfill traditional roles as wives and mothers

2. Development:

   • Weimar Germany liberated women
     • They had equal rights with men, e.g. voting,
     • Many women worked for a living
   • Nazi propaganda based around the image of an ideal woman
     • Look after her husband and children
     • Would not wear make-up
     • Would not smoke
     • Would not wear trousers
     • Would be Aryan, fit and healthy
     • Ideally would have lots of children
   • Women were actively encouraged to have bigger families
     • Women were discouraged from entering the workplace
     • Loans were available to married women who agreed not to work
     • More maternity benefits and family allowences
     • Birth control and abortion banned
     • Awards given to women with many children, e.g. the Honour Cross of the German Mother
     • Single Aryan women could agree to have a child with an Aryan SS soldier and would be awarded for this

3. Non-Aryan Women

   • Nazi Policy towards these women was the opposite to Aryan women
   • Wanted birth rate to fall or stop
     • Almost 100,000 women forcibly streralised under the law for the prevention of diseased offspring
       • E.g. women with genetic conditions, prostitutes, alcoholics, gypsies, etc.

4. Rearmament

   • As war became more likely, women were needed in work
     • Particularly in factories and on farms
   • Far less German women worked as part of the war effort than women in other countries
   • War work became compulsory for adult women in 1942

5. How successful?

   • Numbers of working women fell dramatically
   • Birth rate didn't boom as much as Nazis intended it to; it boomed far more in the 1920's
   • Rearmament forced the Nazis to backtrack on their policy about women in the workplace
   • Racial policy was successful. "Impure" were stopped from having children by sterelising them of killing them and their children