Nazi Policies Towards Women and the Family

A thousand marks and a medal

In June 1933, five months into the regime, the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage offered every couple who married a loan of 1,000 marks, about eight months of an average wage, on condition that the wife gave up her job. A quarter of the loan was cancelled for each child born, so that four children paid it off. By 1937 around 700,000 couples had taken one. From 1938 a mother of four received the Cross of Honour of the German Mother in bronze, of six in silver, of eight in gold, and members of the Hitler Youth were ordered to salute her in the street. The same regime dismissed women judges and senior civil servants in 1933, capped women at 10 per cent of university entrants, closed the family planning clinics of the Weimar years, and in July 1933 passed a law under which around 320,000 people judged hereditarily unfit had been sterilised by 1939. Goebbels said the mission of woman was to be beautiful and to bring children into the world. The party slogan was Kinder, Kuche, Kirche: children, kitchen, church. Then the figures went the other way. Women in work rose from 4.85 million in 1933 to 7.14 million in 1939, because rearmament needed hands and the men were in uniform. The exam asks what the Nazis believed about women, what they did about it in marriage, work and appearance, and how far it succeeded. This module gives you the dated evidence and the Paper 3 shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a 12-mark answer.

The policy, in order

Put these six measures in the order they happened.

• Women are dismissed from the higher civil service and the courts, and university places for women are capped
• The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage introduces the 1,000-mark loan
• The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring permits compulsory sterilisation
• The SS founds Lebensborn
• The marriage law makes childlessness grounds for divorce, and women are recruited back into industry as rearmament grows
• The first Mother Crosses are awarded

Why did the Nazis want women out of work and into motherhood?

The Weimar Republic had given women the vote, the professions and the shortest skirts in Europe. Which explanation best accounts for the Nazi reversal?

• The birth rate had fallen from 36 per thousand in 1900 to under 15 in 1933, and a regime planning a war of conquest needed soldiers and settlers; 6 million were unemployed in 1933 and every woman who left a job made room for a man, which was the quickest way to cut the figure; Nazi racial theory held that the woman who bore healthy German children was doing the work of the state, and that the educated working woman of Weimar was a symptom of decadence; and the party had always drawn its strength from men who wanted the pre-war order back.
• German women had demanded to be sent home from work.
• The churches insisted on the policy as a condition of support.
• The German economy had no work for women.

Aims and results, side by side

The 16-mark judgement on this bullet asks how far the policy succeeded. Set each aim beside its figure and the answer is on the card.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: a description of a poster issued by the National Socialist Womanhood in 1937. It shows a mother in a plain blue dress with her hair in a bun, seated with a baby on her lap and three older children around her, one holding a Hitler Youth flag. Behind them stands a farmhouse with a swastika banner, and an eagle spreads its wings above. The caption reads: The German mother gives the nation its future. A student infers that the poster presents motherhood as service to the state rather than as private family life. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• The caption says the mother gives the nation its future, making the children a gift to the state rather than to the family.
• The mother wears a plain blue dress with her hair in a bun, the appearance the regime approved.
• One child holds a Hitler Youth flag and the eagle of the state spreads over the whole family, so that the household is shown as part of the movement.
• The mother has four children, the number that would earn a bronze Mother Cross.
• The poster was issued by the Frauenschaft, the party organisation for women.

Women and work

Select the THREE statements that correctly describe what happened to women in employment between 1933 and 1939.

• Women were removed from the top: married women in the civil service were dismissed in 1933, women judges and lawyers were barred, women could not serve on juries from 1936, and the number of women doctors fell; the marriage loan required the wife to give up her job.
• Rearmament reversed the policy: from 1936 the Four Year Plan needed labour, the loan condition was dropped in 1937, and women in work rose from 4.85 million in 1933 to 7.14 million in 1939, most of them in factories, farms and shops.
• The share of women in the workforce barely moved: around 30 per cent in 1933 and around 33 per cent in 1939, because the policy took women out of the visible professions while the mass of working women stayed where they had always been.
• Women were banned from all paid work in 1933.
• Women were paid the same as men for the same work from 1936.
• Women were conscripted into the army from 1938.

Two interpretations of the policy

Question 3 gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. The Nazi policy towards women succeeded. The birth rate rose by a third between 1933 and 1939, marriages jumped after the loan, women were cleared from the professions and the courts, and the Frauenschaft reached 6 million members. The regime set out to make German women wives and mothers, and by the end of the decade more of them were both than at any time since the war. Interpretation 2. The policy failed on its own terms. The birth rate rose because the Depression ended and men could afford to marry, not because of a loan, and it never regained the level of 1920; families stopped at two children, not the four the loan rewarded; women in work rose by 2.3 million as the regime itself recruited them for rearmament and dropped its own condition in 1937; and the appearance rules were ignored by the women who bought more cosmetics every year. The Nazis changed what was said about women and very little of what women did. Question 3(c) asks why they differ. The answer is which figures each reads and against what: Interpretation 1 measures 1939 against 1933 and sees a rise; Interpretation 2 measures 1939 against the aims of 1933 and against 1920 and sees a shortfall, and asks whether the rise had anything to do with the policy. This meant that the same birth rate is success to one and coincidence to the other, and the judgement in 3(d) turns on what the regime would have needed to achieve for the word success to apply.

In the shoes of the regime and a young couple

Four decisions between 1933 and 1938. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice led to.

• Spring 1933. You are the new government, with 6 million unemployed and a birth rate under 15 per thousand. You want women at home and men at work. What do you legislate?
• 1934. You are a young couple in Leipzig. You both work, you earn 40 marks a week between you, and you want to marry. The loan is worth eight months of wages. What do you do?
• 1937. You are running the Four Year Plan. Rearmament is short of workers, the men are being called up, and the marriage loan is still sending women home. What do you do?
• 1938. Births are up but families are stopping at two. You want more. What do you add?

From cause to consequence

Because the birth rate had fallen below 15 per thousand and the regime planned for war, the loan of June 1933 rewarded each child with a _____ of the debt cancelled. Because 6 million were out of work, the loan also required the wife to leave her _____, which freed a place for a man. Because the regime saw motherhood as service to the race, it sterilised around _____ people under the law of July 1933 and founded Lebensborn in 1935. Because rearmament needed hands from 1936, the work condition was dropped in _____ and women in employment rose to 7.14 million by 1939. And because families stopped at two children, the _____ of 1938 tried to make eight the ideal.

Paying off the loan

The marriage loan was 1,000 marks, and a quarter of it was cancelled for each child born. How many marks did a couple with two children still owe?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• The main difference is that Interpretation 1 judges the policy a success by the rise in births and marriages and the clearing of women from the professions, whereas Interpretation 2 judges it a failure by its own aims, arguing that the rise had other causes, that families stopped at two, and that the regime itself put women back to work for rearmament.
• Interpretation 2 says women went back to work and ignored the appearance rules.
• I agree with Interpretation 2 because the birth rate never got back to 1920.
• They differ because one thinks the policy worked and the other does not.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why Nazi policies towards women changed in the years 1933 to 1939. One reason the policies changed was the demand for labour created by rearmament. In 1933 the regime wanted women out of work to make room for 6 million unemployed men, and the marriage loan of June 1933 required the wife to give up her job. By 1936, with unemployment below 2 million and the Four Year Plan committing Germany to be ready for war in four years, the problem had reversed: factories were short of workers and the men were being conscripted into an army that grew from 100,000 to over a million. This meant that in 1937 the condition attached to the loan was quietly dropped, women were recruited into industry and offices, and the number of women in work rose from 4.85 million in 1933 to 7.14 million in 1939, even as the posters went on showing the mother at the kitchen table. The policy changed because the economy needed the very women the ideology had sent home. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the loan condition, 1936, the Four Year Plan, 1937, the figures); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question. Two more paragraphs, on the failure of families to grow past two children that produced the Mother Cross and the divorce law of 1938, and on the racial policies of sterilisation and Lebensborn that put births above marriage, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why Nazi policies towards women changed in the years 1933 to 1939. You may use the following in your answer: the marriage loan; rearmament. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a figure, a law or a name
• Causes of your own: the fall in unemployment, the failure of families to grow beyond two children, or the racial aims behind Lebensborn and sterilisation

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks: How far do you agree with Interpretation 1 that Nazi policy towards women succeeded? Use both interpretations and your own knowledge. A student has written the case FOR Interpretation 1. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• The birth rate did rise, but success has to be measured against the aim, and the aim was the four-child family with the mother at home: the average family stayed at two, the rate in 1939 was still below that of 1920 and rose in every country as the Depression lifted, and the regime itself put 2.3 million more women into work and dropped its own loan condition in 1937, so the policy succeeded at clearing women from the courts and the lecture halls and failed at the thing it was for, and a judgement should give it the professions and deny it the family.
• The policy was wrong, so it cannot have succeeded.
• Women kept buying make-up.
• The war ruined everything after 1939.