2 - women & the family

Question 1

Nazi view of women

Answer 1

• should look after family & home
• expected to have large families (growing population = sign of wealth, & supply soldiers)
• ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’

Question 2

‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’

Answer 2

‘children, kitchen, church’

Question 3

women in the Weimar republic

Answer 3

gone out unaccompanied, drunk, smoked in nightclubs, taken up employment, birth rate dropped

Question 4

ideal Nazi woman

Answer 4

• blonde, athletic, fit
• big hips (child-bearing)
• expected not to smoke
• avoided use of makeup
• wore clothes with full skirts & flat shoes
• be a good cook & able use leftovers (make a 1-dish meal at least once a month)

Question 5

Nazi policies to 1937

Answer 5

• 1933 -> interest-free loans offered (600 Reichsmarks) to marry & give up work
• labour exchanges encouraged to discriminate
• excluded from politics
• Nazi Women’s Organisation established (anti-feminist ideology)
• 1934 -> proportion of girls allowed in higher education limited (extended in 1937)
• grammar school education for girls abolished
• banned from studying Latin (requirement for university)

Question 6

Nazi policies after 1937

Answer 6

• had to change due to labour shortage & Four Year Plan
• required for factory work & able to rejoin professions
• number of working women = 5.7mill (1937) -> 7.1mill (1939)
• number of female doctors increased
• girls encouraged to become teachers
• women in work also allowed marriage loans
• 1942 -> 53% workforce = female
• women took on military responsibilities (eg. auxiliaries, manning searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries)

Question 7

How much were women offered to marry & give up work?

Answer 7

600 Reichsmarks

Question 8

Nazi measures to increase the size of families

Answer 8

• strict anti-abortion laws & limited contraception
• improved maternity benefits & family allowances
• gave marriage loans worth half a year’s salary for each child
• reduced taxes in proportion to number of children in a family
• ‘Mother’s Cross’ raised status of motherhood
• ‘I have donated a child to the Führer’

Question 9

Lebensborn programme (1935)

Answer 9

• aimed to ‘improve racial standards’
• unmarried mothers of ‘good racial background’ were cared for
• Aryan girls were impregnated by SS members
• 11,000 children born under the policy

Question 10

When was Lebensborn introduced?

Answer 10

1935

Question 11

success of Nazi policies regarding women & the family

Answer 11

+ status of women increased
+ birth rate increased (although possibly due to end of Depression)
- marriage figures didn’t increase
- divorce rates rose
- women denied many opportunities