Nazi policies towards 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 A person of European descent - not Jewish - often with blond hair and blue eyes. The Nazis viewed Aryans as the superior human race. race.
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Hitler believed women’s lives should revolve round the three 'Ks':
Goebbels said: The mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world.
Marriage and family
Hitler wanted a high birth rate so that the Aryan population would grow. He tried to achieve this by:
- 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
Employment
Measures were introduced which strongly discouraged women from working, including:
- the introduction of the Law for the Reduction of Unemployment, which gave women financial incentives to stay at home
- not Compulsory enrolment in the armed forces. women to help in the war effort until 1943
However, 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.
Appearance
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.
