Paul Roland - Nazi Women

NAZI WOMEN

THE ATTRACTION OF EVIL

PAUL ROLAND

This edition published in 2014 by Arcturus Publishing Limited
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ISBN: 978-1-78428-046-8

Introduction

T he women of Nazi Germany have been portrayed as nave, adoring acolytes of their messianic Fhrer, Adolf Hitler, and as victims of a war that turned so tragically against them. They were pitied for the suffering they had endured at the hands of the Soviet army, whose men raped and brutalized them in revenge for the atrocities committed by the SS, and they were grudgingly admired for their stoicism as the Trmmerfrauen or rubble women who cleared the destruction brick by brick so that their country could be rebuilt. In stark contrast, sadistic female concentration camp guards like Irma Grese and cruel harpies such as Ilse Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald, were condemned as aberrations who would presumably have become killers even if Hitler hadnt given them the motive, means and opportunity to murder with impunity.

But this simplistic picture is far from the whole truth. While Nazi wives such as Magda Goebbels and Emma Goering lived lives of luxury and privilege, flaunting the latest French fashions in defiance of Hitlers avowed distaste for make-up and haute couture, the wild-eyed women activists who had forsworn such luxuries and devoted themselves to campaigning for the most regressive and authoritarian regime in modern times were horrified to find themselves excluded from the administration they had helped put into power.

Hitler had made no secret of his aversion to permitting women a role in politics and public life, advocating instead that they be confined to the home to fulfil their natural function as mothers of blond, blue-eyed Aryan babies, a role exemplified by the Party slogan Kinder, Kche und Kirche (children, kitchen and church). They were denied the opportunities afforded by higher education and barred from the professions. And still they voted for him in vast numbers.

However, not all deferred to the dictator. Student activists such as Sophie Scholl and the German wives of Jewish men threatened with deportation protested openly in defiance of the Gestapo, while their fellow citizens remained silent.

But while a comparatively few German women refused to submit to intimidation, others eagerly embraced the opportunities that the National Socialist administration offered them. An army of female secretaries, clerical workers and office assistants dutifully typed up the orders for mass executions, filed details of atrocities and catalogued the mountains of personal possessions stolen from the Nazis victims, thereby facilitating the process of mass murder. Many of these administrators actively participated in the massacre of civilians, particularly in the conquered countries to the east where the indigenous population were hunted down like animals.

German women, outwardly respectable, devoutly religious and sometimes themselves mothers of young children, thought nothing of killing women and infants with their own hands if the regime had declared them to be enemies of the state. Spurred on by a lethal mixture of ruthless ambition, National Socialist zeal and an eagerness to prove their worthiness to their new rulers, they actively and enthusiastically participated in, and even perpetrated,atrocities while relishing their new-found power. After the war they quietly blended back into German society, living out mundane lives as devoted wives and mothers, never having been required to account for their crimes, or give reasons for their missing years.

Their actions cannot be solely attributable to Hitlers messianic charisma.

CHAPTER ONE

Hitlers Women

Although Hitler was attractive to women, it is unlikely that he ever had a normal relationship...

F rom his formative years as the son of an authoritarian Austrian customs official and an over-indulgent mother, to his violent death in the besieged underground bunker beneath the Reichschancellery in Berlin in April 1945, Adolf Hitler sought unconditional devotion and emotional reassurance from women yet he restricted the womans role in the Third Reich to almost medieval status, as embodied in the maxim Kinder, Kche und Kirche (children, kitchen and church). Under the Nazis women were excluded from politics and discouraged from pursuing careers, the number of female students in further education was severely restricted and the wages for employed women remained significantly lower than those paid to their male equivalents. Yet still the women of Germany voted for Hitler in huge numbers, reaching out to touch him during his stage-managed public appearances like the besotted fans of a glamorous movie star and weeping tears of joy if they were permitted to come into the presence of their beloved Fhrer.

The weaker sex

Hitler encouraged their ardent adoration and demanded they sacrifice their personal ambitions to serve their men, who would restore Germanys honour after the humiliating defeat in the First World War. In Hitlers mind men were made for war and women were the weaker sex. Their sole purpose was to tend the home, serve their husbands and produce blond, blue-eyed Aryan babies to fill the ranks of Germanys invincible military machine. Later, those young women selected for the SS Lebensborn breeding programme would not even be required to marry their state selected Aryan mates.

Those who were not enticed into motherhood were viewed as either purely decorative specimens for men to flatter and fawn over, like the trophy wives and mistresses of the Nazi leaders, or playthings to be used by any man who desired them. There were only a few women who defied these Nazi stereotypes, one being the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who was fiercely independent but who remained in thrall to Hitler until her death. Another was the test pilot Hanna Reitsch, whom the Fhrer regarded as an exception, someone who had overcome the disadvantages of her sex to become the archetypal Wagnerian heroine. Hitlers perception of women was that they were physically and intellectually inferior to men because they were impulsive, emotional creatures. The masses, male and female, could be seduced and manipulated by the power of Hitlers oratory because he believed that their collective will was feminine by nature and therefore susceptible to an appeal to their emotions.

Married to the Reich

And yet throughout his turbulent life Hitler apparently refused all opportunities for intimacy, claiming that he was married to the Reich and that he would lose the adoration of his female followers if he got married. Only in the final hours of his life, when he had accepted defeat, did Hitler consent to marry his devoted mistress Eva Braun and allow her to die by his side. But by then he was in failing health and his mental faculties were impaired by a cocktail of drugs prescribed by his physician Dr Morell, whom his aides called the Reichsmaster of injections and a quack. A week before he had told Braun, his dietician Constanze Manziarly and his loyal secretaries Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian that he wished that his generals were as brave as they had been. The women had refused all offers to escape the capital while there was still a chance. But although he demonstrated a condescending respect for women, he refused to entrust them with a significant role in the defence of the Reich.