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

[Introduction]

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.