Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Women and the Family
in Nazi Germany
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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