PATRICIA CHONG
Gender Based Persecutions in Nazi Germany
Semiotic Significance:
Central to Nazi ideology
was the belief that the problems of Germany the loss of World War I etc.
were due to "ill reproduction." Accordingly, the "solution"
lay in reproduction based on a clear racial and gender order. This is
why so much of National Socialist policy was geared towards reestablishing
Aryan women in the domestic sphere. Aryan women thus entered the Nazi
discourse as "mothers of the race" which is why the independent
"New Woman," symbolic of blurring gender roles, had to be destroyed.
The Third Reich attempted to transform their "Mother" figure
into a reality via social, political and economics means that encouraged
all women to return to the home, and also pressured women of the "superior"
race to procreate, while also trying to limit the procreation of "inferior"
races.
Issues regarding a woman's control
over her body are far from being resolved, as is most prevalently illustrated
in the ongoing pro-life vs pro-choice debate. U.S. President George W.
Bush has repeatedly voiced his intentions to overturn landmark decisions
such as Roe vs. Wade and this debate will once again be brought to the
forefront. As seen in the case of the Third Reich, a woman's control over
her body does not begin or end there, but is indicative of a larger attitude
towards gender roles and women's roles in society.
Considering the vast amount
of historical research done on the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, there
is little in comparison on the genderbased persecutions that also took
place. Inherent to Third Reich ideology was the designation of Aryans
as the "superior" race versus Jews, Slavs, Gypsies etc., but
also the designation of the male sex as superior 1. Nazism
viewed biology race and sex as replacing "artificial" divisions
such as class 2. This is why race and gender persecutions were
intertwined as both were "rationally" based upon notions of
biology as influenced by the ideas of Darwin and Malthus although their
ideas were ultimately perverted at the hands of the Nazis. If Germany's
postWorld War I problems stemmed from ill reproduction, as the National
Socialists believed, accordingly, proper reproduction, "based on
a clear racial and gender order" was the solution 3. Women
had entered the discourse of Nazi ideology as "mothers of the race"
and had been found "guilty of racial degeneration" 4.
This is why so much Nazi policy was geared toward the private domestic
sphere of women, both Aryan women and non-Aryan. A double edged systematic
persecution took place which discouraged so-called "inferior"
women from reproducing, while encouraging Aryan woman to do so. A similar
distinction is made by Gisela Bock in her famous essay, "Racism and
Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization and the State,"
as sexist racism versus racist sexism 5. Sexist
racism meaning that non-Aryan women were "prohibited" from procreating
because of their "inferior" race. Racist sexism meaning that
Aryan women were urged to procreate as members of the "superior"
race. However, Nazi propaganda geared to either inhibit or promote reproduction
were one and the same:
And the strongest pressure on such acceptable women to procreate,
to create an orderly household for husband and children, and to accept
dependency on the breadwinner perhaps came not so much from the continuous
propaganda about "valuable motherhood," but precisely from
its opposite: the negative propaganda and policy that barred unwelcome,
poor and deviant women from procreation and marriage. 6
This systematic coercion took many forms. Politically, the Nazi state
intervened in the private lives of men and women,
non-Aryan and Aryan, enacting laws and establishing government organizations
that pressured inferior women not to bear children and Aryan women to
do so. Economically, the state tried to undermine women financially and
there were monetary rewards, as well as punishments, for Aryan women depending
on if they would follow state policy. Socially, the Third Reich attempted
to shape culture in such a manner as to mould women into Nazi ideals of
motherhood. Clearly, these divisions are not isolated but overlap and
influence one another in creating support of the Third Reich ideology
of proper gender roles and separate spheres. Thus, the "superior"
Aryan woman was subject to Third Reich political, economic and social
persecution as she was forced to return to the private domestic sphere
as "mother."
Nazism was born out of a reaction
to the Weimar Republic and World War I, and it is crucial to comprehend
this historical context. The great irony of Nazism is that such an extreme
right wing political theory arose from the ashes of the Weimar Republic,
which was considered to be one of the most progressive governments of
its time 7. For the purpose of this essay, it is important
to know that the Weimar Republic believed in equal rights for both sexes.
This commitment to sexual equality was put into action since seven to
ten percent of the Reichstag (the German government) were women, which
was a high percentage relative to the time 8. With the outbreak
of the World War I new roles for women opened up as men went off to fight.
Women were now earning higher wages than ever before though still not
equal to men 9. They were entering into new fields of work
that had been traditionally closed off to them as women. Women were economically,
politically and socially independent and the "New Woman" was
born. Yet, these freedoms were short lived. The image of the "New
Woman" in Germany was soon coopted by Nazi propaganda as a "symbol
of degeneracy." With Germany's defeat in World War I, many sought
to blame the loss on the homefront. The blame fell upon many people such
as Marxists, Communists, Jews, supporters of the Weimar Republic and the
New Woman. 10 The Third Reich capitalized on the appearance
of the independent New Woman in the social, economic and political sphere
just when Germany had been defeated. As the economy crashed with the Depression
made worse by the War Guilt Clause of the Treaty of Versailles
requiring Germany to pay all war reparations, 11 the Nazis
were able to provide simple answers to a disillusioned nation. If the
Holocaust was to "cleanse" the German nation of "racially
inferior" peoples, then the persecution of the New Woman was to "cleanse"
Germany of the "inferior sex" who had violated prescribed gender
roles and had partook in the public domain of men. If proper breeding
was to be the solution to Germany's problems, then the Nazis had to ensure
that the non-Aryan races did not reproduce and that the Aryans did, which
required men and women to fulfill their designated gender roles. This
is another reason why homosexuals were also persecuted by the Nazis, not
only did homosexuals fail to reproduce but their very existence called
into question the legitimacy of gender roles. The Third Reich's simple
dichotomy of superior/inferior in terms of German/nonGerman, male/female,
heterosexual/homosexual etc. provided an extremely seductive answer to
people because of its simplicity.
The Third Reich sought to re-emphasize
gender roles by enacting laws and establishing government organizations
that pressured all woman to retreat back into the private domestic sphere.
Nazis passed four laws regarding the civil service in an attempt to limit
women in the workplace. 12 Consequently, only women over thirty
five could legally work in the civil service and then only at lower pay.
As most women had children when they were younger than thirty five, the
Nazis were not as concerned about older women in the workplace. Explicitly
in violation of the Weimar constitution, a law was passed that allowed
for the firing of women who were the "second-earners" in the
family. 13 Thus, by law, a married woman whose husband worked
could not herself. The Law to Decrease Unemployment of stated that
women should be employed "in households, as far as possible."
14 This law effectively made it illegal for women to work in "male"
businesses such as rolling mills and mines where women had previously
been employed. 15 Women in professional occupations were also
persecuted. Though only five percent of physicians (considered a "male"
occupation) were women, when abortion was made illegal for Aryan women,
female doctors were overwhelming the majority of those brought to court.
This illustrates how the law was used to persecute women who worked at
"male" jobs. 16 With these laws women found themselves
being "purged" from the workplace by coworkers, similar to how
Jews had been. 17 The Nazi laws that forced Aryan women back
into the domestic sphere also sought to legalize the inferior position
of Aryan women to Aryan men. This is evident in a law that required an
unwed Aryan woman giving up her child for adoption to tell her future
husband about it. 18 However, a man in the same situation was
not obliged to tell his future wife. The very need to enact these laws
restricting women's political rights would suggest that the majority of
women were not buying into the Nazi ideas of womanhood, and had to be
legally stripped of their rights before returning back to the domestic
sphere. However, even then, it is questionable as to what degree women
adopted the status of secondary citizens.
As German women saw their legal
rights in the public sphere restricted there were also government organizations
established to control sexuality and reproduction. The National Socialists
attacked the Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science that
advocated "less rigid sexual identities" as this ran contrary
to Third Reich belief. 19 The link between sexual behaviour
and the control of female reproduction is evident with the establishment
of the Reich's Central Agency for the Struggle Against Homosexuality
and Abortion by the Gestapo Chief, Heinrich Himmler. 20
Homosexuality and Aryan abortions were seen as deviant behaviours as both
ran contrary to Nazi reproduction ideology. Homosexuals were persecuted
by the Nazi regime and put in concentration camps despite their race.
The issue of abortion was more ambivalent because it was legal for "inferior"
groups but illegal for Aryan women. 21 The Nazi government
even monitored hospital miscarriage lists to ensure that abortions were
not being passed off as miscarriages. 22 After two abortion
laws were passed there was a sixty five percent increase in convictions
in the next half decade. 23 However, many Aryan women defied
Nazi propaganda of motherhood and were willing to take the dangerous risks
in order to obtain abortions, thus pointing to the fact that not all women
believed in the Nazi ideal of motherhood. For example, in Alison Owings'
Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich, a German nurse named
Frau Emmi Heinrich recounts how many Aryan women attempted suicide rather
than become unwed mothers because abortion was illegal. 24
She also explains how a friend who had suffered a miscarriage had to deal
not only with her own grief but with proving to the Nazis that she had
not had an abortion. 25 It is evident that Aryan women were
also persecuted under Nazi rule.
The Third Reich had also enacted
state policies regarding sterilization. The Law for the Prevention
of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was introduced with its controversial
paragraph twelve that forced sterilization upon "inferior" races.
26 According to the Third Reich, anywhere from five to thirty percent
of the population should be sterilized and eventually two hundred and
fifty sterilization courts were set up. 27 These targeted "inferior"
races but Aryan women were affected as it was made clear that any deviant
behaviour, even as a member of the "superior" race, would be
punishable with sterilization. 28 These are just a few of the
laws and government organizations that attempted to control women. The
Aryan woman found her reproductive capabilities celebrated at the cost
of all her other freedoms. Thus, Nazism put the "Aryan Woman on a
pedestal, then surrounded her by attentive armed guards." 29
Along with Third Reich laws
and organizations, there were also economic pressures that coerced women
into leaving the male workplace, as well as financial rewards and penalties
for dissenting from the Nazi ideal of womanhood. There were two models
for working Aryan women to follow: the Blood and Soil model and
the Social Engineering model. 30 The Blood and Soil
model called for women to work in positions that were extensions of their
role as mother such as a social worker, teacher, nurse etc. The Social
Engineering model was couched in the assumed inferior nature of women
which meant that women should work in positions of low skill and therefore,
of low pay. The Social Engineering model was more prevalent and this is
evident in the Law to Reduce Unemployment that stated women were
to be eliminated from male jobs and put into "onerous, low paying"
jobs that "correspond[ed] to the nature and talents of women."
31 Women were seen as perfect workers for the assemblyline jobs
so crucial to the war machine. 32 Yet, unlike during World
War I, the Nazis justified paying women significantly less this time by
introducing pay based on gender rather than skill, status or difficulty.
33 The logic being that women's work required so little thought
they should not be paid much. 34 Furthermore, this type of
work was beneficial to women as they could use their free mental time
to think of their families. This idea resulted in such absurd regulations
such as not allowing women to look inside factory machinery. 35
Female assemblyline work had a high turnover rate which allowed for task
declassification and resulted in even lower wages. Since many women stayed
only a short time at such job, it ensured that the wages of any individual
would not rise significantly. 36 There were other types of
work for women, such as agriculture, but women also found their wages
slashed. After only three years of Nazi rule the advances made by the
Weimar Republic had disappeared and women working in agriculture were
paid half of what men were paid doing the same work. 37 The
underlying idea behind destroying the economically independent New Woman
was that it would make the male, once again, the breadwinner. Women then
became more economically dependent upon men and more willing to marry
and come under control. 38
As the Third Reich attempted
to make Aryan women less financially independent, they also established
a system of monetary benefits for conforming to the Nazi ideal of motherhood.
In the Law to Reduce Unemployment of 1933, marriage loans of one
thousand marks were given to newly married couples if the Aryan wife agreed
to quit her job. 39 The loan would be repaid after three months
at a one percent interest. With the birth of the first child the loan
was reduced by a quarter and interest stopped for a year. This continued
with the second child and so on. Between 1933-1935 over 617,000 marriage
loans were applied for. 40 Income taxes were reduced by fifteen
percent for each child from the gross income while parents with six children
or more paid no personal income tax at all. 41 The Nazis also
made it easier to claim someone as a dependent since the age limit was
raised to the age of twenty five. There were also child allowances of
sixty five marks. 42 All these monetary benefits were made
payable to the husband as the Nazis did not want women in charge of family
finances. Thus, the gender division was pronounced. However, not all Aryan
women were granted benefits which emphasizes the primary importance put
on breeding by the Third Reich. In Frauen, Frau Wilhelmine Haferkamp
recounts how another Aryan classmate was refused any benefits, as she
was deemed unfit:
She did not get a penny from Hitler . . .because they all had
inherited diseases. You had to be healthy, the children had to be healthy,
so that you can propagate your heirs and no sick ones. I got all that
child money and she got nothing at all. She often said, "I can't
help it." 43
This illustrates how Aryan women were also persecuted like the "inferior"
races if they did not conform to Nazi ideals.
The nature of these so-called
"benefits" is questionable because often the "rewards"
were in fact not bonuses at all but fulfilling basic needs. Thus, punishment
was often in the form of exclusion from basic services. In Frauen,
Frau Wilhelmine Haferkamp recalls how children had to join the BdM League
of German Girls, a division of the Hitler Youth: "You were not promoted
[to the next grade], you had no advantages at all, you didn't have this
and didn't have that. You had to be in the BdM." 44
How successful these incentives were is debatable as two thirds of married
couples could not apply for marriage loans because of eugenic restrictions
and of those who did there was a three percent denial rate. 45
Furthermore, from 1933 to 1943 two million "paid off" their
loans with an average of 1.1 children.
The political and economic pressures
worked together along with social propaganda to create a culture in which
women would accept their inferior nature and act as breeders of a new
race. Nazism was a "male phenomenon" and women could participate
by doing typically female activities like sewing and cooking to raise
money for the party. 46 Nevertheless, the Third Reich's cultural
climate was so geared toward reproduction that even active Nazi women
who were not childbearers were considered "inferior". 47
Indeed, in the history of the National Socialists there was a strong women's
faction which produced such famous female leaders as Guida Diehl and Elsbeth
Zander. 48 As the Nazi movement became more established, and
thus in less need of female support, the female division was marginalized
and came under male control because no woman could be independent, no
matter how devoted a Nazi she was. 49 This is illustrated in
Adolph Hitler's speech to The National Socialist Women's Organization
in 1934. 50 In it he states that the Nazi women's movement
"contains only one point and that is: the child." Hitler goes
on to speak about the separate spheres, calling upon both genders to fulfill
"[their] natural mission." Women "naturally" were
of the heart, of feeling and of faith. Men were of intellect and reason.
Hitler subverts what appears to be an insulting division by claiming that
Germany's problems arose because men had been seduced by reason, while
women remained true because of their emotions and lack of reason:
Woman has proved to us that she knows best! In those times when
the great movement appeared to many to be faltering and everyone was
sworn against us, depth and certainty of feeling proved to be more stable
factors than refined intellect and reputed learning. The deepest knowledge
is in effect rooted in the world of feeling. 51
Initially, it appears Hitler is praising women, but really, he is claiming
that women are emotion based rather than reason based. This is made obvious
when Hitler equates the idea of the degenerate New Woman who has become
less emotion based but instead has been influenced by "Jewish intellectualism."
52 Furthermore, Hitler goes on to say that the world of politics
was "unworthy of" women, and it would corrupt them, when in
fact, he deemed women, as creatures of emotions, to be "unworthy
of" politics.
The perfect symbol of Nazi Germany
was a "healthy fertile mother at home tending five or six children
while the father worked or went off to war" and this message was
indoctrinated upon Aryan women in a variety of social ways. 53
On an individual level, girls were taught Nazi slogans that dictated proper
behaviour: "The German woman doesn't smoke" and "The German
woman brings children into the world." 54 The image of
the Third Reich woman and her "sturdy peasant family" graced
the covers of Nazi magazines. 55 To increase cultural pressure
the Third Reich created Mother's Day on August 12th,
Hitler's mother's birthday, and made it a national holiday so that the
mother became a celebrated figure. 56 Heinrich Himmler attempted
to do the same when he created the Mother Cross award which honoured
mothers of large families. An Aryan woman received the bronze for five
children, silver for six, gold for seven or more. 57 The medal
was worn on a blue ribbon around the neck and Nazi Youth were to salute
any woman bearing this award. 58
Frau Wilhelmine Haferkamp in
Frauen recalls how she was "'really proud of it'" and
how the Third Reich arranged to have a celebratory party for her.
59 Haferhamp was "'praised, honoured, esteemed,'" but
when asked by the author/interviewer Owings if she wanted that many children,
she responded: "'Ne. I did not want so many children."
60 Haferhamp recounted how if she had sex with her husband she would
"tremble" for weeks afterward, thinking to herself, "'I
hope I get my period.'" Obviously, not all Aryan women wanted to
become the Nazi ideals of womanhood, even if they had won the Mother
Cross.
This propaganda could only change
the older generation of women who had lived during the Weimar Republic
to a degree as they had something to compare their present lives to. The
Nazis simply imposed a ten percent quota at universities limiting the
number of women who could enroll. 61 The Third Reich attempted
to indoctrinate the younger women through the education system. All teachers
had to join the Nazi Teachers' Union and follow a dictated curriculum
reinforcing women's roles as procreators. 62 A "deschooling"
was to occur, meaning that the new goal of education was to "redirect
students' values away from 'decadent' Weimar individualism and toward
Nazi self sacrifice." The education system changed the goals for
young girls and it tried to stop them from choosing an independent life.
63 A girl was to be taught to become a mother; nothing else, and
this had to start at a young age. Sports were important as they kept girls
fit and more likely to bear healthy children. Math and Latin were replaced
with home economics, as a domestic woman would only need the latter. Once
out of school there were few options left for women as one woman in Frauen
explains that if a woman left home without a husband her options were
either to become a nun or an actress. 64 There was no choice
for Aryan women and they were trapped in their role as mothers. Thus,
there were social pressures placed upon Aryan women to adhere to the Nazi
ideology of the German woman.
Through social, economic and
political pressures the Third Reich attempted to force Aryan women to
adhere to the idea of separate spheres, which regarded women as inferior
and relegated them back into the home. Aryan women were persecuted as
they were expected to behave in a Nazi ordained manner, in short, women
were to return to the private domestic sphere as mothers. This also entailed
accepting the inferior nature of women to men. The gendernbased persecutions
that took place under the Third Reich are less known even though it was
a key point in Nazi rhetoric of proper breeding. It is surprising how
little historical research has been done on this topic. Naturally, there
is the issue of emotional "baggage" as German historians' study
of their collective past is of course their own personal past. 65
The designating of collective guilt upon Germans becomes more complicated
when dealing with the genders as it is simply not a clear cut case of
Aryan women as "guilty" and nonAryan women as not. Indeed, the
current historical research done on women tends to judge those "who
lived in/under/through the Third Reich" as either "victims or
perpetrators." 66 It is as if we are once again falling
prey to the black and white answers of a overly simplistic dichotomy:
My mother did not resist, she also did nothing which would suggest
a conscious opposition to the National Socialist system. She also did
not murder anybody. She only remained silent and determined certain
parts of National Socialist practical politics to be good and useful.
The rest did not interest her, and she didn't want to be involved .
. . Those are our mothers! 67
This either/or attitude oversimplifies complex issues and hinders any
attempt to gauge women's experience of Nazism. Indeed, more work needs
to be done on the role of Aryan and non-Aryan women in the Third Reich.
Endnotes:
Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman and Marion Kaplan, eds When Biology
Became Destiny: Women In Weimar and Nazi Germany, (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1985): 276.
Bridenthal, Biology, 212.
Bonnie G. Smith, Changing Lives: Women In European History Since 1700,
(USA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1989): 464.
Bridenthal, Biology, 272.
Bridenthal, Biology, 288.
Ibid., 267.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 202.
Ibid., 2-3.
Ibid., 7-8.
Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich, (USA: Rutgers
University Press, 1999), xxix.
Bridenthal, Biology, 20.
Ibid.,
Ibid., 241.
Smith, Lives, 465.
Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, Family Life, and Nazi
Ideology, 1919-1945, (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), 187.
Bridenthal, Biology, 241.
Owings, Lives, 311.
Smith, Lives, 465.
Bridenthal, Biology, 276.
Smith, Lives, 466.
Ibid., 465.
Bridenthal, Biology, 275.
Owings. Frauen, 311.
Ibid., 424.
Bridenthal, Biology, 276.
Smith, Lives, 466.
Bridenthal, Biology, 271.
Owings, Frauen, xxxiv.
Bridenthal, Biology, 239.
Smith, Lives, 465.
Ibid., 468.
Smith, 468.
Bridenthal, 256.
Ibid., 257.
Ibid., 242.
Koonz, Mothers, 198.
Smith, Lives, 465.
Ibid., 464.
Bridenthal, Biology, 242-243.
Koonz, Motherland, 185-186.
Bridenthal, Biology, 285.
Owings, Frauen, 24.
Ibid., 19.
Bridenthal, Biology, 285.
Smith, Lives, 463-464
Bridenthal, Biology, 210.
Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, eds "Speech to National Socialisst
Women's Organization," Women, the Family and Freedom, Vol. II, 1880-1950,
(Stanford, 1983), 377.
Bridenthal, Biology, 226.
Bell, "Speech," 375-378.
Ibid., 375.
Ibid., 376.
Smith, Lives, 464.
Owings, Frauen, 173.
Koonz, Mothers, 177.
Ibid., 186.
Ibid., 186.
Smith, Lives, 464.
Owings, Frauen, 24.
Owings, Frauen, 27.
Bridenthal, Biology, 20
Koonz, Mothers, 208.
Ibid., 244-245.
Owings, Frauen, xxx.
Ibid., xii.
Bridenthal, Biology, 350
Atina Grossman, "Feminist Debates about Women and National Socialism,"
Gender & History, Vol. III, Number III, (Great Britian, 1991), 351.
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