Women During The Third Reich

In the book Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich by Alison Owings, we are provided with plenty of women who describe their lives before, during and after Hitler received power. This book provides us with different views of the time era and as well as how the impact of Hitler affected every woman differently through social class, age, marital status and etc. This paper will explore the lives of three German women who seem to be in the Grey area during the over control of Hitler but mostly with the killings of the Jews. This paper will further explore the complicity and the different levels of resistance that these three women had during this time era which is 1933-1945. The three women that will be discussed in this paper are Margarete (Margrit) Fischer, Ellen Frey, and Christine (Tini) Weihs. When looking into the lives of all three women these women it seems as though women didn’t have much of a responsibility for the events that were happening around them. Although these women seemed to be complaint to a certain degree with the events there were going on around them. These women would have been complaint due to the fear of what happened to Germans when they stood against the events that took part.

The most obvious and elementary instance in which gender analysis is relevant to the topic of Jewish deportation during the Holocaust is when gender is referenced explicitly. For example, the scene in Schindler’s List where female and male Jews are told to group on opposite sides of the street in preparation for transport to the Płaszów concentration camp is a clear invocation of gender to frame a depiction of deportation. However, in order for gender analysis to be constructive, it is necessary to also discuss the underlying power relations that gender subtly affects. Joan Scott addresses this concept directly when she asserts that ‘the implementation of Nazi policy in Germany’ was an example of power that was justified as ‘masculine’. Furthermore, Scott emphasises that oppressive actions against women by the state, such as the Holocaust, can ‘only be made sense of as part of an analysis of the construction and consolidation of power’. Using this broad framework of characterising gender as an essential element of power and politics, we can apply Scott’s theoretical structure to the Holocaust and glean insight that would otherwise be impossible to achieve under

“Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich” by Alison Owings displays interviews with women who lived in Germany during the 1930s to 1940s. The two women in this book, Liselotte Otting and Freya von Moltke discuss their feelings about the Nazi government and their actions, most importantly how they felt about genocide of the Jewish population. Both women discussed their attitude and behavior toward during this time.

Women have always played an important role in the formation of the United States, despite the fact that women are considered less able and less qualified than men throughout America’s history. During times of war, women were forced to pick up the jobs that were left behind as men marched off to other countries and then leave them when the men came back home. Women have always been treated as the primary homemaker, raising children and cooking meals for their husbands, even after more and more women are forced to work to survive. There is a double standard for women and it is deeply rooted in America’s history. Women have fought for equality, justice, and change from the very beginning. Women are still fighting now. While there have been a great

Women served an important role in WWII. They not only took the challenge and stepped up to take the places of the men off fighting in the war to work in factories, but they also fought side by side with those risking their lives and fighting for their country. They were needed everywhere during the war. There were an unbelievable amount of job opportunities for women during the war and many supported the brave acts of voluntary enlistment. “‘A woman’s place is in the home’ was an old adage, but it still held true at the start of World War II. Even though millions of women worked, home and family we considered the focus of their lives” says Brenda Ralf Lewis. Without the help of those women who were brave enough to

In the aftermath of World War II, German civilians become the target of hatred due to the Holocaust. The mass rapes that happened to German women during the occupation of Berlin are not remembered due to the hatred of the German population as a whole. In her diary A Woman in Berlin, Anonymous catalogues her perspective of the mass rapes. In order to cope effectively with the rapes and to survive, Anonymous manipulates her sexual assaults to become a method of obtaining necessary goods because she, like other women, could not depend on men.

Why women? In 1933, Germans began their discrimination against the Jews; men, women, homosexuals, and children alike. Many testimonies, memoirs and historical documents hold the facts of the damage the Nazis inflicted, the amount of Jews that suffered and died, and the lives it changed all around the world. But female victims have their own unique story to tell through a different lens that brings about a whole new horror of its own. It underlines the strength that women hold that marks them as true warriors of survival.

When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 there were several areas that concerned him about the position of women in Germany. A few of these included the drastic decrease of babies born in 1933, the big increase of female employment and the ‘immorality’ of women. Hitler believed that the role of women was to stay at home and have children, as many as possible.

After World War One, German women became more involved in the workforce as there was a shortage of men to fill the empty positions. This gave women more opportunities to be self reliant and equal to men. When the Nazis were elected into office in January 1933 it was their goal to remove women from the workforce. This is one area where Nazi oppressive leadership led to their downfall. When World War Two started, many men left to fight in the war. German women were needed to fill their positions. With the strict Nazi policies, this was unable to happen. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi were reluctant to allow women to join workforce, as it was their belief women belonged in the home.

“The mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world.” These were the words of Joseph Goebbels, a dear friend and colleague of Adolf Hitler, in 1929. To him and Hitler, the ideal Nazi woman did not work outside of the home and had extremely limited educational and political aspirations. With the exception of a few among the elite ranks of society, a woman’s role in Nazi Germany was to give birth to Aryan babies and raise them as faithful subjects of the Third Reich.

During 1933 and 1945, the Nazi Party controlled Germany. During the Third Reich, the Nazis introduced many new policies in an effort the Nazi Party introduced many new policies to make a new great Volksgemeinschaft (the people’s community). Whether Nazism brought a social revolution to Germany is debatable. One of the key features of Nazism was ‘Kinder Kurch Kirche’ which is translated to ‘children kitchen church.’ Meaning that women were supposed to stay at home and raise children. But, really their role was set by the economic demands of the time. Therefore, their actions are better described as a social reaction rather than a social revolution. The Nazis’ implemented policies for women that sought to return moral values to the Biskmarkian

After facing and overcoming the despair and the hardship of the years following the end of the WWII conflict, West Germany started restoring its society and economy under the example of the Western allied. Adenauer and Erhard first escorted the FRG out of poverty and then propelled it toward the future splendour of the Wirtschaftswunder. Starting from the early 1950’s the flourishing economic market hinged upon consumer goods and consequently depended on buyers. Consumer became thus the model to get inspired upon and the judge and final caliber of the government economic policies’ excellence. The incentive to invest and spend naturally intersected existing consumption patterns, revealing women as the effective managers and unaware mediators of family’s decisions and tastes. From the early 1950’s onwards, female role as administrator of the household’s budget and controller of

In closing, the Nazi’s had their picks for which women were good enough to become a child bearer. They had control over women’s every action. The Nazi’s didn’t think women were worthy enough to complete a ‘mans’ job, that’s why they only used the women when they had no other choice. If it hadn’t of been for the men being shipped off for battle, the women would’ve still been considered valuable only for their reproductive ability. Women eventually gained control over their own lives, but it was easy to

“The existence of an organized resistance in Germany during the Third Reich has often been glossed over or ignored . . . Now for the first time this fascinating story, told by the surviving sister of two of the students, is available in accurate and readable English”—Library Journal

To initiate this plan, laid out in von Weid’s book, Germany began the forceful annihilation of all historical evidence of a world before Hitler. With all historical records, cultural indicators, and academic knowledge incinerated and obliterated, the glorification of Hitler as God and removal of women’s right to sexually deny a man (their only perceived agency) were the final steps in creating a utopian society for German men. Without the historical context to contradict this society, its government, and the new religion, who is to say Hitler is not God or that women do have souls? This removal of history and shared belief about hierarchical power is the platform on which the Holy Hitler religion and government by the elite can stand. These two factors are one in the same, with the government relying on the religion for its source of power and the religion relying on the government for its propagation.