Women

• Nazi expectations of women

  • The Nazis had clear ideas of what they wanted from women
  • They were expected to stay at home, look after the family and produce children in order to secure the future of the Aryan race
• The 3 Ks (What Hitler believed women’s lives should revolve round)

  • Kinder - Children
  • Kuche - Kitchen
  • Kirche - Church

  
• Joseph Goebbels view on women

  Goebbels said: " The mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world. "
• Why Hitler wanted a high birth rate

  Hitler wanted a high birth rate so that the Aryan population would grow
• Ways in which Hitler tried to encourage Women so that the Aryan population would grow

  • introducing the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage which gave newlywed couples a loan of 1,000 marks, and allowed them to keep 250 marks for each child they had
  • giving an award called the Mother’s Cross to women who had large numbers of children
  • allowing women to volunteer to have a baby for an Aryan member of the SS
• Methods to discourage women from working

  • the introduction of the Law for the Reduction of Unemployment, which gave women financial incentives to stay at home
  • not conscripting women to help in the war effort until 1943
• More Women entering the workplace

  • Female labour was cheap and between 1933 and 1939 the number of women in employment actually rose by 2.4 million
  • As the German economy grew, women were needed in the workplace
• Nazi expectations for the appearance of women

  • Women were expected to emulate traditional German peasant fashions - plain peasant costumes, hair in plaits or buns and flat shoes
  • They were not expected to wear make-up or trousers, dye their hair or smoke in public
  • They were discouraged from staying slim, because it was thought that thin women had trouble giving birth