Nazi Women

The Nazis believed their mission was to 'masculinize' life in Germany. Hermann Goering told women, 'Take a pot, a dustpan and a broom, and marry a man,' but many still became active participants in murder and mayhem. From the Reich Bride Schools through the Bund Deutscher Mädel and the bizarre Lebensborn Aryan breeding programme to the brothels of the Sicherheitsdienst, this book covers the lives of women in the Third Reich, concentrating on those who sought personal power and influence amid the chaos and death.

This fascinating book examines the position of women under the Nazis. The National Socialist movement was essentially male-dominated, with a fixed conception of the role women should play in society; while man was the warrior and breadwinner, woman was to be the homemaker and childbearer. The Nazi obsession with questions of race led to their insisting that women should be encouraged by every means to bear children for Germany, since Germany’s declining birth rate in the 1920s was in stark contrast with the prolific rates among the 'inferior' peoples of eastern Europe, who were seen by the Nazis as Germany’s foes. Thus, women were to be relieved of the need to enter paid employment after marriage, while higher education, which could lead to ambitions for a professional career, was to be closed to girls, or, at best, available to an exceptional few. All Nazi policies concerning women ultimately stemmed from the Party’s view that the German birth rate must be dramatically raised.

Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Bormann, Hess – names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Gerda and Ilse ... These are the women behind the infamous men – complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarrelled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the mighty Führer himself. And yet they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husband's murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the slave labour in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables. Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skilfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.

From extensive research, including a remarkable interview with the unrepentant chief of Hitler’s Women’s Bureau, this book traces the roles played by women – as followers, victims and resisters – in the rise of Nazism. Originally publishing in 1987, it is an important contribution to the understanding of women’s status, culpability, resistance and victimisation at all levels of German society, and a record of astonishing ironies and paradoxical morality, of compromise and courage, of submission and survival.

From images of jubilant mothers offering the Nazi salute, to Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels, women in Hitler’s Germany and their role as supporters and guarantors of the Third Reich continue to exert a particular fascination. This account moves away from the stereotypes to provide a more complete picture of how they experienced Nazism in peacetime and at war. What was the status and role of women in pre-Nazi Germany and how did different groups of women respond to the Nazi project in practice? Jill Stephenson looks at the social, cultural and economic organisation of women’s lives under Nazism, and assesses opposing claims that German women were either victims or villains of National Socialism.

A history of German women in the Holocaust reveals their roles as plunderers, witnesses, and actual executioners on the Eastern front, describing how nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives responded to what they believed to be Nazi opportunities only to perform brutal duties.

Examination of the role of German women in borderlands activism in Germany's eastern regions before 1939 and their involvement in Nazi measures to Germanize occupied Poland during World War II. Harvey analyses the function of female activism within Nazi imperialism, its significance and the extent to which women embraced policies intended to segregate Germans from non-Germans and to persecute Poles and Jews. She also explores the ways in which Germans after 1945 remembered the Nazi East.

This fascinating book examines the position of women under the Nazis. Policies concerning women ultimately stemmed from the Party's view that the German birth rate must be dramatically raised.