The regimentation of women at the heart of satellite organizations of the Nazi Party, as the Bund Deutscher Mädel or the NS-Frauenschaft, had the ultimate goal of encouraging the cohesion of the "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft).
For example, Gertrud von Seidlitz, a widow of a noble family, donated 30,000 marks to the party in 1923;[14] and Helene Bechstein, who had an estate on the Obersalzberg, facilitated Hitler's acquisition of the property Wachenfeld.
[24] Historian Pierre Ayçoberry [fr] points out that "this offensive offered the double advantage of pleasing their male colleagues worried by this competition, and returned to private life more than 100,000 people proud of their success, the majority of whom were voters who supported the political left".
[27] In 1936, a law was passed banning certain high-level positions in the judicial system to women (notably judge and prosecutor, through Hitler's personal intervention[28]) and the medical field.
Female doctors were no longer allowed to practice, until their loss had a harmful effect on health needs and some were recalled to work; also dissolved was the Association of Medical Women, which was absorbed into its male counterpart.
With respect to the widespread tendency to underestimate the threat that the regime presented, the historian Claudia Koonz highlights the popular proverb of the era: "The soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked".
[8] Women who were the most resolute in their opposition either set their sights on emigration, or, if they took an active stance, risked being arrested and interned, and possibly executed, the same as male opponents of the regime.
[24] The Nazi woman was an important part of Adolf Hitler's vision of German society (the Volksgemeinschaft) and should mirror its ideals: racially pure and physically robust.
She should not work outside of the home, and should be devoted to motherhood, following the slogan of the former emperor William II of Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche, meaning "Children, kitchen, church".
In a document published in 1934, The Nine Commandments of the Workers' Struggle, Hermann Goering bluntly summarizes the future role of German women: "Take a pot, a dustpan and a broom and marry a man".
This was anti-feminism in the sense that the Nazis considered political rights granted to women (access to high-level positions for example) as incompatible with the nature of reproduction, the only role within which they could blossom and best serve the interests of the nation.
[34][35] These ideals differed to the conservative and patriarchal norms that had prevailed during the German Empire, in that rather than being sidelined in society, women were expected to participate at a foundational level in the roles of mother and spouse.
[37] Concerning abortion, access to services was quickly prohibited, and in 1935, the medical profession became obliged to report stillbirths to the Regional Office for State Health, who would further investigate the loss of a child.
In 1943 the ministers of the Interior and Justice enacted the law "Protection of Marriage, Family and Motherhood", which made provisions for the death penalty for mothers convicted of infanticide.
[44] The education manual Das kommende Deutschland notes that: The Jungmädel (young girl) must know a) the date and place of the birth of the Führer, and be able to recount his life.
Nazi propaganda published pamphlets that enjoined all German women to avoid sexual relations with all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood.
However, on June 5, 1942, the Minister of Finance Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, a conservative politician, threatened to cut grants to the second school, if it did not become a simple internship for adolescents, rejecting all political education for girls.
Young girls were trained for certain employment (social work, cleaning) or farming (Ernteeinsatz, helping with harvest) and practised sports; as the education manual Das kommende Deutschland shows, the physical performance demanded was sometimes the same as those of the boys (for example, to run 60 meters in less than 12 seconds).
He extended the existing laws of the Reich, concerning the protection of minors and of employment standards for the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel) Osteinsatz,[58] for whom such work was compulsory.
They took part, under the same authority as prisoners of war (Hiwis), as auxiliary personnel of the army (Behelfspersonal) and they were assigned to duties not only within the heart of the German Reich, but also within the German-occupied territories, for example in the General government of Poland, in France, in Spain and later in Yugoslavia, in Greece and in Romania.
Coming mostly from lower- or middle-class social origins, they previously worked in traditional professions (hairdresser, teacher, for example) but were, in contrast to men who were required to fulfill military service, driven by a sincere desire to reach the female wing of the SS, the SS-Gefolge.
On October 7, 1944, members of the Sonderkommando, 250 prisoners responsible for the bodies of persons after gassing, rose up; they had procured explosives stolen by a Kommando of young Jewish women (Ala Gertner, Regina Safir, Estera Wajsblum and Roza Robota) who worked in the armament factories of the Union Werke.
Freya von Moltke, Mildred Harnack-Fish and Libertas Schulze-Boysen participated in the Resistance group Kreisau Circle and Red Orchestra; the last two were arrested and executed.
Winifred Wagner directed the highly publicized Bayreuth Festival, and soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was promoted as the "Nazi diva", as noted by an American newspaper.
[83] Famed Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, outraged by finding the body of a small girl murdered following a gang rape, wrote a scathing poem to mark the moment for posterity (right).
An example is discernible in what Stalin once asked Yugoslav's communist leader Milovan Djilas, "Can’t he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?
The women took pleasure in politics and eugenics of the state, which promised financial assistance if the birth rate was high, so they would help to stabilize the system "by preserving the illusion of love in an environment of hate.
"[87] In addition, if Gisela Bock denounced the work of her colleague as "anti-feminist", others as Adelheid von Saldern [de] refuse to stop at a strict choice between complicity and oppression and are more interested in how Nazism included women in their project for Germany.
"[88] Recent work from historian Wendy Lower (consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), demonstrates that a substantial number of women were accomplices to Nazi atrocities, and sometimes direct participants.
[90] Such realities make it abundantly clear that by the time the war ended, German women had traversed the full-circle of being once sheltered incubators for the Aryan future to effectual contributors in the Nazi concentration camp system.