Download Women in Nazi Germany

How did the Nazis try to control
women?
Learning objective – to be able to explain
how the Nazis treated women in their
regime.
I can describe some
of the features of
how the Nazis tried
to control women.
Grade D
I can explain the
impact of the Nazis
policy
towards
women.
Grade B
I can explain and
assess the impact of
Nazis policy towards
women.
Grade A
Starter – What does this source reveal about the
Nazis attitude towards women?
What was the position of women
in Weimar Germany?
The position of women changed during the
1920s in a number of ways.
The main changes were –
•
•
•
•
All women over the age of 20 could
vote.
Women could stand for political
representation – 20 women had seats in
the Reichstag during the 1920s.
Women were more likely to go out and
work. This included the professions –
100,000 female teachers in Germany by
1933.
Women gained more social freedoms,
such as fashion choices and remaining
single.
What was the Nazi view on the place
of women in society?
The Nazis felt that women should serve
society by taking on the responsibility of
domestic duties, such as looking after the
family and being good mothers.
In the Nazi vision, women should –
• Stay healthy.
• Learn housecraft.
• Marry and enable their husbands to be
useful workers.
• Have children and bring them up to be
good Germans.
• Stay at home and concentrate on
domestic matters and stay out of work
and politics.
What were the key ideas behind the
Nazis vision of women?
The formation of the German Women’s
Enterprise which arranged classes and
broadcasts teaching good motherhood.
Women were encouraged to leave work
and concentrate on the 3 Ks – Kinder,
Küche, Kirche.
Some professional women were forced to
leave their jobs, such as doctors and
teachers.
How did the Nazis manage their policy
towards women?
Gertrud Scholz-Klink was appointed Head of
the Nazis Women Bureau in 1934.
She was the model Aryan women that the
Nazis promoted. She had blonde hair, blue
eyes and in good physical condition.
However, her powers were very limited and
she was expected to do as she was told by
the Nazi Party. She was excluded from key
decision making issues, such as the
conscription of female labour in 1942.
How did the Nazis encourage women to
focus upon marriage and child rearing?
The birth rate in Germany was falling in the 1930s and the Nazis saw this as a
problem. They introduced a number of schemes to try and reverse this.
The Law for the Encouragement to Marry passed in 1933 gave loans of 1000
marks to young couples who got married and the wife would leave work. The
loan could be kept if the couple produced four children.
The Mother’s Cross was an award to mothers who had a number of children
with a bronze cross for four, silver cross for six and a gold cross for eight or
more children. All were awarded on Hitler’s mother’s birthday – 12th April.
In 1935, the Lebensborn [fountain of life] programme was initiated. This
encouraged childbirth for families of SS men providing first nurseries and
financial aid. Later it offered SS men ‘pure Aryan’ women to start a family
with.
What role did propaganda play in encouraging
support for the Nazis view on women?
The Nazis had very fixed ideas about what
women should look like. Using make up,
smoking in public, wearing trousers and
slimming were frowned upon.
However, the Nazis knew it was impossible
to impose such views on the public.
Although, those Germans loyal to the Nazis
did publicly chastise women who were
deemed acting outside the Nazi vision.
Instead the Nazis produced a huge
propaganda campaign to persuade women
to act in the way they wanted. It had a very
limited impact.
How far was the Nazi policy towards
women successful?
Between 1933 and 1936, there was a 30%
increase in the birth rate. Although there was an
increase in births outside marriage – frowned
upon at the time.
The booming economy by the late 1930s saw a
shortage of workers and women stepped into the
gap. The rate of married women who were
working increased from 4.2 million in 1933 to 6.2
million by 1939.
Employers encouraged this as women worked for
lower wages compared with men and wages
were rising faster than prices, allowing for
families to buy more goods. This helped the ‘feel
good’ factor in the Nazi regime for many women.
Task
This word cloud summarises
the content of the Nazi vision
of women.
In pairs, find the 10 terms in
the word cloud and using the
PowerPoint and the sheet
given to you, list the 10
terms and, for each term,
write their relevance to the
Nazi vision of women in two
sentences.
Terms
Kinder
Küche
Kirche
Marriage
Birth Rate
Mother’s Cross
German Women’s Enterprise
Scholz-Klink
Lebensborn
Domestic Work
Tasks
Complete a mind map outlining the Nazi Party’s policy towards women.
Your mind map should include the following features –
• Central title ‘ The Nazis and women’.
• Four arms with the headings – Weimar and Women, Birth and
Marriage, Women and Work and Success and Failure.
• No more than 20 words.
• Colour coded.
Extension Task
Design a propaganda poster that summarises the position of women in
the Nazi State.
Plenary – a touch of Scrabble
What are the three key words
from this lesson that sums up
your learning?
Which word has the highest
value if you used in a game of
Scrabble?
Compare with the person
next to you. Which word has
the highest value?