Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 23. September 12 1977

Women in Nazi Society

Women in Nazi Society

Photo of women saluting Hitler

The position and role of women under the Nazis was clear-cut; while man was the warrior and breadwinner, woman was the homemaker and child bearer. As Adolf Hitler explained at the 1937 Nuremburg Rally;

"If today a female lawyer achieves great things and nearby there lives a mother of five, six, seven children, all of them healthy and well brought up, then I would say; from the point of view of eternal benefit to our people, the woman who has bourne and brought up children, and who has therefore-given our nation life in the future, has achieved more and done more!"

The Nazi obsession with questions of race lead to their insisting that women should be encouraged by every means possible to bear children for Germany. This included liberal tax concessions, generous loan provisions for newly married couples, and exemption from interest payments on loans, with the birth of children.

Death Penalty for Abortions.

Abortion was considered a heinous crime and those found guilty could be liable to prison sentences. In 1943 the death penalty was introduced for those found guilty of performing abortions. Birth control centres, the availability of contraceptives, and contraceptive advice were also restricted. There was a legal ban on the public advertisement of contraceptives, and in 1933 the birth control groups were outlawed, so that those most in need of help had only a limited chance of obtaining such aid. On the other hand, Nazi theories about race and heredity suggested that in certain cases i.e. the ill, the unsuitable, those who had hereditary defects, or were politically undesirable or non-Aryan, birth control should be positively encouraged.

Nazi Policy Towards Women Students

As Nazis tried to guide schoolgirls into a "womanly" education, so their propaganda suggested that they would also deny girls the chance of studying in universities, or other institutes of higher learning. It is important to remember that many of the early educational property's attributed to the Nazi Government were conceived by the previous Weimar Government in an attempt to solve the problems of the economic depression. The policies initiated by the Nazis were similarly moulded by necessity, with the result that the dogma which was conveniently relevant in 1933 had to be abandoned in the later 1930's as it proved increasingly unrealistic in the changed circumstances of the economic market. Early Nazi policy was expressed as—

"It is clear that study cannot offer women a suitable general education. Women will in future be employed much less in occupations requiring a period of study.... Therefore senior schools will not need to prepare girls for university."

In 1933 a particular restriction was placed on girls' numbers, which in no case were to exceed 10% of the quota for each land. The effects of this policy can be seen in a quick comparison—

In 1933 women took up 18% of the places in universities, while in 1937-8 the percentage dropped to 15%. In Physics, women were 25% of the overall intake in 1931, but only 7% in 1937-8. The policy to restrict the entry of women to university had achieved alarming success.

This policy was accompanied by the creation of a great variety of activities and organisations for women student which highlights the fact that the Nazis main aim was to oppose and restrict academic freedom and independent minded intellectuals. However, as the unemployment situation eased and the shortage of skilled personnel became apparent, and then acute, the idea which had found currency in earlier Nazi theory - that high intelligence and "womanliness" were incompatible—was categorically denied.

New Zealand Showing Signs of Fascism?

Recently, women along with other groups such as trade unions and Polynesians have been the subject of legislative and, media attacks. The most obvious examples are the legislation currently before Parliament based on the findings of the Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilization, and Abortion, and the Government's cuts to the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB).

The similarity between the Nazi polices and the present situation in New Zealand is frighteningly ominous. In Germany the Nazis responded to the economic crisis by subjugating the democratic rights of the individual to the state. In the 1930's German workers lost the right to strike, German women lost the right to control their reproductive lives (either through contraception or abortion) and the German people lost the right to democratically control their destiny.

In New Zealand, workers have effectively lost their right to strike and women are losing the right to control their reproductive lives.

In Nazi Germany the provision for children was the over-riding criterion, and, any considerations of either morality or personal happiness were secondary. Hence abortion and contraception were illegal, and an ideological campaign was waged to push women into the home.

But there is one civil liberty left to both women and men in New Zealand and that is the right to protest. We should stand up for our civil rights before it is too late.

Lindy Cassidy