The Role of Women in Nazi Germany 1939-1945
How did Their Status Change During the Second World War?
Oct 8, 2009
When the Nazis came to power in 1933 one of their primary aims was to increase the population with racially pure, Aryan children, this was to be achieved by banning marriages between Germans and ‘undesirables’ and a series of financial incentives for large families.
Women Before the Second World War
Women in Nazi Germany were encouraged to stay at home and produce lots of children, apart from financial encouragement; the Nazis introduced stricter divorce and abortion laws. In a more direct way to increase the population, thousands of women were sacked from professional careers like teaching, the law and civil service, and it was made more difficult for women to attend universities. However there was still a proportion of women in low paid and unskilled work despite the incentives to remain at home as a housewife.
Women During the Second World War
Despite all the emphasis and campaigns on women staying at home, in 1939 around half the women of working age were in some form of regular employment, much higher than Britain and the United States in this period. As the Second World War progressed and ever increasing numbers of men were drafted into the armed forces, women were required to fill a number of these roles. In most cases these were women from the poorer echelons of society. As opposed to Britain and the United States – when it entered the war – there was no massive press campaign calling on women to do war work.
There were a number of reasons for Nazi Germany not forcing women into work; firstly Hitler believed it had a negative effect on morale; using the problems of Germany after the First World War as an example, when women did work for the war effort. Most importantly as the Wehrmacht advanced through Eastern Europe the Nazis now had hundreds of thousands of people they could use for slave labour in the Concentration Camps. Huge factory and industry complexes were built around the camps producing munitions, chemicals and components for the war effort. For the Nazis the huge advantages were that this work force did not command any wages and were expendable, they could literally be worked to death. The downside for Nazi Germany was that as forced labour the workers were likely to commit acts of sabotage, something German women wouldn’t have done.
Women as SS Concentration Camp Guards
A few thousand women did become guards at a number of Concentration and Extermination Camps, most of these women trained at Ravensbruck camp in Germany which was primarily for women prisoners. The prospect of money was a major factor for women choosing this career as well as a lack of other work. A handful of these female guards were amongst the most notorious of all guards, their brutality and sadism matched only by the worst of the Nazi war criminals. These particular women were tried for war crimes after the war, and a number of them received the death sentence for their actions and were executed in the same way as their male peers.
Women on the Home Front
In the later stages of the Second World War, as the Red Army were advancing from the East, the Nazis began to establish their home front defences. As well as the Volkssturm – a civil defence unit poorly armed and trained – and members of the Hitler Youth, women were also trained in the use of anti-aircraft guns and the Panzerfaust in a last ditch attempt to save Berlin. For Hitler using women in defence of the country was the final resort in a war that the Nazis had already lost.
Sources
Kitchen, M. A History of Modern Germany 1800-2000. Malden: Blackwell, 2006.
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