Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany

Charu Gupta
With the rise of National Socialism, in whose ideology the degradation and depersonalization of women was
implicit, the process of women's emancipation in Germany suffered a setback. In addressing the larger question
of what fascism does to gender this paper deals specifically with the image of women in Nazi ideology and whether
this imagery underwent a change during the course of the second world war. It examines also the controversy
surrounding the role of women in Hitler's rise to power and the voices of dissent. The paper concludes by drawing
some partial Indian analogues to the portrayal of women in Nazi Germany, particularly the way communal organisa-
tions look at women.
I
Introduction
W I T H the coming of National Socialism, the process of female
emancipation was reversed, her degradation and depersonalisa-tion
became an element of German ideology' The desirability of
motherhood for all German women became the central issue and
family was seen as the germ cell of the nation, class or volk. The lack
of a com-peting conceptual framework also con-tributed to the
middle class's vulnerability to Nazi family ideology. As is stated:
"The petit bourgeois is asocial: the fellow human to him is human
material, usable subject matter which may be manipulated... His girl
as his beloved is sexual animal, as German woman she is a
mechanical womb; enthroned as heroic patriarch, the man towers
over the family?
1
With communalism and fundamentalism in India acquiring almost
fascistic overtones, the current relevance of this topic cannot be
overlooked. What does fascism do to gender? The specific questions
that have been dealt in this paper are the image of women in Nazi
ideology and whether this imagery changed during the second world
war? Was it the women's vote that brought Hitler to power? What
were the voices of protest? Lastly, one cannot help but draw some
partial analogues with the way com-munal organisations in India
look at women.
I I
M o t h e r h o o d a n d Sterilisation as
R a c i s m and Sexism
Women appeard in the Nazi world view, primarily as mothers
either as Aryan mothers, to be encouraged to have more children and
to be made fit to do so by the new emphasis on physical training
which the Nazis introduced in schools, workplaces and organisations
such as the League of German Girls; or as 'inferior' mothers, as
Jewish, gypsy, handicapped or other 'degenerate' mothers and
potential mothers, to be discouraged or prevented from having
children and to be rigidly separated from the favoured majority of the
population.
2
Thus reproduction, or as Gisela Bock prefers to call it, 'the
reproductive aspect of women's unwaged housework', was directly
effected by state policy.
3
Thus in the context
of Nazis, race and
gender, racism and
sexism are closely
connected with each
other. The issue of
motherhood went
hand in hand with
compulsory
sterilisation and had
a close bearing to a
sort of 'race hygiene'
culture It becomes
important to study
this aspect not only
due to the emphasis
on the sup-posedly
'natural' or
'biological' domains
of women but also
because here
specifically
traditionalism and
anti-feminism
combined effectively
with racism.
The obsession
with motherhood
comes out clearly in
Nazi writings. Just as
men served the state
by fighting, so
women served by
bearing children. The
theme of childbirth
as an analogue to
battle was a popular
one in Nazi ideology
'Every child that a
woman brings into
the world is a battle,
a battle waged for the
existence of her
peopled But Nazi
leaders were aware
that the exclusive
function of
childbearing
demeaned women in
the eyes of some
critics. Thus Hitler
felt compelled to
proclaim in his 1935
Party Day speech to
the Frauenschaft,
"When our op-
ponents say: You
degrade women by
assign-ing them no
other task than that of
childbearing, then I
answer that it is not
degrading to a
woman to be a
mother. On the
contrary, it is her
greatest honour.
There is nothing
nobler for a woman
than to be the
mother of the sons
and daughters of the
people.''
5
Gregor
Strasser wrote that
National Socialism
intended to restore
the natural order, to
accord women the
respect they
deserved as mothers
and housewives.
6
Of course, this
went hand in hand
with an extreme
separation of
spheres for men and
women. There was a
distancing of the
household from the
'productive' sphere,
a point that 1 will
discuss later The
notion o f 'private
woman' and 'public
man'; mascu-
line/feminine;
strong/weak
dichotomy; was a
part of this concept
of sexual polarity.
The married pair
came to be viewed
as com-plementary:
husband
representing
strength,
domination, the
world; the wife
weakness, sexuality,
subordination, the
home, i e, her
supposedly 'natural'
or 'biological'
domains. This
stereotypical role
clearly fixed
women's position in
the home and in the
family.
Thus Adolf Hitler
stated, " I f we say
the world of the man
is the state, the world
of the man is his
commitment, we
could then perhaps
say that the world of
the women is a
smaller world for her
world is her husband,
her family, her
children and her
home. But
where would the big world be if no-one wanted to look after the
small world? How could the big world continue to exist, if there was
no-one to make the task of caring for the small world the centre of
their lives? No, the big world rests upon this small world! The big
world cannot survive if the small world is not secure,''
7
Alfred Rosenberg, the self-proclaimed Nazi philosopher,
represented the female sex as the 'lyrical' pole, the male as the
'architectural!
Oppression of women in Nazi Germany in fact furnishes the most
extreme case of anti-feminism in the 20th century. There was a
multiplicity of responses towards women and the family, i e, multiple
exploitation and simultaneous repressive protection.
A hysterical protective anxiety on behalf of guileless German
women was one of the hallmarks of Hitler's fantasies on the sub-ject
of 'Jewish pollution of the German racial stock', etc, in Mein Kampf
and it formed one of the most persistent themes in later Nazi anti-
scmitic propaganda. The purity of the blood, the numerical power,
the rigour of the race were ideological goals of such high priority that
all women's acti-vities other than breeding were relegated in party
rhetoric to secondary significance.'
There was in fact a
close connection bet-
ween Nazi pro-natal
ism for 'desirable'
births and its anti-
natalism for
'undesirable' ones.
Women were thus
hailed as 'mothers of
the race', or, in stark
contrast, vilified, as
the ones guilty of
'racial degeneration'.
There was a complex
relationship between
racism and sexism
and they were not
just two forms of
exploitation. Before
going into the
specificities of this,
one or two points
must be made clear.
When the Nazis
came to power, they
were confronted by
a declining birth
rate.
9
They stated
that the problem
stemmed from the
women's
movement. Such
women's organi-
sations based on
bourgeois liberalism
were abhorrent to
the Nazis. It was
believed that the
women's movement
was part of an inter-
national Jewish
conspiracy to
subvert the German
family and thus
destroy the German
race.
10
The
movement, it
claimed was en-
couraging women to
assert their economic
independence and to
neglect their proper
task of producing
children. It was
spreading the
feminine doctrines
of pacifism,
democracy and
'materialism'. By
encourag-
WS-40
Economic
and Political
Weekly April 27, 1991
ing contraception and abortion and so
lowering the birth rate, it was attacking the
very existence of the German people. Thus
the feminist movement incorporated in the
BDF, was defamed as a tool of the 'Jewish
world conspiracy' to destroy the unity and
existence of the German people.
11
The Nazi policy thus took specific
measures to Increase the birth rate of the
pure Aryan race. Various medals, tax con-
cessions and other privileges were
conferred upon mothers. A special
marriage loan pro-gramme was introduced
as early as the sum-mer of 1933 to
eliminate women from the gainful labour
force and to encourage marriage and
procreation. It was an effec-tive instrument
which promised interest-free loans to
young racially fit couples about to marry as
long as the woman promised not to work
until the loan was repaid. Richard M
Titmuss described the campaign as "the
most tremendous experiment ever attemp-
ted consciously to change biological
trends".
12
In an attempt to encourage births without
spending money, the government honoured
prolific German mothers in a variety of
ways. Mother's Day, an idea which had
spread from the United States to Germany
in 1923, became a major holiday; even at
the end of the war, the party found the
resources to celebrate Mother's Day with
pomp and circumstance. The government
awarded an Honour Cross to prolific
mothers and ordered the Hitler Youth to
salute women wearing the medal.
13
Later on in the Third Reich (i e, in the
late 1930s) breeding camps' were
established where selected, unmarried
'racially valuable' Germans were sent for
the purpose of im-pregnating the women.
Those who did become pregnant could
await childbirth in special maternity homes
for unmarried mothers which the Nazis
provided under the so-called Lebensborn
scheme. In addition, towards the end of the
war, Hitler was even thinking of
introducing selective polygamy for the
purpose of making up the loss of men in the
war, 'improving the race' and rewarding the
all-male elite of the Thousand Year Reich.
However, the most sexist and also the
most effective was the anti-abortion cam-
paign. This acquires a special significance
in the light of the recent agitation witnessed
in the US between the pro-choice and anti-
abortion groups. The partial victory of the
anti-abortion lobby in this is a great threat
to the Womens' movement today. It not
only denies women a fundamental right
over their bodies and reproductive life, it
"also reduces them to mere child-bearers.
14
It has been argued that birth control
policies and abortion laws have generally
played a powerful role as a reinforcers
and perpetuators of sexist ideology. They
monitor a woman's 'reproductive and pro-
ductive' duties. They also reflect social
attitudes towards women, viewing them
primarily as mothers or as potential
mothers. In fact, medicine has the
dubious
distinction of shifting justification for
sexism from religion to bio-medicine,
thereby, taking it out of the realm of pre-
judice and putting it within the confines
of 'scientific' objectivity. The
interpretations medicine offers are
basically to legitimise the discrimination
of women and the-r con-tinuous
oppression under the guise of biological
determinism.
15
This partially helps in
explaining the phenomenon of scientific
racism and sexism in Nazi Germany.
To come back to the anti-abortion cam-
paign in Nazi Germany, on May 26, 1933,
two penal laws were introduced that pro-
hibited the availability of abortion facilities
and services. The Nazis banned contracep-
tives, closed birth control clinics and
increas-ed the penalties for abortion. From
1935 on, doctors and midwives were
obliged to notify the regional state health
office of every mis-carriage. Women's
names and addresses were then handed over
to the police who investi-gated the cases
suspected of being in actuality abortions.
16
There was a gradual rise in the birth
rate after 1933 and the Nazi population
planners saw it as proof of the completely
voluntary and spontaneous confidence of
the German people in the Reich, the
Fuhrer, the future, a confession which
could not be more beautiful than, in the
form of children of confidence.
However, this cannot be accepted fully.
Nazi and non-Nazi demographers agree on
the limited extent of the rise in the birth
rate.
17
Also the increase does not seem to
have been'the result of Nazi politics and
goals. As economic conditions improved,
voluntary births increased. One must also
not forget the coercive measure of pro-
natalism: forced labour for mothers through
the prohibition of ahortion for valuable,
'German-blooded' women. In fact, there is
some evidence, though locally limited, thai
after 1932 the rise in births nearly equalled
the decline in abortions.
18
A necessary corollary of anti-abortion was
race hygienic sterilisation. The glorification of
motherhood, which received public sup-port,
found its necessary counterpart, from the Nazi
perspective, in compulsory sterilisa-tion for the
sake of racial purity.
19
A new statute was
introduced in late spring 1933 to legalise
eugenic sterilisation and prohibit voluntary
sterilisation. Beyond this, a cabinet, headed by
Hitler passed a law on July 14, 1933, against
propagation of 'lives unworthy of life' called
the 'Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily
Diseased Off-spring'. According to official
German statistics, more than 5,00,000 people
were sterilised in the last few years; of these
30,000 cases resulted in death. There were also
5,000 'eugenic abortions' from 1933 to 1939.
The victims of sterilisation were evenly
divided between men and women, and came
typically from the lower classes. Of the
women sterilised, servants, unskilled or
poor workers, prostitutes, unmarried women
and most of all Jews were overrepresented.
These
women deviated from the norm of
'accept-able' gender behaviour. Proper
and orderly German workers of either
sex were less likely to become victims
of sterilisation; 'race hygiene'
contributed to the maintenance of the
class structure as well as the affirmation
of the Nazis' standards of proper gender
behaviour.
20
The use of force against those who did
not submit freely, was an accepted norm.
The minister of interior Wilhelm Frick
announc-ed, "We must have the courage
again to grade our people according to
its genetic values".
Popular vernacular expressed the
situation pungently. Eugenic sterilisation
was called Hitlerschnitt (Hitler's cut),
thereby linking it to an anti abortion policy
which refused abortions to women who
had already gone through two previous
ceasarian operations. Only after three of
these did a woman have the right to
abortion and then also only on the
condition that she also accepted the
Hiiterschnitt.
21
Also the campaign for
sterilisation had its subtle appeal to naive
belief in modern science, social rationality,
and planning.
22
Its criteria of inferiority
had at the centre concepts of 'value' and
'valuelcssness' that were related to the
social or racial 'body' and its productivity.
Now one comes to the crucial point that,
transcending older political partisanships,
prohibition of abortion and alongside com-
pulsory sterilisation, compulsory mother-
hood and prohibition of motherhoodfar
from contradicting each otherhad now
become two sides of a coherent policy
com-bining sexism and racism.
This also went hand-in-hand with the
Na/i image of seeing the woman as a
mother and not as a sexual parasite. She
was the breeder of races: 'To breed means
to create, by means of deliberation and
planned utilisation of all aids, a generation
which at least is not below the value of the
progenitor, and if possible, will improve the
stock from generation to generation!'
23
In
fact, in Mein Kampf Hitler glorified the
brutality of marital union for the sake of
breeding. Going by the method of the cattle
breeder, Richard Walter Datre (Hitler's
Reich leader of the peasants and minister of
agriculture) divided girls into four classes:
those well-suited for procreation, those less
well-suited, those hardly suited, and those
unfit.
24
As a soulless and anti-intellectual move-
ment, National Socialism could conceive of
love only in terms of lust and procreative
mechanics. Thus the main meaning and
pur-pose of marriage was the 'multiplication
and preservation of race and kind! In one of
his nightly reveries, Hitler asked
rhetorically: "Is there a more lovely
consecration of love, pray, than the birth of
a handsome babe glowing with health? . ..
Nature blesses the love of two beings by
giving them a child.. .
To my way of thinking the real ideal is
that two beings should unite for life and
that their love should be magnified by the
presence of children."
25
In fact female sexuality has always been
Economic and Political Weekly
April 27, 1991 WS-41
a source of concern in all patriarchal
societies. Medical theories of the late 19th
and early 20the century drew a rigid
distinc-tion between reproductivity and
sexuality. It was believed that the
development of reproductive powers and of
the material in-stincts could only take place
when sexuality itself was suppresed.
Women were told (by medical
theoreticians) that sexual feelings were
"unnatural, unwomanly, pathological and
probably detrimental to the supreme
function of reproduction".
26
However,
feminists have argued that mothering is part
of the operation of male domination: A
woman's lack of control of reproduction is
part of the social relations that define her
oppression.
27
Nazi Germany along with this emphasis
on motherhood considered the ideal woman
to be confined to Kinder, Kurche, Ktrche
(Children, Kitchen, Chruch). Thus it was
firmly believed that the major influence
of women in society was exerted through
the medium of the family, the basic cell
of the state (called keimzelle). Nazi
ideology granted women importance not
only in the family, but also as guardians
of racial purity. It was for this reason that
the Nazi image of women was not a
simple reconstruction of the Victorian
ideal. There was great emphasis on her
health, strength and grace. Thus she was
not frail and helpless, but strong,
vigorous, athletic. Thispoint will be
discussed in another part of my paper in
some detail. A l l this was sustained and
held together by a barrage of propaganda
in all forms.
What emerges from the above is the
fact that Nazi racism and sexism
concerned all women; the 'inferior' as
well as the Superior'. Racism was used to
impose sexism in the form of unwaged
houSework on Superior' women. On the
other hand the 'inferior' women became
targets of negative race hygiene. In fact,
modern sexism was established, below
the ideological surface of theories of
'woman's nature' and the 'cult of true
womanhood'. Thus in Nazi Germany,
racism and sexism went hand-in-hand
and all women were equally involved in
both, but with different experiences. They
were segregated through dual sides of the
same policy, a division that also worked
to segregate their forms of resistance to
sexism as well as racism.
28
Thus it was the reproductive capacities
of women that formed the core of the
Nazi pro-gramme as far as women were
concerned. But how was this imagery
reconciled at the time of the war?
I ll
Woman's Place in War
Women's lives werealtered by both
world wars of the 20th century. By
disrupting the normal lines of power and
social activity, the war opened up
unparalleled opportunities for women in
work and family decision-making and
made their work experiences very different
from men's. The war also pro-
duced experiences and images of horror
that later intensified male demands for
the soothing and procreative qualities
they expected of women. In contrast the
inter-war years brought into question
women's gains, especially their right to
work. The decades of the 1920s and
1930s saw renewed efforts to remove
married women from the work-force as
'double earners'.
Demobilisation removed thousands of
women from their wartime jobs and
retracted others into lower paying 'female'
areas, By creating unemployment and job
competition, demobilisation intensified
the antagonism between the sexes.
29
Nazi
Germany successfully fed on the post-
war disillusionment to push forward its
ideal for women.
The Nazis, in the 1920s and early 1930s,
called for the removal of women from all
areas of political and economic life and the
reversal of the gains women had made since
the beginning of the German feminist
move-ment in the 1860s.
30
Before going into the specificities of
this, it is important and necessary to give
a brief background and examine the
position of women in Germany after the
end of the first world war.
After and end of the war, there was a
numerical preponderence of women over
men. Some 1.7 million German male
soldiers had been killed in the first world
war. Thus, the years from 1916
(mobilisation for the war effort) to 1929
(onset of the world economic crisis) was a
period of intense and rapid tran-sition in
the employment patterns of those women
who did not work outside the home.
31
Germany actually embodied a profound
contradiction. On the one hand, the new
Constitution of the Weimar Republic ex-
pressed the best of liberal principles
pushed in the direction of democracy.
Guaranteeing equality before the law and
full political rights for women, as well as
labour protec-tion, it seemed to offer proof
of the triumph-of feminismwomen were
guaranteed equal access to public life. On
the other hand, Germany became the
home of the most anti-modern, violent and
racist movement in inter-war Europe.
Thus the lower middle class revolt of the
Nazis appeared to roll back the tide and
claims of the Republic to uphold women's
equality.
However, there are differences of
opinion among feminists and historians as
to whether women in the Weimar
Republic were actually as emancipated as
one has tended to assume.
Throughout the life of the Repblic,
there was a Rightist campaign which
proclaimed militant nationalism, coupled
with anti-semitism, as its hallmark. It
denigrated women's rights, seeing the
assumption of non-traditional roles by
women as 'un-German' as well.
In the field of employment also, the so-
called economic advancement dr 'emancipa-
tion' of women left a lot to be desired. Thus
Renate Bridenthal, writing in 1973 was
forc-
ed to argue that women in Germany in the
1920s, despite gaining the vote and other
rights, and despite the image portrayed on
film, in literature and (not least) in
historical writing, "lost status and relative
indepen-dence and, quite probably, a
corresponding sense of competence and self
worth".
32
During the Weimer Republic, the most bit-
ter contest for jobs occured in industry and
service. New jobs were created but increasing
numbers of lower middle class and working
class women worked in low-level, dead-end,
white-collar jobs, and those who worked in
industry did the most routine and underpaid
work. These jobs were thus less rewarding not
least because they involved a trivialisa tion of
the female image, in the process of which
German women came to approximate the
helpless, clinging and coy sex object.
33
Also, this had increased the pressure of
women's work and some women were
anxious to leave the exploitation of the
workplace and take care of their respon-
sibilities as wives and mothers.
34
At the same time, these new jobs were
more conspicuous than the older jobs. It
was erroneously believed at that time that
women were achieving economic success
by displac-ing men. Recent research has
proven other-wise.
35
But the political
significance of the contemporary view
and the backlash that it created remains.
What fascism has taught is that myths are
important and real if they influence how
people act. Even during demobilisation at
the end of the war, there had been public
outcry against women's work. It gathered
momentum in the un-settled economic
conditions of the early postwar period
and resurfaced when massive
unemployment, caused by the Great
Depression of 1929 in the United States,
appeared in Germany.
In reality, it was the process of job ra-
tionalisation that made women's work seem
threatening to men. In a burst of effort
beginning in the mid-1920s, Germany at-
tempted to discard old plants and equipment
and to modernise both industry and
agriculture in order to remain competitive in
the world market. Rationalisation entailed
the introduction of labour-saying machines,
standardisation of parts, and a flow produc-
tion design that moved goods more swiftly
along an assembly line, The new machinery
and techniques invaded not only the fac-
tories but even the offices. It meant that
work became divided into smaller, simpler
and more repetitive stages and permitted the
lining up of unskilled cheap labourthe
cheapest labourers were women.
Rationalisa-tion of production thus deskilled
labour, restructured and in certain cases
rigidified the sex-segregated labour market,
while also undermining traditional
hierarchies of skill.
36
However, what has been conclusively
pro-ved is the fact that women did not
replace men; instead, they took jobs in
expanding industries that had previously
employed women. Rationalisation did not
significantly increase the proportion of
women in the
WS-42 Economic
and Political Weekly April 27, 1991
paid labour force. What it did was to reorganise the labour market so as to tighten, even institutionalise, the modern
sexual divi-sion of labour.
37
But their work
was definitely more 'observable' now. In
popular mentalities' the women's question
became a man's question and a political and
an economic question; insofar as it aroused
general passions, leading to heated debates.
Yet this view misses out one crucial
point. There were some gains made
during this period but simultaneously a
part of the feminist movement also
became socially and politically
conservative. The radicalisation of the
feminist movement was superficial and
short-lived. The period of relative
stabilisation that allowed this culture
alternatively experienced as threatening
and exhilaratingto flourish was short-
lived. Despite the continued numerical
growth of feminist support, that support
itself was becoming rapidly less liberal in
character by 1914. The liberal institutions
in the Weimar Republic were in fact
extremely weak and fragile.
38
In this atmosphere of deteriorating
material conditions on the one hand and
some political benefits on the other,
many middle-class women's
organisations pushed towards a Rightist
direction.
39
The lower middle class revolt of the
Nazis was bound to make an impact in such
an at-mosphere. The Nazi regime had a
more clearly defined and more self-
conscious at-titude towards women than
perhaps any other modern government. It
was avowedly illiberal and protective in its
aims. In their eyes, women were that part of
the popula-tion on whom, if it was at all
possible, novel, major and general
hardships should not arbitrarily or
continuously be inflicted.
40
Thus on the one occasion, referring to
the Social Democrats, Hitler wrote: "The
so-called granting of equal rights which
Marxism demands, in reality does not
grant equal rights but constitutes a
deprivation of rights; since it draws the
woman into situa-tions that cannot
strengthen her position vis-a-vis both men
and societybut only weakens it.
41
Thus motherhood and "work consistent
with women's natural inclination", such
as teaching small children, nursing,
domestic service, cooking, cleaning, were
more to petty bourgeois Nazi tastes than
female emancipation, independence and
competi-tion with males. Here is how the
ABC of National Socialism expressed it:
"German women want to be wives
and'mothers...
They have no longing for the factory, no
longing for the office, no longing for the
parliament. A cosy home, a laving
husband and a flock of happy children is
closer to their heart"
42
Adolf Hitler stated, "The wonderful
thing about nature and providence is that
no con-flict between the sexes can occur
as long as each party performs the
function prescrib-ed for it by nature"
43
Here it is imperative to state the failure
of the feminist organisations in providing
an
effective argument to counter the Nazi
ideology. The largest bourgeois feminist
organisation was the BDF which to a large
extent had opened up to the Right, But
much worse was the failure of the SPD
(Social Democratic Party) and the KPD
(Com-munist Party). The campaign against
'dou-ble earners' in 1930 was supported
even by theSPD. More important, no well-
developed alternative discourse existed
among the left to compete with or counter
the conceptual framework provided by the
Nazis on issues of women's wage labour,
political participa-tion or access to higher
education.
The demise of SPD influence the
weaken-ing of trade unions, the stalemate
in the Reichstag, the pressures of
unemployment, and the failed agendas
meant further dis-illusionment. This also
brings into focus the weaknesses of the
traditional Left in tackl-ing gender
specific problems, which left an opening
which was very skillfully used by
Nazism.
The economic situation of Germany also
played a crucial role in the success of
Nazis. Historically, the Nazi regime was
partly the product and certainly the heir of
the ra-tionalisation of industry which was
follow-ed by economic depression and
mass un-employment. For the first time,
however, a government came to power with
an ideology that made sex-specific
employment an integral part of its
programme. It did not return sporadically to
legal means to restore the old 'balance
1
, as
had many previous governments. Rather, it
used a whole arsenal of instruments.
There was direct intervention of the state
in the size and structure of the labour
market. The depression had increased
unemployment and thus the campaign
against married women's employment
increased.
44
Also marriage loans were
sanc-tioned.
45
In short, the ideology of the
"innate differences between men and
women" and of 'sex-specific work' became
something like an official doctrine.
Yet, during the second world war, a grave
need was felt to employ women, since they
constiuted the largest available reserve of
workers. How was the Nazi ideology of con-
fining women to their homes or in 'proper'
jobs reconciled with this? Before proceeding,
it is important to remember that basic ideas
about the 'proper' roles of the sexes change
extremely slowly. But propaganda, through
popular media for public consumption, can
lead to sudden and temporary changes
(usually imposed by economic or political
need) without challenging traditional
assumptions about women's role in society
This in part can explain the lack of change in
the status of women after the crisis is over.
Thus, the Nazi image of women seems to
have remained relatively stable throughout
the period. However economic
determinants led to a shift in the Nazi
policy, without a corresponding etiange in
response to the 'ideal'.
46
These shifts found
their justifica-tion in the National Socialist
principle of the common good before the
individual good.
The mainstream Nazi conception of
women owed its flexibility to this
principle, for the ideal Nazi woman
owed service to the state above all else.
The blend of traditional ideas and Nazi
principles which characterised the main-
stream image gave it the necessary
resilience to meet changed economic
circumstances. Also, the various measures
that were adopted were aimed initially not
only to drive women away from
employment but also in the direction of
deskilling. All this had the potential to
attract different groups and these were
points on which the interests of various
partially competing pressure groups
convergedthat of industry, which wanted
a cheap and disciplined labour reserve for
assembly-line work and typing; that of
middle-class men, who wanted to get rid of
female competition for middle or high level
white collar jobs; that of middle-class
housewives who on the one hand sought
confirmation of their roles within the home
and on the other wanted domestics; tfiat of
agriculture, which wanted labourers with
no other choice of work; that of the regime,
which wanted a female population that
could reconcile the major goal of child
bear-ing with readiness to perform diverse
and vital tasks whenever men were in short
supply.
47
The Nazi authors believed that the best
situation for a woman was as full-time
housewife and mother. She was the
transmit-ter of German culture, guardian of
racial purity and supporter of national
economic policy. However, the employed
woman was by no means forgotten or
totally rejected. Thus it was stated that "no
woman who out of personal preference,
wants to take up a profession, will be
prevented from doing so.. Germany, the
great mother, embodied in National
Socialism, loves and needs every one of her
daughters: the one by her child's cradle and
the one behind the counter, the one at the
stove and the one at the lectern, the one in
the factory and the one in the laboratory,
every one who works honestly and
selflessly for the rise of our fatherland',
48
Especially at the time of the second world
war, tradition was redifined and women were
urged to be traditional by reclaiming their
economic importance. Thus the official Nazi
women's magazine announced, "We see the
woman as the eternal mother of our people,
but also as the working and fighting com-rade
of the man!" One woman wrote that women
still belonged primarily to the home, but then
proceeded to redifine 'home' to
include, 'Wherever Germany may need
us!'
49
What was also crucial and central was
the element of 'sacrifice'. This principle of
sacrifice for the state justified discrimina-
tion against employed women in the first
years of the Nazi regime as well as the en-
couragement of employment after 1936.
50
Also, according to another view, driven
into marriage and monotonous work,
returned to the labour market by the
narrowness and
Economic and
Political Weekly April 27, 1991 WS-43
dependence on the nuclear family and by
economic need, women provided the
desired flexible assembly line proletariat
that never could qualify for full social
security and protection.
51
But it must be remembered that Germany
failed in mobilissing its women labour force
during the war, especially if one compares it
with America. Germany's female labour
force increased by only 1 per cent from
1939 to 1944 (Figure). Though the Nazis
declared that woman's place was in the war,
their mobilisation propaganda was not as
forceful (if more fori bright) as that of
America. This was due to a number of
reasons. Hitler was opposed to conscription
of women. Also Nazi propaganda expressed
great concern with protecting women from
physical or mental strain that might
endanger them as mothers. All this resulted
in a contused government policy towards the
mobilising of women and an absence of
concerted pro-paganda campaigns. Also, the
financial in-centive for women to go back to
employment was quite poor. Germany made
no pretense of instituting an equal pay
policy.
52
However, inspite of this failure, the fact
remains that for the Nazis the second world
war was a total war, calling for total parti-
cipation. And this called for sacrifices on
the home front. Along with this, it is impor-
tant to state a point that 1 have referred to
earlier, i e, the Nazi image of women was
not a simple reconstruction of the Victorian
ideal. The woman as mother was healthy
and strong. The peasant woman who
laboured in the fields, cared for the garden
and poultry, cooked the meals, cleaned the
house, and bore numerous strong healthy
children was a prime example of the Nazi
ideal.
The heroic woman in war-time was one
who could take on a man's work in an
emergency and write a courageous letter to
her husband at the front without knowing
from where her next meal would come.
Thus Nazi ideology on women was, like
Nazi ideology in general, a strange mixture
of traditional conservative ideas, vague
long-ings for a mythical past and acceptance
of the needs of a modern economy. The
result of the blending of ideas and the
controversy among Nazi theorists was the
creation of an ideal that reflected the
conflicts and con-fusion confronting a
society in the process of modernisation.
The Nazis used biology to explain every
twist and turn of changing labour policy
with regard to women, ultimately relying on
a supposed material instinct to keep women
from being fully committed to the perma-
nent labour force-and at the same time
employing them when the need arose.
53
The adaptation of war images to the
demands of war allowed the German public
to accept the employment of women in 'un-
womanly' occupations without challenging
basic ideas about 'woman's place'. Also the
Nazi ideology promised women security
and meaningg in what was, from a
conservative
and nationalist point of view, a world gone
mad.
54
Thus there seems to be some substance
in the statement that women's vote was
crucial for the rise of Hitler.
IV
W o m e n : For or Against?
It is one of those classic questions that
historians have asked and pondered over
since the victory of Hitler. Was it really the
women's vote that brought Hitler to power?
55
Why did women support a move-ment
that was so obviously anti-feminst? Or did
they really support it so massively as has
been claimed? Were there no voices of pro'
test? If they were there, then what was the
form they took?
Unfortunately, while one has abundant
material on the first set of questions, infor-
mation regarding the second is extremely
dif-ficult to find.
Hitler stated in 1933, "Women have
always been among my staunchest sup-
porters. They feel my victory is their
victory."
56
As I have stated before, women
were numerically more in number after the
war
57
and thus they predominated in the
electorate as well. There does seem some
prima facie justification for the belief that
the female vote was important as an
element in the Nazis' success.
58
One of the most dubious but widely
accepted popular explanation for this
phenomenon is the supposed irrationality
of women. This analysis fails to consider
women's capacity for political thought and
action. There is an alleged tendency for
women to make politial choices on the
basis of candidates' personal qualities
rather than by reference to issues. Thus
women are assumed to 'personalise'
politics, denying its political content.
59
Thus Grunberger worte, "Hitler's
monkish persona engendered a great deal of
sexual hysteria among women. not least
among spinsters, who transmitted their
repressed yearnings into tantrymosc
adoration"
60
Fest also stated, the "over-
excited, distinctly hysterical tone" of
Hitler's meetings "sprang in the first place
from the excessive emotionalism of a
particular kind of elderly woman who
sought to activate the unsatisfied impulses
within her in the tumult of mighty political
demonstrations before the ecstatic figure of
Hitler",
61
In the same stream it has been suggested
that this was not one-sided. It has been
stated that Hitler exploited and manipulated
"specific female qualities, such as capacity
for self-surrender or demand for authority
and order''.
62
Hitler himself wrote in Mein
Kampf, "The people in their overwhelming
majority are so feminine by nature and at-
titude that sober reasoning determines their
thought and actions far less than emotions
and feelings".
63
However these arguments have no scien-
tific basis and there are many problems
with them. The views of Hitler and his
close
associates have been given an almost
distorted twist. The stereotype of women as
emotional and submissive (which was
prevalent in European society before the first
world war) is certainly reflected here. Also,
the sexism in such comments is very
obvious. It clearly shows the conservative
social ideology of the period. Also, there was
perfectly orchestrated, propaganda which
carefully stage-managed Hitler's rallies to
prove a particular point.
The other reason which appears much
more plausible is the one presented by some
feminists. Firstly, as I have shown women
were not as emancipated in the Weimar
Republic as one had tended to assume. Thus,
Hitler's views had a certain appeal for them.
The strongest view seems to me to be the
one recently presented by Claudia Koonz.
64
She explains the enthusiasm of millions of
women for Hitler's project due to the prac-
tical social importance now accorded to the
activities which they carried out anyway. To
be a mother for the Fatherland, to save
Germany, to put an end to wantthe ideals
interlocked, became synonymous with
being a woman. Consequently politics,
military affairs and science could be left to
men, because hearth and home did not
simply promise women something private
but made the familiar work of the private
itself a public sector.
Non-interference and the cultivation of
difference between the sexesthese were at
once a promise and a practice on the basis
of which women could erect their own
realm, sufficiently free and autonomous for
its explicit subordination to the male sphere
not to weigh so heavily. Common to all was
the enthusiasm for a specific women's
sphere, for motherhood as feminine con-
tribution to the national community. They
left politics to the men because they had
more important things to do, they fed 'the
holy flame of motherhood
1
, at last they
could call one another 'sister'.
65
Thus the
centre of Koonz's book is not women's
hysterical enthusiasm at the sight of Hitler,
a perspective familiar from many studies,
but the conviction they showed in carrying
out ordinary daily tasks.
Another recent work by Richard J
Evans
66
points to the fact that the feminist
movement itself in Germany had become
socially and politically conservative,
largely Left-liberal and progressive before
1914, by 1930 BDF had opened up to the
Right.
Some feminist historians, particularly in
Germany, have been reluctant to accept that
the feminist movement at this time, like
other bourgeois liberal associations, became
vulnerable to the lure of Nazi ideology.
Infact Irene Stoehr, a German feminist, has
argued that parliamentary democracy had
proved to be as bad as fascism for women
and thus there was no need for women to
oppose it. She extends the argument to
ridiculous limits when she states that the
feminist movement was in fact becoming
more radical. The feminist call of retreat
into the home is thus interpreted as a form
of
WS-44 Economic
and Political Weekly April 27, 1991
radicalism as they were withdrawing from
'masculine' politics.
67
However, history, facts, and above all the
women's movement have effectively proved
this argument to be wrong. To say that
women's position in Weimar and Nazi
Germany was the same is virtually criminal
in view of the degradation and murder
which millions of women suffered under
the Third Reich. It has been effectively
argued by Venska, another German feminist
that "using biological sex as the starting-
point for political judgments", which Stoehr
regards as a form of resistance, has been
part of the male reportoire since time im-
memorial, and it is more plausible when
women use it. In fact women's withdrawal
or rather, forced retreat, into a 'female'
political sphere of welfare and social work
may well have been a factor in allowing the
male political world to become so violent.
68
One or two points need to be made here.
The vast majority of Protestant women,
especially their leaders recognised their own
anti-emancipatory values, as well as their
anti-communism in Nazism and, given a
degree of autonomy, were willing to comply
with them.
69
At the same time it must be
remembered, that at times women were
reluctant to vote and many of them usually
voted for that party/person to whom the
male members of their family voted. Thus it
would be an oversimplification to state that
it was just women's vote that brought Hitler
to power or that women voted purely to
parties' policies on women's issues. The
Nazis won support because they were able
to appeal to many different sectors of the
population. Also as I have stated earlier
there was a degree of flexibility of Nazi
position on women and without compromis-
ing on their basic ideology, they were able
to induce certain changes and modify their
policies to suit their needs, thus leading to a
certain degree of confusion.
70
Voices of Protest
All this is not to say that there was no
resistance on the part of women. However
there was a failure to act and defy in a united
fashion. While each individual act of
resistance was courageous, it remained
relatively ineffectual.
Claudia Koonz, in her recent book, talks
of resistance by women in some detail.
7
' She
recounts the fate of individual women: their
work at first in open groups, then
underground, abroad, their arrest, their
execution. Their names form a c h a i n -
women who courageously did the obvious
when the obvious was outrageous, and were
murdered because of it. To learn about them
is heartening because they bear witness that
resistance was possible; their life stories are
also horrifying and crippling because they
show that resistance was impossible.
The resistance mainly came from com-
munists, socialists and Catholics. Some
were politically motivated or were inspired
by an
internalised moral code. But they did not
call for organised resistance against Hitler.
It has been pointed out that the Hitler-
Stalin Pact and the Concordat with the
Pope even tied down the enormous
international power which these
institutions should have had at their
command. The consequence was in-
dividual heroism without strategy, creating
countless martyrs.
There were, however, various acts and
forms of resistance. Working class women
slowed down on the job, middle-class
women could not be mobilised in the
workforce. Most women refused to have
large families. Whatever the motivation,
personal or political, women's recalcitrance
hindered the smooth functioning of the war
machine and made it impossible to achieve
a total mobilisation of 'Aryan' labour for
total wan Some women gave food or other
support to Jews, political fugitives, and
slave labourers, and a few hid and saved the
prosecuted.
72
The oral history of Katharina Jacob
shows how she operated the tools of
resistance: typewriters and mimeograph
machines that produced forbidden
leaflets.
73
Hanna Schmitt, a Swiss woman
active in the Inter-national Women's
League for Peace and Freedom, and had
worked closely with German feminists
during the Weimar period came out heavily
against Nazi rule in a docu-ment: The
Disfranchisement of Women.
74
A factory worker in Nazi Germany wrote
a letter entitled: 'DischargedWhen You
Are Too Old'. She stated: "... I was given
two weeks' notice along with nine women
workers. We are discharged and our places
taken- by men from the storm troopers'
ranks. They'll do women's work for
women's
wages... And what are we women supposed
10 do in the days to come? No Nazi can tell
us!"
75
Koonz states that because of social pre-
judice about their position and character,
women were particularly suited to the
dangerous and important work of passing
on information. Their coffee parties allow-
ed them to meet without arousing suspicion;
prams and shopping bags were convenient
means of transport. The view that women
were above all mothers capable of expres-
sing warmth but not provided with great
intelligence, meant that it was some time
before the security organs paid any atten-
tion to them. She concludes that the
women's resistance network was closer and
more effective than historians describe
76
The great women's organisations
particularly those of the churchesfailed in
the face of fascism, not least because the
conception and practice of culturally distinct
women's sphere, with motherhood and family
at their centre, suited them. The organisation
of the working class failed, not only because
international opposition had been blunted by
the Hitler-Stalin Pact, but also because they
recognised far too late the threat of a politics
which did not deal in terms of class and
property, but whose whole propaganda effort
was directed towards the sphere of
reproductiontowards the reproduction of a
'pure', 'healthy' race This politics was oriented
towards women's everyday lives, it elevated
them by drawing their activities into the
public sphere, and degraded them because at
the same time they remained in subordinate
and biologically determined areas. The
elevation meant that
Economic and Political Weekly
April 27, 1991
WS-45
they did not experience fascism only as a
threat, and that organised resistance, the
only kind which could have been
successful, did not take place.
But what about the Jewish women? At
the time of Weimar Republic, there was a
power-ful League of Jewish Women which
strug-gled to promote feminist goals within
the Jewish community and which belonged
to the organised bourgeois German
women's movement until the Nazis seized
power. After that they were increasingly
ostracised and persecuted as Jews. Previous
feminist solidarity vanished into thin air,
and strategies of sheer survival replaced the
earlier gender-specific concerns of Jewish
feminists.
77
Between 1933 and 1938 the League of
Jewish Women joined other Jewish
organisa-tions in a struggle for survival.
This endeavour took several forms: fighting
anti-semitism, preventing the disintegration
of communal organisations, ensuring the
con-tinuation of Jewish practices, helping
needy Jews and preparing people for
emigration.
78
It must also be remembered that the im-
possibly misogynist nature of the Third
Reich made feminism both futile and
dangerous. They also launched a self-
discipline campaign in which simplicity in
the appearance of women and girls was en-
couraged. They stressed on a simple stan-
dard of living. In a defensive posture, they
demonstrated a common characteristic of
oppressed minorities, blaming themselves
to a certain extent for their victimisation.
What emerges is that at the time of
crisis, racial identity prevailed over female
solidari-ty not only among Jews, where the
identity was imposed, but also among
German gen-tile women, who accepted
and sometimes embraced racist
divisions.
79
Voices of protest were definitely heard,
but they were not unified. The failure,
especially on the part of communists, to
organise a united and effective resistance is
crucial in the context of today as well; more
so for India, with increasing
communalisation of politics. Though the
Leeft has recognised the link between gender
class racial colonial exploitation
theoretically, in practice this linkage has been
integrated to mean virtual marginalisation of
a host of gender-specific problems as
'bourgeois feminism'. The Nazi experience
must teach us otherwise.
V I
Conclusion
One of the features of the Nazi state was
its totalitarian tendency to wipe out the
boundaries between public and private life
and to politicise every aspect of the indi-
vidual's existence.'
80
As time went on
women came to resist this politicisation of
the family. The stage was set for the cult of
domesticity which was a central feature of
German social and political life in the two
decades following the collapse of the Third
Reich.
Another enduring image of post-war
Germany was also one of women standing
in the ruins, engaging in a national clean up
campaign, again devoted to rebuilding
family and nation, and forgetting the very
recent past.
It has been argued by many feminists that
in various social functions the position and
identity of women took precedence; oppres-
sed whatever their particular circumstances.
Hence the importance of feminist con-
sciousness in any revolution.
81
But the
fascist experience has taught us that this is
just one side of the picture. The history of
German-Jewish women forces us to acknow-
ledge the salience of race in the current
struggles for women's equality.
Also, women's protest against fascism
would have consisted of joining together the
spheres politically; the sphere of reproduc-
tion should neither be abandoned, nor
merely be given public recognition. Its tasks
have to be articulated in a political context
and distributed as work for the whole of
society irrespective of gender, but in relation
to other tasks.
Fascism has also shown that public
images may change in moments of crisis but
they do not bring any major change because
the dominating imagery remained of
women's 'place' in the home or in the war,
signifying that little had changed.
Today, the neo-Nazi trends arc again
casting a shadow upon Germany. There are
around 70 neo-Nazi groups and associations
active. Together they run nine book pub-
lishing houses, 18 newspapers and magazine
establishments and 15 distribution services,
accounting for publications with a total
circulation of more than nine million
copies.
82
This alarming trend makes fascism
today a living reality and the lessons of
history cannot be forgotten.
I cannot end this paper without drawing
some Indian analogues (though partial) to
the portrayal of women in Nazi Germany.
During the colonial period, in the interaction
between colonialism and nationalism, the
woman's question held a key place. A new
identity for Indian womanhood was re-
constructed especially in the second half of
the 19th century which highlighted their
'Aryan' values. This was expressed in the
writings of R C Dutt, Bankim Chandra
Chatterji and most explicitly in Dayananda
Saraswali's. His writings at times bear a
similarity to the Nazi position on some
questions.
83
What was central to Dayananda's thinking
was his understanding of the role of women
in the maintenance of race. Motherhood for
Dayananda was the sole rationale of a
women's existence but what was crucial in
his concept of motherhood was its specific
role in the procreation and rearing of a
special breed of men. For example, the
Satyarth Prakash lays down a variety of
rules and regulations for ideal conception.
The birth of the child is also followed by a
series of regulations on food, cleanliness,
clothing, etc, for both mother and child.
84
This evokes the concept of motherhood in
Nazi Germany.
85
In present day India there is a visible
escalation of communal conflicts and an in-
creasing politicisafion of religious
identities. An important manifestation of
this funda-mentalism' of religion is a
fundamentalist assault on women's freedom
and identity. The Shah Bano and Roop
Kanwar incidents reveal the coming
together of fundamen-talism and a partisan
state and reflect the several patriarchies,
86
While these have been the most blatant
manifestations, the basic ideology of com-
munal organisations in relation to gender
has a marked similarity with Nazism. Hindu
communal organisations like the Rashtriya
Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) are vocal sup-
porters of Hitler's rule. And what do they
have to say about women?
In an important commentary on the
'perversion of (Indian or Hindu) virtues', V
D Savarkar severely rebukes Shivaji for
having been decent towards Muslim
women, in keeping with the ideas of
religious tolerance, respect for 'other
(men's) women' and the protection of
women belonging to the enemy. Thus he
chides Shivaji for having turned a deaf ear
to the cries of Hindu women captured and
molested by Muslim warriors, and then
reprimands him for having failed to order
the molestation and rape of Muslim women,
both as a deterrent and as a punishment.
"Had such terror been inflicted upon the
(community of) Muslim women in the first
two or three centuries of Muslim conquest,
then lakhs of Hindu mothers, sisters and
daughters would not have had to suffer the
humiliation that became their lot for
hundreds of years." Besides, says Savarkar,
this would have helped limit the 'enemy'
Muslim population.
87
In fact there is almost a hysterical
protec-tive anxiety about numbers, evoking
clear images of Nazi Germany. A pamphlet
of the VHP states: Ek Hindu ka nara hat
'hum do ha mare do' jabki ek Muslim ka
nara hat 'ham panch hamare pocchisl''
Worse still an article by Vijay Kumar
Malhotra, who is a BJP MP is titled: Bharat
mein Hinduon ki ghatri wnkhiya par chinfa.
The article expresses grave worry at the
declining percentage of Hindu population.
It goes on to say that India can only retain
its basic values if the majority is Hindu,
since Muslims succeeded in partitioning the
country.
89
It is amply clear as to what will
happen to women in such an ideology, as
underlying such statements is an obvious
attack on Muslim female 'fertility' and a call
for Hindu women to produce more children.
More so, Balasaheb Deoras, the present
chief of the RSS, justifies the exclusion of
women from the RSS structure on the
grounds of domestic responsibilities: "How
can women participate in 'shakhas' when
they have domestic responsibilities?"
90
Thus in today's world the Nazi ideology
is very much alive, Women are cast in a
WS-46
Economic
and Political
Weekly April 27,
1991
particular mould both to symbolise the
identity of the community or race and to
embody its definition in relation to other
communities or races. It logically follows
that the struggle against womens' oppres-
sion, along with female solidarity, has to
embrace many more levels. The connection
between class oppression, gender identities,
colonialism, imperialism, etc, has to be
recognised. They have to be fought jointly
for a just future.
Notes
[I am greatful to my guide Sumil Sarkar lor
his valuable suggestions and to Monica
Juneja for all the initial help. Warm thanks
to our Gender Studies Group and especially
Uma Chakravorty for listening patiently to
the preliminary draft and helping me rethink
some of the points.)
1 Herman Glaser, The Cultural Roots of
National Socialism, (Groom Helm,
London, 1978), p 177.
2 Richard J Evans, Comrades and Sisters:
Feminism, Socialism and Pacifism in
Europe. 1870-1945 (Great Britain,
1987), p 161
3 for a very good analysis of this aspect
see, Gisela Bock, 'Racism and Sexism in
Nazi Germany: Motherhood,
Compulsory Sterilisation and the State'
in Signs, Vol 8, No 3, 1983, pp 400-421.
4 Taken from Leila J Rupp, 'Mother of the
Volk: The Image of Woman in Nazi
Ideology' in Signs. Vol 3. No 2. 1977.
pp 363 64.
5 Ibid, p 364
6 Ibid.
7 Taken from Tim Mason, 'Women in
Germany, 1925-40: lamily, Welfare and
Work', in History Workshop, spring
1976, p 74. The statement was made by
Adolf Hitler in a speech to the National
Socialist Women's Organisation on
September 8, 1934.
8 Adolf Hitler, Mem Kampf book 1,
chapter X I . (New York, 1939).
9 For the point on differential birthrate and
social differences in fertility see John
Knodel, The Decline of fertility in
Germany, 1871- 930 (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1930).
10 P J P Pulzer, The Rise of Political Ann
Semitism in Germany and Austria,
Chapter 23 (New York, 1964).
11 There is now a substantial literature on
German women in the Third Reich, lor
useful introductions see Jill R Stephenson,
The Nazi Organisation of Women
(Croom Helm, London, 1981); Renate
Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and
Marion Kaplan (eds), When Biology
became Destiny: Women in Weimar and
Nazi Germany (New York, 1984),
12 Richard M Titpiuss, Parents Revolt
(London, 1966), p 105. Also see Clifford
Kirk pat rick, Nazi Germany: Its Women
and family Life (New York, 1938), p 152.
Richard Titmuss in his other book, Essays
on 'The Welfare State' (London, 1958,
chapts 5 and 6), gives a brilliant introduc-
tory survey of how the proportion of adult
women who did not marry fell from 28.2 per cent to 23.1 per cent between 1910
and 1939 in Germany. The absolute
number of married couples rose by
almost 6 million over the same period.
13 Leila J Rupp, op cit, p 371.
14 For the main points of the recent judgment
of the US Supreme Court regarding this
see Archana Sachdeva, 'Ami -Abortion
Laws Violate a Woman's Basic Rights' in
The Times of India, July 1989
15 There is a tot of material published on this.
Some preliminary works are, Elizabeth Fee,
'Women and Health Care: A Comparison of
Theories' in International Journal of
Health Services, Vol S, No 3. 1975,
pp 347 415; G J Baker Benfield, The
Horrors of the Half-Known Life (Harper
and Row, New York, 1976); Graham
Milary and Ann Oakley, 'Competing
Ideologies of Reproduction: Medical,
and Maternal Perspectives on Pregnancy'
in Helen Roberts (ed), Women Health
and Reproduc-non (Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, 1981), pp 50-74; C
Salhyamala, 'ls Medicine Inherently
Sexist?
1
in Socialist Health Review, Vol
I, No 2, September 1984, pp 53-7.
16 Biil Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society
(Croom Helm, London, 1975), p 68.
17 For the demographic debate see David V
Glass, Population: Polices and
Movements tn Europe (Frank Cass,
London, 1967), pp 263-313, on
Germany and passim for other Luropean
countries.
18 Ibid, pp 311-13.
19 Lor a very good account of this aspect
see Renate Bridenthal et al (eds), op cit.
20 See Marilyn J Boxer and Jean H Quataert
(eds). Connecting Spheres (OUP, New York,
1987), p 214.
21Richard Grunbergcr, A Social History
of the Third Reich (London, 1971), p
332.
22For an overview of the eugenics
movement see Allan Chase, The Legacy
of Mai thus; The Social Costs of the
New Scientific Racism (New York,
1977), pp xv-xxii and chapter I.
23 Glaser, op cit, p 189.
24 For Walter Dat re's breeding concepts see
Clifford R Lovin, 'Blut and Boden: The
Ideological Basis of Nazi Agricultural
Programme' in Journal of the History of
Ideas, No 28, 1967, pp 279-88.
25 Taken from August Kubizek, The
Young Hitler I Knew, trans E V
Anderson (Boston, 1955), p 233.
26 Sathyamala, op cit, pp 55-56.
27 Zillah R Eiscnstein (ed), Capitalist
Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist
Feminism (Monthly Review Press,
USA, 1979),
28Bock, op cit, pp 419-21.
29For a good account of the situation
between the world wars and its effect on
women see Bridenthal et al (eds), op cit,
intro, pp 6-10. Also see M J Bower et al
(eds), op cit, pp 187-211.
30For a good discussion on this see Claudia
Koonz, 'Mothers in the Fatherland:
Women in Nazi Germany" in Renate
Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (eds),
Becoming Visible (Boston, 1977), p 445-
73.
31 Tim Mason, op cit, pp 77-78.
32Renate Bridenthal, 'Beyond Kinder, Kuche,
Kirche: Weimar Women at Work' in Central
European History, 1973, pp 148-66.
Economic and Political Weekly April 27, 1991 WS --47
33Ibid.
34Koonz, op cit.
35Mason, op cit, and Bridenthal, op cit.
36For an understanding of the process of
rationalisation see Bridenthal et al (eds)
When Biology became Destiny, op cit, intra,
pp 10-11.
37Ibid.
38Larry E Jones, "The Dying Middle":
Weimar Germany and the Fragmentation
of Bourgeois Politics' in Central
European History, 1972, pp 23-54. Also
see Richard J Evans, The Feminist
Movement in Germany 1894-1933,
(Sage Publications. London, 1976).
39For a study of the case of the Housewives
Union and how it got pushed in the Nazi
camp see Renate Bridenthal, 'Class Strug-
gle around the Hearth: Women and
Domestic Servants in the Weimar Republic'
in Michael N Dobkowski and Isidor
Walliman (eds), Towards the Holocaust:
The Social and Economic Collapse of
the Weimar Republic, (Westport, 1983),
pp 243-64.
40 Tim Mason, op cit, p 86.
41 Quoted in George L Mosse, Nazi
Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Socidl
Life in the Third Reich (New York, 1966),
pp 30-47.
42 Taken from Harry G Shafer, Women in the
Two Germanies: A Comparative Study of
a Socialist and a non-Socialist Society
(Pregamon Press, USA, 1981), p 6.
43 Claudia Koonz, The Competition for a Women's
Lebensraum, 1928-1934' in Renate
Bridenthal et al (eds), When Biology
became Destiny, op cit, pp 199-236.
44 Dismissal of women with employed
husbands and of unmarried women, who
could be supported by their parents.
Thus women were attacked as 'double'
earners. See Jill Stephenson, Women in
Nazi Society (London, 1975).
45 See Section II of this article.
46For a good analysis of this aspect see
Leila J Rupp, Mobilising Women for War:
German and American Propaganda,
1939-1945 (Princeton University Press,
USA, 1978).
47 Annemarie Troger, 'The Creation of a
Female Assembly-Line Proletariat' in
Bridenthal et al (eds), When Biology
became Destiny, op cit, pp 237-70.
48 Quote taken from Leila J Rupp, 'Mother
of the Volk' in Signs, op cit, p 373.
49Taken from Claudia Koonz, 'Mothers in the
Fatherland" in Renate Bridenthal et al
(eds), Becoming Visible, op cit, p 466. This
argu-ment has also got a close bearing to
that of Gail Minault, used in the context of
the Indian National Movement and
women's participation. The idea of the
'extended family' was to include the whole
of India into the family. See Gail Minault
(ed), The Extended Family: Women and
Political Par-ticipation in India and Pakistan
(Chanakya
Publications. Delhi, 1981).
50 In fact, one sees that in many
movements women are seen to have a
great capacity for sacrifce. Thus their
participation is also seen as something
of a 'sacrifce' for the common good and
not as something 'natural'.
51 Annemarie Troger, op cit, p 265.
52For a detailed study of this see Leila J
Rupp,
Mobilising Women for War, op cit.
53Annemarie Troger, op cit.
54Some insight into the appeal of Nazism for
women can be gained from reading some
of the autobiographies of womeri party
members, available in Peter Merkl,
Political
Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early
Nazis (Princeton Univesity Press, UK,
1975). Also see Elanor S Riemar and John
C Fout (eds), European Women: A
Documentary History, 1789-1945
(Schocken
Book, New York, 1980), pp 106-10. Ir has
a document written by Guida Diehl, which
talks of the adherence to Nazi principles by
the National Socialist Women's
Association.
55See Hermann Raurschning, Hitler
Speaks: A Series of Political
Conversations with Adolf Hitler on His
Real Aims, (London, 1939), p 259.
56Quoted in Helen Boak, 'Women in
Weimar
Germany: The "Frauenfragc" and the
Female Vote' in Richard Bessel and E J
Feuchtwanger (eds), Social Change and
Political Development in Weimar
Germany,
(London, 1981), p 155.
57 See Section III of this paper.
58Curiously no serious attempt seems to
have been made to calculate the
absolute number of women who voted
for the Nazis in July 1932.
59See Janet Silanen and Michelle Stanworth
(eds). Women and the Public Sphere,
(Hutchinson and Co Ltd, London, 1984).
This book gives a theoretical argument
about how women have always been
thought of as more 'emotional' rather
than rational as far as electoral politics
goes.
60 Grunberger, op cit, p 117.
61 Joachim C Fest, The Face of the Third
Reich, (Harmondsworth, 1972), p 401.
62Ibid, p 402.
63Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans Ralph
Mankeim, (London, 1969), p 167.
64Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland:
Women, the Family and Nazi Politics,
(Jonathan Cape, 1987).
65Ibid, p 87.
66Richard J Evans, Comrades and Sisters,
op cit, pp 169-79.
67 Arguments taken from Evans, ibid, pp 172-
73.
68 Ibid, p 174.
69For this point see Evans, ibid; and Koonz,
Mothers in Fatherland, op cit.
70See Section II of this paper.
71 Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, op cit.
72Renate BredenthaJ et al (eds), When Biology
Became Destiny, op cit, p 28.
73Reprinted in Bridenthal, ibid, 'Comrade-
Woman-Mother-Resistance Fighter', as
told to Gerda Szepansky by Katherina
Jacob, pp 349-62.
74Republished in Elanor S Riemar et al
(eds), op cit, pp 111-13.
75 Ibid, p 114.
76Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, op cit.
77See Marion Kaplan, "Sisterhood under
Seige: Feminism and Anti-Semitism in
Germany, 1904-1938' in Renate
Bridenthal et al (eds). When Biology
Became Destiny, op cit, pp 174-196.
78Ibid, p 190.
79 Ibid, p 193.
80W S Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power:
The Experience of a Single German
Town, (New York, 1984).
81See for example Juliet Mitchell, Woman's
Estate, (Penguin, 1971).
82See article, 'West Germany: Big Upsurge of
Neo-Nazi Activity' in Peoples Democracy,
July 2, 1989.
83For details see Uma Chakravarti, 'Whatever
Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism,
Nationalism and a Script for the Past' in
Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds).
Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial
History, (Kali for Women, New Delhi,
1989), pp 27-87.
84 Ibid, p 56.
85 See Section II of this paper.
86For a good analysis see Kam la Bhasin,
Ritu Menon and Abha Bhaiya, 'Why
Women Fear the Fundamentalists' in The
Times of India, Sunday Review, January
20, 1991, p I.
87V D Savarkar, Bhartiya Itihas ke Chhah
Swarnim Prishta, (in Hindi), (Rashtra
Dharma Pustak Prakashan, Luc know),
Vol 2, pp 45-53.
88This appears in a pamphlet of VHP titled
'Chetavani-2: Desh Khatare Mein
1
(in
Hindi).
89 Vijay Kumar Melhotra, Navbharat Times,
(in Hindi), October 4, 1990. p 4.
90 Quoted in Dina Nalh Mishra, RSS: Myth
and Reality, (Vikas Publishing, New
Delhi, 1980), p 136. For details about the
way com-munal organisations in India
look at the woman's question see Ish N
Mishra, 'Gender-Bias in Communal
Ideologies' in
Third World Studies, August -Spetember,
1989, pp 37-50.
WS-48
Economic
and Political Weekly
April 27, 1991