Hitler Rule #2

  • Hitler Youth and BDM 

    • Organizations built for youth in order 

      • To indoctrinate them

      • To build them into what was seen as the perfect people

      • To allow them to gather under the pretense of hitler

      • Emphasize competetioon

    • 9 million youth in hitler youth

  • Womens organizations 

    • National Sozialistische Frauenschaft NSF (National Socialist Womanhood) 

    • Deutsches Frauenwerk DFW (German Women’s Enterprise)

    • Again, women gathering under pretense of hitler

    • Used to indoctrinate women

Paragraph 2: Targeted Propaganda

  • targeted propaganda at women

    • Strong women were portrayed in posters

    • Women were encouraged to have kids for hitlwr 

  • Targeted propaganda at youth+education


Paragraph 3: Empowerment vs disempowerment of women and youth

  • Male youth were empowered

    • Encouraged to participate in hitler youth

    • Given oppurtunties

  • Women are disempowered

    • Rights taken away

    • Feminism was discouraged

    • Employers encouraged 

Paragraph 4:


In class notes april 24

  • Nazi incentives

    • Party pressure and financial inducements was used to pressure women out of the workplace and back into home:

      • June 1933 interest-free loans of 600RM were made available to young women who withdrew from the labor market to get married

      • effects of the Depression reduced the number of female workers anyway (though less than male workers) and was used to justify the Nazi campaign to give up work for the benefit of unemployed men

      • employers were advised to positively discriminate in  favour of men

    • As a result, the percentage of women in employment fell from 37% (1933) to 31% (1937)

  • Nazi women’s organizations

    • Women excluded fromNazi machinery of government

    • Employment did exist within the various Nazi women’s organizations

      • Such as

        • National Sozialistische Frauenschaft NSF (National Socialist Womanhood) 

        • Deutsches Frauenwerk DFW (German Women’s Enterprise)

    • NSF and DFW regarded by the Party as tools for the propagation of the anti-feminist ideology using cultural, educational, and social programs

      • EG the NSF started a campaign for the enhancement of opportunities for women within the Party and its organizers were officially discredited

  • Effects

    • By 1937 Nazi ideological convictions were already threatened by the pressures of economic necessity

      • Introduction of conscription and the rearmament boom from the mid-1930s led to an increasing labor shortage 

        • This meant that to uphold Nazi ideology the economy would need to be slowed down which would restrict the rearmament programme

      •  relative decline in female employment began to reverse, rising from 5.7 million (1937) to 7.1 million (1939) – from 31% to 33% of  total workforce

      • At this point the government decided to end the marriage loan scheme for women who withdrew from the labour market

  • The effects of war

    •  female employment continued to increase, 

    • Nazi regime did not fully exploit women as munitions workers and figures show women remained unemployed right to the end of the war. 

    • Several reasons for this:

      • Germany’s poor economic mobilization at 

        • first badly organized and no general conscription of female labour; 

        • Speer tried to mobilize the economy on a total war basis he received opposition for suggesting the conscription of women from Bormann and Hitler

      • The appeal for women to work for the war was not convincing 

        • long hours in arms factories added to home responsibilities

        • financial incentives to have more children made it unattractive

      • Farming responsibilities,

        •  women had traditionally played an important part in German farming,

        • As agricultural labor declined women experienced considerable hardship meeting the demands of running a farm (by 1944 about 65% of the agricultural workforce were women)

  • The contradiction

    • Two conflicting motivations

      • Military expansion

      • Basic anti-feminism

    • These conflicting motivations led to CONFLICTING messages

      • One NSF official wrote:

        • “It has always been our chief article of faith that a woman’s place is in the home – but since the whole of Germany is our home we must serve wherever we can best do so.”