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Before delving into the period of the Third Reich, it is worth noting that women had some influence in helping the Nazis rise to power in 1933.

After World War I, two major changes took place in Germany.

The proclamation of the Weimar Republic marked the end of the German Empire, founded by Bismarck.

The emancipation of women was a slow process but one that was beginning to take off by 1919.

The newly created Weimar Constitution gave women something they had not had before: the right to vote.

With universal suffrage, women could have a voice and a vote in the new Germany that was trying to rise.

Despite the humiliating conditions imposed on the German nation by the Treaty of Versailles, not only could they vote, but for the first time in German history, women would occupy seats in Germany’s legislative chambers—at least legally.

In practice, the reality was quite different.

In the first elections held in 1919, 9.

6% of the representatives to the National Assembly of Weimar Germany were women—37 out of 416.

Although the elected women influenced politics, they could not or did not intend to change traditional values.

For a significant portion of women at the time, including some newly elected deputies, working was acceptable and even preferable.

But the most important role for a woman was to be a homemaker.

The Republic sought to return to conventional roles after years in which men were at war, and women had left the home to work in factories.

Policies were directed at promoting marriage and encouraging women to leave their jobs and return to the home.

Women had become accustomed to working and having their own income.

So the very idea of marriage initially provoked rejection or was simply put on the back burner.

Women in the cities wanted to advance in their jobs while young and marry later in life.

This led to a gender struggle that began to mix with the social conflict.

In response to this, during the 1920s, the newly created National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) adopted the idea of “Volksgemeinschaft” (The People’s Community), which sought to eliminate class divisions and shape the aspirations of both men and women in order to achieve a single family and national goal.

By the mid-1920s, seven years after the end of the war, women found themselves stagnating in the labor market.

They generally did not reach high positions within companies and earned much less than men.

With the Great Depression of 1929, these labor market frustrations intensified.

This is where the Nazi party came into play, proposing that women leave their jobs and return to their homes.

As public opinion among women had changed by then, women joined the National Socialist Party with much greater fervor than other parties.

The wounds of the First World War had still not healed by 1932.

There were still more women than men in Germany, especially in the cities, where electoral tradition was stronger.

An example of this is Berlin, where there were 1,116 women for every 1,000 men in the 1932 Federal elections.

The Nazi party was the most voted; it won 230 seats, more than double the previous election, and 13 million votes.

Women voted for the Nazis at a slightly higher margin than men.

Since there were many more women, they widened the gap between the Nazi party and its closest opponent, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which received nearly 8 million votes.

This Nazi victory, which began an era of horror in Europe and the most brutal war in human history, was not only due to German men but also to the women who voted with Hitler’s speeches in mind.

Despite this support, they were the first to be betrayed when Hitler was elected Chancellor in November of 1933.

There were no women in Parliament during the war.

Nazi leaders even considered stripping women of their right to vote.

The role of women in Nazi ideology: A doll in a dollhouse.

Now that I’ve explained how women contributed to the Nazi party’s rise to power through electoral means, it’s time to discuss how the betrayal of the rights they had gained over the past 15 years began.

Today, we can interpret that all governments of the time—whether Bolshevik, English, American, and of course Nazi—were conservative.

However, there were nuances among them.

The Nazis could be counted as one of the most conservative.

They wanted to return to a purer past in their view, and for that, they needed two things: many warrior men to fight in Europe and many women to give birth to those men and raise them within the ideology of a Reich that was supposed to last a thousand years.

In the words of the great Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, “The mission of women is to be beautiful and bring children into the world.

” That is not at all as outdated as it seems.

The female bird cares for her mate and for the eggs for him.

In return, the male provides food, stands guard, and protects her from enemies.

Joseph Goebbels, before joining the Nazi party, studied Germanic studies, classical philology, and history.

Something that is evident in the quote above.

For the minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, a woman was to care for the home while her husband handled external matters, brought food home, and defended the nation to ensure his wife’s protection, just as birds do.

The bird metaphor was no accident.

Birds are the animals with the highest percentage of monogamy in the entire animal kingdom—something necessary for the Reich to endure.

Birds are also free and migrate across vast territories within continents or the world, as the Nazis expected Aryan men and women to do once the war was over.

In Nazi ideology, men and women complemented each other.

While one fought for the larger world, the state, and Europe, the other was to ensure the care of the small world—the home—and Aryan children.

Thus, each contributed to the integrity of the nation and the future of the Reich.

For that reason, it’s no surprise that in 1933, when Hitler and the Nazi party were firmly consolidated in power, nearly all women in public administration were dismissed.

This reduced the number of teachers by 15%, and similar actions were taken with female doctors, lawyers, and women in German state philharmonic orchestras.

That same year, the regime offered a marital loan in the form of a check to young couples who wanted to start a family.

The loan amounted to 1,000 German marks, equivalent to about $5,750 in 2024 purchasing power.

It wasn’t a fortune, but it was certainly a relief for new German families hoping to start a home.

But the loan was not given out of altruism.

It was a measure to promote births among Aryan groups, who were the only ones eligible for the credit.

The debt was reduced by 25% for each child born annually.

If the couple followed this plan, by the fourth year of marriage with the birth of their final child, they would owe nothing to the Third Reich.

Once more lands were conquered across Europe, male settlers would be crucial for Aryan expansion in each territory.

But the martial atmosphere and this separation of roles clashed head-on with reality.

Starting in 1934, just a year after the dismissals, many women gradually returned to teaching.

University education was another issue that saw both progress and setbacks.

Between 1933 and 1935, 40% of women entered universities.

But by the late 1930s, they represented only 10% of the student population.

In 1937, just a year before the Sudeten crisis and the invasion of Poland, Germany was already fully militarized.

Military service had taken many men out of public administration and into the barracks, disrupting state and bureaucratic tasks.

To address this problem, the Third Reich forced women to work for a year of unpaid service, both in public administration and in certain private sector industries.

That same year, the marriage loan was abolished.

Control over women’s lives went even further.

It was frowned upon for them to wear makeup, pants, high heels, dye their hair, or get permanent waves.

They were also not allowed to smoke or drink in public, nor to be too thin, as that was not what German mothers were supposed to do.

By 1943, due to the war, the German population had declined, and the Reich’s main muscle—the family—was completely atrophied.

It was difficult to increase the birth rate with the vast majority of men dead or at the front, fighting for the Reich and far from their wives.

This created a new problem for Nazi party leaders, as they could not allow their plans to fail.

If there was no population, who would continue the colonization process in Eastern Europe?

Faced with this problem, some Nazi leaders proposed changing the rules again.

All women, married or single, should have four racially pure children.

In case they already had them, men would have the legal freedom to father children outside of marriage.

However, the Nazis had other problems at the time, so this proposal was never approved.

A league to gather them and catch them all: The Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls).

The first youth movements in Germany began in 1896 with self-directed young people who had no relationship with adults or their organizations.

During the 20th century, the Berlin student Carl Fisher transformed this movement into the Wandervogel (migratory or hiking birds), and by 1914, this group had more than 45,000 members, consisting of boys and girls aged between 14 and 21.

For this reason, when Gustaf Link founded the National Socialist Youth League in March 1922, no one found it strange.

Youth leagues were common at the time, but no one expected what it would later become: the Hitler Youth, which also had a female branch in 1923.

Some female youth groups joined the National Socialist Party, and in 1930, an organization exclusively for females was created, called Bund Deutscher Mädel (the League of German Girls).

It was a branch of the Hitler Youth.

By 1931, 1,711 young women led by Elisabeth Griewald formed the League of German Girls, uniting the other female groups that existed at the time.

On July 17th, 1933, all youth movements that did not belong to the Hitler Youth were eliminated by law.

Their elimination was due to the fact that they went against National Socialist ideals, as was the case with the Wandervogel, which was characterized by its emphasis on freedom.

Thus, some groups were permanently closed, and only church-affiliated movements survived but at the high cost of being absorbed by the Nazi party’s youth organization.

This organization maintained that all German boys, girls, and teenagers should follow the same path, both physically and spiritually.

From 1933 onward, girls between the ages of 14 and 18 directly joined the League of German Girls.

If they were younger, between 10 and 13, they were integrated into the League of Young Girls, provided they met the admission requirements, which were being of German origin, holding German citizenship, being free of hereditary diseases, and having completed the fourth grade.

In a sense, it was the Nazi appropriation of scouting, founded by Robert Baden-Powell, something the Soviets also did with the Pioneer movement.

In March 1934, Trude Mohr replaced Griewald as the leadership of the League of German Girls.

Mohr was responsible for the creation of this same group in Brandenburg in 1930.

The activities of the female league included skiing, hiking, campfires with German folk songs, folk dances, and more.

In addition to these activities, the young women carried out Health Service or Social Service, which involved helping within the community, assisting farmers, and aiding the less fortunate.

Additionally, the girls practiced rhythmic gymnastics, a sport promoted by the Nazi party for women as it encouraged the harmony of their bodies.

During the winter, they gathered to sew, knit, or engage in other types of crafts.

As for fashion, there were also very puritanical restrictions for the girls.

Although it wasn’t much different from other scouting movements of the time, within the Hitler Youth, they were not allowed to wear high heels, silk stockings, makeup, jewelry, rings, or wristwatches.

For activities, the summer or spring uniform consisted of a navy blue skirt, a white blouse, and a black neckerchief with a leather knot.

While in winter, they could wear blue pants, a brown jacket, and sometimes a black beret.

If a teenage girl stood out for her skills or leadership in the league, she had better chances of going to university or finding a job.

However, after completing that stage, all girls in the league had to perform a year of social service in tasks as diverse as working in the fields or caring for children in daycare.

From 1936 onward, membership in the League of German Girls was mandatory.

When the war began in 1938, the duties of these young women changed.

They entertained the troops stationed in the rear, assisted with first aid and care in hospitals, received wounded soldiers at train stations, and supported people left homeless after the bombings.

The League of German Girls had 4 and a half million members in 1944.

It was the largest female youth organization in the world at that time.

A year later, when the Red Army entered Berlin, many young women from the League joined the National Labor Front to defend Berlin, becoming cannon fodder.

Finally, on October 10th, 1945, the League of German Girls was officially dissolved by the Allied Control Council.

Eugenics, Mothers, and Nurses Building the Aryan Man.

The principles of Charles Darwin on the evolution of species were used in the 19th century by British sociologist Herbert Spencer as the basis for developing his sociological theories.

Spencer argued that just as evolution postulated that the fittest survived in nature, only the fittest should survive in society.

This doctrine, or belief, was called eugenics, and as you can imagine, eugenics was incredibly important to the Nazis.

On July 14th, 1933, just five weeks after Hitler came to power, the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (Götz Gesetz) was passed.

This law created a hereditary health court responsible for forcibly sterilizing people with what was considered hereditary deficiencies, thus preventing contaminating elements in the future Aryan race.

But this Nazi idea of purifying and creating a new race did not end there.

As Himmler and the SS progressively created a Nordic population nucleus to ensure the expansion of the Aryan race, direct supports for healthy Aryan mothers were also introduced.

On December 12th, 1935, the Lebensborn registered association was founded.

This family welfare program provided maternity homes where women could give birth and receive social assistance during and after childbirth, as well as financial or social assistance to the wives of SS members.

The program also accepted unmarried pregnant women and people not linked to the SS, as long as they were considered racially valuable.

Additionally, nurses played a fundamental role during Nazism in implementing the Reich’s eugenic and Nordicist ideas.

To maintain control and ensure that births were pure, the Nazi regime carried out the Action T4 program.

This infamous program’s mission was to systematically murder all children with physical or psychological conditions.

Specialized units were created for this purpose, and their agents were Nazi nurses or midwives.

These women were required to report births and inform their superiors if a child was born with a disability.

In exchange for this report, they received cash bonuses.

Around 600,000 nurses were trained in basic eugenics and Nordicism.

Once a child with certain conditions was born, their job was to persuade parents by explaining the “innovative treatments and best care” that Nazi doctors would offer their children, leading them to controlled spaces where they ultimately died.

Starting in 1939, Hitler authorized a large-scale massacre aimed at eliminating adults with physical and mental disabilities.

Many were sent to concentration camps to test the gas chambers that would later be used in the Holocaust.

By 1941, people with disabilities were killed by other methods such as lethal injections, oral overdoses, and starvation.

Each was carried out by Nazi nurses under doctor’s orders.

Hedwig Poast and Lena Hyrich: Women and Lovers of SS Leaders.

The officers of the German secret service are well-known, but they also had wives and lovers who are less recognized.

Two of them are Hedwig Poast and Lena Hyrich.

Poast was a woman who was a member of the League of German Girls.

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