The Nazi Ideology of German Womanhood >>> Eryn Kane On September 8, 1934 in Nuremberg, Germany, Adolf Hitler gave a speech in which he stated: If one says that man’s world is the State, his struggle, his readiness to devote his powers to the service of the community, one might be tempted to say that the world of woman is a smaller world. For her world is her husband, her family, her children, her house. But where would the greater world be if there were no one to care for the small world? How could the greater world survive if there were none to make the cares of the smaller world the content of their lives?1 Statements and questions of this nature, propagated and proclaimed by high ranking officials within the Nazi party, created and supported the Nazi ideology of womanhood within German society. The ideology of womanhood was conceptualized by Adolf Hitler and other male party members to support the party, its policies, and the State, as he and the Nazis rose to power within Germany during the early twentieth-century. The desirability of motherhood for all German women became the foundation of the Nazi conception of womanhood and family was seen as the germ cell of the nation, class, or ‘volk’.2 The Nazi conception of womanhood established a belief that women were to be segregated and confined to the domestic realm of home and family, functioning only as mothers, and therefore inhibiting female development within German society. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power within Germany during the 1930s. Prior and essential to the succession of the Nazi party, the nation experienced a severe economic depression as a result of Germany’s involvement and defeat in World War I. The German population, suffering and ready for a change, turned to a new leader. In his campaign for power, Hitler asserted that Jews, as an ‘inferior’ race, were responsible for Germany’s troublesome situation. Hitler and the Nazi party convinced Germans that an ‘Aryan’ or racially pure society would fix the problems of the nation’s recent economic downturn and create a successful future for Germany. Whether convinced or just seeking new leadership, the German population accepted Adolf Hitler as ‘Fuhrer’ or the leader of Germany and the Nazi party was placed in control of the nation’s government. Hitler and high ranking male Nazi leaders began to create plans of action for securing a successful and racially pure German State, in which the Nazi womanhood ideology was essential. In the conceptualization of the Nazi womanhood ideology, Hitler and other male party members most likely borrowed many of their beliefs from the True Womanhood or Domesticity ideology. The True Womanhood or Domesticity ideology appeared in both Europe and the United States during the Victorian era of the nineteenth-century and laid the groundwork for twentieth-century ideals. The ideology divided society into two separate
Aegis 2010
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