Towards women

• Lebensborn:

  • translates to 'wellspring of life'
  • founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1935
  • increase Germany's birthrate by encouraging SS men to have children with Aryan women, so the children could lead the society
  • only 40% of women passed the racial purity test
  • the majority of mothers were unmarried ==> 57.6% by 1940
  • allowed areas for pregnant, non married aryans
  • end of WW2, 11 000 children born this way
  • rape
  • first Lebensborn home was built in Steinhoering (tiny village) in 1936
• Female Employment:

  • wanted to reduce female employment
  • women were turned down from key jobs such as medicine and law
  • Law for the Reduction of Unemployment => gave women financial incentives to stay at home
  • female teachers and students decreased => 10% of students were women and they couldn't have high up degrees as they weren't taught latin
  • many incentives created: labour exchanges to discriminate against women, June 1933 => interest free loans of RM600 for young women to leave work and marry, used the depression to move women out of work
  • employment fell from 37% to 31% in 1936
• Organisations to reduce female employment:

  • German Women's Enterprise => 2.3 million, cooking and eating healthy, led by Gertrud Scholtz Klink
  • Nationalist Socialist Womanhood => birth rate and blood
  • Gertrud Scholtz Klink => joined NSDAP in 1929, seen as a perfect Nazi woman, after the war she still supported the nazis
• Marriage and Families:

  • marriage loans => over half a year's earnings was given, 1/4 of wages to children ->> decreased from 1937
  • "Donate a child to the Fuhrer"
  • income tax reduced if you had children, 6+ then they didn't have to pay
  • maternity benefits improved but no abortion
  • contraception limited
  • 12th August eachyear, a mothering cross given to mothers (bronze = 4 children, silver = 6 children, gold = 8+ children)
  • Birthrate ==> from 1933 it increased significantly, but divorce rate increased, marriage was stable, failed to meet having 4 children per woman
• The Nazi view on women:

  • Magda Goebbels was the model woman
  • "eternal mothers of the nation"
  • devoted to her husband, look after her home and children
  • 10 commandments for choosing a spouse
  • Kinder, Kuche, Kirche ==> children, kitchen, church
  • only employed for special vocations e.g. midwifery
  • grow the declining population --> less than a million born a year
• How effective were polices towards women?

  • Employment => limited success as they were called back into work due to conscription, 1939 female employment was 33%, didn't use women as well as Britain
  • idealistic but impractical
  • successful in removing women from key areas
  • couldn't keep women out of work forever
  • women were reduced to 2nd class citizens
  • didn't reach the wanted birth rate