WEAPONIZED WOMANHOOD:
HOW GERMAN WOMEN WERE COMPLICIT IN
THEIR DEPRIVATION OF AGENCY
BRIANNA ALMOND

In this essay, the topic of gender roles in Germany between the Weimar Republic
and the Nazi regime is analyzed closely. Though women made major strides in
establishing their rights to individual liberty following World War I, the onset of
the Nazi era in Germany led to a precipitous drop in their involvement in wider
society. The evidence for this includes an analysis of the guidelines of popular
women’s clubs, university and government policies, as well as individual examples.
What is remarkable about this event is that this was not done to women by men
alone-- women across political boundaries worked together to architect their
removal from public view.

In Nazi era Germany, women were accessory to the deprivation of their own
individual rights by the state. This was due to a c omplex blend of eugenic ideology
and desire for sexual and economic freedoms that were being demanded by women
at the time. 1 It pervaded all levels of society; women, including Jewish women and
women from all political spheres, utilized eugenic thinking to promote ideas of who
‘should’ be breeding. 2 Upon the ascension of the Nazi party, instead of fighting
back against the extremely misogynist ideals promoted by party ideology, women’s
rights groups simply disbanded. 3 This led to many women joining the rising wave
of Nazi racial purity theory, which was greatly supported by the foundation of
Ann Taylor Allen. "Feminism and Eugenics in Germany and Britain, 1900-1940: A Comparative
Perspective." German Studies Review 23, no. 3 (2000): 479-478. Weinstein, Valeric. "Working
Weimar Women into the National Socialist Community: Carl Froelich's Women's Labor Service
Film, Ich Für Dich—Du Für Mich (1934), and Mädchen in Uniform (1931)." Women in German
Yearbook 25 (2009): 29-30.
2
Allen, 484-490. Prue Chamberlayne. "The Mothers' Manifesto and Disputes over
'Mütterlichkeit'." Feminist Review, no. 35 (1990): 17-18.
3
Allen, 493.
1

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eugenic schools of thought and mother’s rights that German feminists had fought
hard to have recognized. 4 In the National Socialist era, women were complicit in
how they were funneled by the government into jobs traditionally considered
‘women’s work,’ despite the popularity of feminist thought in the Weimar era. They
bought in to the propaganda fed to them by the government and did not seek to
affect great change despite intrusion into their rights over their bodies and personal
lives. 5 This meant that women were used as a tool to spread Nazi ideology
throughout the country via their direction into social, public facing sectors of the
workforce.
In the Weimar era, there was political division over the role of women in the work
force and at home. 6 Women left the role of housewife to join the legions of German
workers, which lead to a precipitous drop in birth rates as their priorities shifted. 7
Women were more interested in starting careers and lives in the public sphere
instead of the domestic sphere. 8 There was a trend towards women being interested
in and socially encouraged to be more cosmopolitan and interested in education.
This was horrifying to German policy makers due to a national ‘pronatal’ ideal. 9
They desired more German children due to their need for more people to fulfill a
national vision embedded during the era of the German empire: the more Aryan
people, the better served the country would be. 10 As a result, German feminists and
women’s advocacy groups grappled with this ideal and utilized it in their rhetoric
to justify their desires. Women’s advocacy groups such as the Bund fur
Mutterschutz (BfM) and Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) argued that the
uplifting of mothers as the spiritual heart of Germany was essential, and the BfM
especially argued that eugenic policies against ‘inferior’ births needed to be in
place. 11 ‘Unwanted’ and ‘damaged’ children needed to be avoided in order to
preserve the ‘purity’ of the German people. 12 For them, the intended result of such
arguments was that the sexual freedom of women meant they would have access to
birth control and could choose when they could become mothers. 13 They took
advantage of the inability of marginalized women to speak for themselves and
repudiate claims that they needed to be stopped from having children. 14

Allen, 490-494.
Allen, 494.
6
Chamberlayne, 17-18.
7
Chamberlayne, 17-18.
8
Chamberlayne, 17-18; Charu Gupta. "Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany." Economic
and Political Weekly 26, no. 17 (1991): 42-43.
9
Allen, 488.
10
Allen, 488.
11
Allen, 484-490; Gupta, 17.
12
Allen, 485-490.
13
Allen, 485; Gupta, 40-41.
14
Gupta, 46.
4
5

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The Nazi party had very specific ideas about a woman's place in the world, with
Hitler bluntly saying that they were in charge of the household and men were in
charge of the public sector. 15 Though many feminist groups in Germany were wary
of Nazi ideals and disagreed with their desire to force women out of the workplace,
they did not go so far as to protest loudly against them, even before the Nazis were
in power. 16 Instead, they simply disbanded their groups rather than toe the Nazi
party line that was dictated to them. 17 In order to increase the birth rate and relegate
women to the purely domestic sphere, the Nazi regime pushed for women to do
their duty to the country by procreating and ‘protecting’ the home. Ironically the
work that both mainstream and radical feminist groups had done to promote the
ideal of the mother as a saintly figure only gave legitimacy to the Nazi rhetoric. 18
By disbanding they also left numerous women jobless, and their only equivalent
options were Nazi sponsored groups. Thus, women were driven straight into the
arms of the Nazis and were vulnerable to their ideals. As well, the advances in the
workplace that women had achieved in the Interwar Period were becoming stale;
with the return of the men, women were relegated to the most menial and laborious
jobs in the industrial and service industries. 19 This was compounded with fears
brought on by the Depression that women were ‘taking’ jobs away from
hardworking men. 20 This social and economic climate made it easier for Nazi
policy makers to convince women to give up working and return to homemaking.
The intensity of the propaganda was unevenly applied depending on one’s social
status. 21 Abortion laws were deeply invasive at the time; in 1933 the Nazi party
instituted strong laws limiting access to contraceptives and stopped access to
abortions entirely unless permitted by the state, in order to increase birth rates. 22 In
contrast, women who were on the fringes of society were discouraged from
procreating and saw the nastier face of the government. 23 “Undesirable” women
were sterilized in mass numbers in accordance with the values of eugenics and a
‘healthier Aryan race.’ 24 The eugenics policies of government lead sterilization
deemed that it was acceptable for force to be used to achieve its goals because the
Chamberlayne, 19.
Allen, 493.
17
Allen, 493.
18
Chamberlayne, 19.
19
Mouton, Michelle. "From Adventure and Advancement to Derailment and Demotion: Effects of
Nazi Gender Policy on Women’s Careers and Lives." Journal of Social History 43, no. 4 (2010):
945-946.
20
Patmore, Greg. "Germany." In Worker Voice: Employee Representation in the Workplace in
Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US 1914-1939, 164. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2016.
21
Chamberlayne, 20; Gupta, 40.
22
Gupta, 40-41.
23
Gupta, 40-41.
24
Gupta, 40-41.
15
16

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victims were a danger to the German people. 25 This was ostensibly to prevent the
birth of defective children, but statistical evidence shows how unevenly the policy
was truly applied, a fact that was well known at the time. 26 Jewish women, Romani
women, and women of ‘socially inferior class’ were all targeted directly, thus they
were the ones who protested their treatment. This only caused ethnically white
women to double down on their convictions that eugenics were necessary because
women’s liberation movements were further associated with ‘otherness’ due to
their advocates. 27 This was due to racist and classist thinking on the part of policymakers. The protests by marginalized groups had the effect of bolstering Nazi plans
because of a desire to reject anything associated with the Jewish people and other
‘undesirables.’
Under the National Socialist government, the ideal German woman was
sympathetic and emotional, but she was not the same as the Victorian ideal of a
frail, delicate lady. 28 A German woman was supposed to be strong, athletic, and
willing to do anything to support her country and the future of her race. 29 Above all
else, she was required to produce as many offspring as possible, and nothing should
stand in her way. 30 Their policies encouraged women to work, though in specific
fields that reinforced the gender stereotypes that the government was promoting.
These included fields such as nursing, teaching children, cooking, and other ‘soft’
roles. 31 The National Socialist party justified their demand for women to enter the
workforce in these positions by saying that it was for the common good, and that
women were better suited to perform these roles. 32 To ensure they had no choice
but to pursue these positions, new acceptance standards for universities were put
into place. 33 Starting in secondary school, girls were funneled into courses that
focused on skills related to domestic service. They were deliberately denied math
and English courses in order to stop them from developing interests in those
fields. 34 This resulted in them not being able to qualify for most universities that
would have allowed them to study to join professions that were too ‘mannish’ for
them, such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Women abruptly stopped enrolling
in post-secondary education, with university rates dropping precipitously from a
high of 91% in 1923 to 5.6% in 1934. Girls and women who had started the
qualification process before the new laws came into effect found that they were not
Allen, 484-496.
Gupta, 40-41.
27
Gupta, 40.
28
Mouton, 950.
29
Gupta, 42.
30
Jane Caplan. "The Administration of Gender Identity in Nazi Germany." History Workshop
Journal, no. 72 (2011): 171-80.
31
Gupta, 40; Mouton, 947-948.
32
Mouton, 947-948.
33
Mouton, 947-950.
34
Mouton, 948-950.
25
26

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hired and were relegated to finding jobs that were considered more genderappropriate until they married and left the workforce. For many women, this
effectively guided them out of the workforce entirely, as there was a drop in
employed women in Germany after the laws were put in place.
In addition, there were financial penalties for families with ‘double earners’ and
rewards for married couples if the women were not working. 35 Penalties must be
considered in the financial climate of the time: due to the recession, money was
tight for most families, regardless of social status. For working men, penalties
included excess taxes, and doctors with wives that worked were not allowed to
claim money back for seeing patients with insurance. 36 Women could be fired
without cause if they were from a family of ‘double earners’ and they now no longer
had any advocates to speak for them regarding the improvement of pay, hours, and
working conditions. 37 Rewards took the form of loans that were available to
married couples if the wife wasn’t working and free access to certain tests required
of doctors to remain certified. 38 With such two pronged tactics, social conformity
was assured.
Another policy the National Socialist Party enacted in order to control women and
direct their life choices was to shut down church youth groups and demand national
women’s organizations follow strict standards that promoted Nazi ideals. 39 The
BDF, the biggest women’s organization at the time, folded. 40 This left the Nazi
party with a monopoly on women’s groups, which meant that they could dictate
what women were being taught and what was being promoted as important values.
A call went out to German women to ask them to join the Nazi sponsored groups:
the National Socialist Women’s Organization (NSF) and the Reich Mothers
Program. 41 To compound matters, in order to be allowed to join post-secondary
institutions, one was required to have actively participated in the national German
girls youth group, the League of German Girls (BMD) or the Reich Work Services
(RAD). 42 As a result, women were left with no other choice than to join the
government sponsored youth groups that took the place of the former church youth
groups and community groups, which led to a greater influence on the part of the
government at a more susceptible age. 43 These youth groups encouraged specific
sets of behaviours and career directions. Girls participated in athletic activities to
encourage physical fitness, as well as volunteer activities to help the poor and assist

Mouton, 950.
Mouton, 950.
37
Mouton, 950.
38
Mouton, 950.
39
Chamberlayne, 19-20; Allen., 493-494.
40
Chamberlayne, 19-20.
41
Mouton, 948.
42
Mouton, 948.
43
Mouton, 948-950.
35
36

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soldiers, such as singing for them while they were in the hospital. 44 They were also
encouraged to move away from any communities that might entice them to question
the government, such as religious communities that might divide loyalty between
the leaders of the church and the state. 45 It was carefully orchestrated propaganda
that kept women complacent from a young age and created general feelings of
warmth towards the government. It discouraged women from questioning the state
laws that sought to control their bodies. Thus, girls were trained from a young age
to be obedient to the desires of their politicians.
Women were encouraged to work in specific settings that were considered
appropriate for their gender, such as social work, teaching, and nursing. They felt
grateful to the government for creating new job opportunities for them: the Nazi
party utilized the BDM to create job openings for women that had been left empty
by the Christian groups and the BDF after their dismissal and dissolution,
respectively. 46 There were a myriad of new job openings in social wellness fields.
The BDM offered the chance for women to open health clinics and daycares, as
well as advice clinics that taught domestic skills and gave parenting tips. 47 This was
due to the fact that they were helping people who were considered racially
appropriate by society and thus they were largely rewarded for their work by the
state. 48 The desire to help the individuals the women were dealing with specifically
superseded their ability to acknowledge other, less savoury, policies of the
government. As the war effort mounted and the Nazi party recognized that they
would need women’s help in factories, they justified this using their ideology as
well. They claimed that women were actually very well suited to repetitive
assembly line work because it meant they did not have to take their minds off of
their families at home. 49 This had the effect of reinforcing that working women
should still put their family above all else. Serving the state was just another way
to support her family. The political spin on the policies made women feel as if their
choices were voluntary and they were happy to contribute to their governments’
cause.
The feminist rhetoric that the Weimar women had set up had the unintended side
effect of bolstering Nazi ideas about eugenics and racial purity. Their goal of
continuing the emancipating women and creating greater equality between the
sexes was foiled by the Great Depression, as their insistence on representation in
the workplace only made men and non-working women resent them for supposedly
making it harder for men to find jobs.50 The feminist movement became a symbol
Mouton, 946.
Mouton, 948.
46
Gupta, 42.
47
Mouton, 949.
48
Mouton, 949- 950.
49
Mouton, 950-952.
50
Gupta, 40-41.
44
45

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that made the Nazi regime stronger by its demonizing of the women in the group
and highlighting of the fact that racial inferior women were part of it. 51 German
women fell into a trap of their own making. Women worked depending on what
field they wanted to go into, and they were foiled if they tried to make career plans
outside of what the state wanted for them. 52 This was so extensive that most women
did not realize it was happening to them on a personal level. This was likely due to
a desire to assert agency over their lives and to the idea that the government would
not be able to so effectively meddle with them as individuals. 53 Instead of
complaining women frequently chose careers that fit with Nazi ideology and
happily left the workforce when it was demanded of them. 54 Thus, they perpetuated
their own suffering and played into the hands of the Nazi party

Gupta, 40.
Mouton, 948.
53
Mouton, 945-950.
54
Mouton, 948-950.
51
52

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALLEN, ANN TAYLOR. "Feminism and Eugenics in Germany and Britain, 19001940: A Comparative Perspective." German Studies Review 23, no. 3
(2000): 477-505. doi:10.2307/1432830.
CAPLAN, JANE. "The Administration of Gender Identity in Nazi Germany."
History Workshop Journal, no. 72 (2011): 171-80.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/stable/41306843.
CHAMBERLAYNE, PRUE. "The Mothers' Manifesto and Disputes over
'Mütterlichkeit'." Feminist Review, no. 35 (1990): 9-23.
doi:10.2307/1395397.
GUPTA, CHARU. "Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany." Economic and
Political Weekly 26, no. 17 (1991): WS40-S48.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/stable/4397988.
MOUTON, MICHELLE. "From Adventure and Advancement to Derailment and
Demotion: Effects of Nazi Gender Policy on Women’s Careers and
Lives." Journal of Social History 43, no. 4 (2010): 945-71.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/stable/40802012.
PATMORE, GREG. "Germany." In Worker Voice: Employee Representation in the
Workplace in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US 19141939, 149-69. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016).
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/stable/j.ctt1gn6brb.12.
WEINSTEIN, VALERIC. "Working Weimar Women into the National Socialist
Community: Carl Froelich's Women's Labor Service Film, Ich Für Dich—
Du Für Mich (1934), and Mädchen in Uniform (1931)." Women in
German Yearbook 25 (2009): 28-49.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/stable/20688312.

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