Hitler's policies towards women

• Political
• Women had received greater amounts of rights and freedoms during the rule of the Weimar
• However, it ended with Hitler and the Third Reich
• Women had no place in politics, according to Hitler
• Consequently:
• No women delegates in the Nazi party’s Reichstag
• Hitler argued that ‘the Emancipation of Women’ was invented by the Jews and should therefore not be followed
• Women were to stay at home and nurture the coming generation
• Industry and education
• Goebbels wrote in 1929: “the mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world.”
• Women were not to work
• Employers were encouraged to hire men rather than women
• Due to other policies (economic recovery) there were more women employed in 1939 than in 1933
• Women were not to be educated – no higher education
• 1934: 10% of the male population in higher education could be girls
• Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum created the need for people to fill the newly conquered territory, so that  became women’s priority number one
• Social                     
• Historian Lisa Pine argues:
• The Nazis systematically reduced the functions of the family to the single task of reproduction. The family as an institution completely in the service of the totalitarian state.
• Women were strongly encouraged to marry and have as many children’s as possible
• Especially the Aryan race were encouraged
• KKK – Kinder, Kirch, Kuchen
• Children, church, cooking
• On Hitler’s mother’s birthday, 12^th august, the Motherhood Cross gave out rewards to mothers, Gold for 8 children, silver for 6 and bronze for 4.
• On the harsher end of the spectrum:
• The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage - 1933
• A loan program that gave couples 1000 Marks, but depending on the number of children they had, the payback amount would decrease 25% per child
• Abortions were prohibited
• Lebensborn – an SS, state supported, program designed by Heinrich Himmler to produce more Aryan offspring
• Aryan race women could go and meet with SS officers who were considered of good genes to have children – outside marriage