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Apparently, however, even the public’s judgment could not be relied upon entirely. “At one period in the mid-Thirties,” Shirer observes, “the hissing of German films became so common that Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of the Interior, issued a stern warning against ‘treasonable behavior on the part of cinema audiences.’” <ref> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer pg 341 </ref>
Apparently, however, even the public’s judgment could not be relied upon entirely. “At one period in the mid-Thirties,” Shirer observes, “the hissing of German films became so common that Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of the Interior, issued a stern warning against ‘treasonable behavior on the part of cinema audiences.’” <ref> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer pg 341 </ref>
== Women in the Third Reich ==
The Weimar Republic had seen the rise of another trend the Nazis hated, the emancipation of women, who were suddenly granted suffrage in 1918 by an interim Socialist cabinet. <ref> Mothers in the Fatherland, Claudia Koonz, pg 24 </ref>The hard times and dearth of male workers that resulted from World War I and its loss had also forced women from their homes and into public life and had given them a taste of independence that not all were eager to relinquish even when the soldiers returned to home and workplace. As a result women, while still a minority, had become increasingly visible not just in the workplace, but in city councils and provincial assemblies.
The Nazi view of this newfound visibility was succinctly expressed by Englebert Huber in Das Ist Nationalsocialsismus “There is no place for the political woman in the ideological world of National Socialism…The postwar phenomenon of the political woman, who rarely cuts a good figure in parliamentary debates, signifies robbing woman of her dignity.” <ref> Nazi Culture, “The Nazi Ideal of Womanhood.” George L. Mosse pg 47 </ref> Hitler declared in a speech to the National Socialist Woman’s Council in 1935, “The so-called granting of equal rights to women, which Marxism demands, in reality does not grant equal rights but constitutes a deprivation of rights, since it draws the woman into an area in which she will necessarily be inferior. It places the woman in situations that cannot strengthen her position. <ref> Nazi Culture, “The Nazi Ideal of Womanhood.” George L. Mosse pg 39 </ref> Alfred Rosenberg, announced that “Emancipation of woman from the women’s emancipation movement is the first demand of a generation of women which would like to save the Volk and the race…” <ref> Nazi Culture, “The Nazi Ideal of Womanhood.” George L. Mosse pg 40 </ref>
Much of this rhetoric was an attempt to soften an attitude that consigned women mainly to the role of child-bearers, and removed the question of whether or not to have children out of an individual woman’s hands and into the hands of the state. The unvarnished Nazi view of women was best expressed by a Nazi delegate who, on the floor of the Reichstag before they took power, shouted at a female Social Democrat delegate mourning her son who had died in the first World War, “That’s what you old nanny-goats are for! <ref>Time Magazine, May 9, 1942 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885973,00.html</ref>
Immediately after taking power, the Nazis began excluding women from professions, higher education and government. In 1933 the admission of women to universities was restricted to “10 per cent off the annual intake.” <ref> The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman, “Women in the Third Reich” pg 258 </ref> By 1935 not only were married women physicians denied the right to practice, but those female doctors who were left “(like Jewish physicians) could no longer receive payments from the state-sponsored health-insurance system.” <ref> Mothers in the Fatherland, Claudia Koonz pg 145 </ref> After 1936, women were barred from serving as judges or public prosecutors or serving on juries.
Some of these restrictions, especially those surrounding university admissions, had to be rescinded once war broke out and the male labor and student population were significantly diminished by conscription, but the emphasis continued to be on child-bearing. “Racially valuable” women were rewarded according to the number of children they’d had—A “valuable” woman with three children under the age of ten received an “Honor Card,” which offered preferential treatment in shops. A woman who’d bourn five children got a bronze medal, six, a silver medal. A gold medal was awarded for the mother of seven, along with a blue ribbon so she could wear it around her neck and be acknowledged by members of the Hitler Youth, who were required to salute her. <ref> Mothers in the Fatherland, Claudia Koonz pg 186 </ref> Birth Control was outlawed for Aryan women, and penalties for abortion were increased. After 1939, performing an abortion on a “racially valuable” woman was a capital offense.
Unwed pregnancies among blonde, blue-eyed gentile girls were supported by the Third Reich through SS “Well of Life” homes, where pre and post natal care were provided and an adoption service set up for the infants. This, at least one historian has noted, seemed to rest less on tolerance than Heinrich Himmler’s sneaking fondness for polygamy. <ref> The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann pg 252 </ref> The eagerness for “Aryan” children even extended to the ugly policy of kidnapping “racially valuable” children in occupied countries like Poland and the Soviet Union and shipping them back to Germany to be placed with “acceptable” German families.
Those women deemed “unfit” to have children included Jews, socialists, pacifists, Roma, Poles and Russians. Within about five and half years after taking power, the Third Reich had performed compulsory sterilization on 320,000 people. Some 400 women died in that time frame as a result. <ref> The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann pg 253 </ref> “Schizophrenia” or “feeble mindedness” were the frequent rationalizations offered for the forced sterilization of German women, and ironically, given the regime’s eagerness to promote even unwed pregnancies among “acceptable” German women, the reasons cited sometimes included promiscuity. In the case of a factory worker sterilized in 1941, a woman with six children, five of them illegitimate, evidence cited for her “feeblemindedness” included, “During a personal interview she was noticeably indifferent towards her shifting sexual relationships.” <ref> The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann pg 258 </ref>
[[category: history]]
[[category: history]]