Tim Heath - Hitlers Housewives: German Women on the Home Front

HITLERS HOUSEWIVES

In memory of Cy Garrett 24 August 1976 to 15 June 2016 and his father Dave Garrett 25 August 1952 to 2 April 2018.

Family lives in the heart forever. You both left much too soon. Yet we will remember you both with great love and affection always. I feel honoured to have been able to call you family however brief that time may have been.

German Women on the Home Front

TIM HEATH

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Tim Heath, 2020

ISBN 978 1 52674 807 2

eISBN 978 1 52674 808 9

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52674 809 6

The right of Tim Heath to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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The meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party cowed the masses into a sense of false utopia. With an economy steadily geared towards war throughout the 1930s, by 1938 the scourge of unemployment in Germany had all but been eradicated. Hitler believed that Germany had been a nation subjugated to materialism and that prosperity could only ever be gained through struggle and war. In the relatively brief period of its existence, Nazi Germany had been devoid of any clear economic objective, yet the women of Germany played a crucial role in Hitlers rise to power. It has been suggested that, during Hitlers 1932 election campaign, over half of those who voted for him were women. They had witnessed the anarchy of the post-war years in Germany and experienced the economic and social privations that resulted from an Allied-brokered peace. The women of Germany had also witnessed first-hand the chaos brought about by rival gangs brawling on their streets, the result of over forty different political factions all vying for power in this blighted land. Unemployment had been the greatest single threat to the stability of family life in Germany at that time. The depression years brought about not only severe social hardships of every conceivable kind but also a high mortality rate amongst the countrys young. In a place where even the most basic of foodstuffs such as a loaf of bread became luxury items, malnutrition and disease soon took hold; children were usually the first to perish under such conditions. It was not unusual during those years of hardship for families to lose four out of six children.

When Hitler came to power there was at last a ray of hope in what appeared an impenetrable darkness; that this man of the people would restore not only political stability to the country but also prosperity to its people. As reforms were set in place, Hitler encouraged women to step aside from their jobs and allow men to take their places. Initially the theory worked and Germanys female population followed their leaders instructions. Their duties as guardians of the home were to be the very foundation for a future Thousand-Year Reich. Germanys women readily accepted this as recompense for Germanys journey back to greatness, though not all embraced the principle of living in a society where two distinct worlds existed: that of men and that of women. With the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Germanys women would soon find themselves on the front line. As fathers, sons, brothers and boyfriends went off to war women faced the unique challenges that the home front would present. Divided by their roles as mothers and housewives, they accepted the ambiguities of their leaders.

The home front is a crucial factor for any nation during times of protracted war. The home front is where society itself becomes mobilised towards the goal of victory. Although the leadership of Nazi Germany understood the lessons learned from the First World War, during the Second World War the Nazi home front was somewhat slow in mobilising. The main reasons for this were twofold. The first point to consider is that during the early phase of the Second World War America had yet to enter hostilities alongside Britain and France. Germany had yet to experience the mass air raids on her cities and industrial bases. Therefore, Germanys infrastructure was, at this early stage, largely unaffected. Secondly, it was not until 1941 after the invasion of Russia that Germany would be faced with the reality of fighting a war on two fronts. Americas entry into the Second World War, following the Japanese attack on US Naval forces at Pearl Harbor, sealed Germanys fate. From 1941 the country would be locked in a fight for survival that it could not possibly win. The realisation that victory would be neither quick (as Hitler had hoped) nor without huge cost in lives meant that Germanys women would soon form a significant part of the war effort.

As the war progressed manpower became a problem. As more and more men were required on the battlefront it would be the women of Germany who would have to take their places in every sphere of life. Effective management of the home front often has a huge influence upon the outcome of any war. Perhaps the best examples of this would be that of Britain and America. In Germanys case all the efforts, no matter how great they may have seemed at the time, only served to prolong the inevitable outcome. The desperate situation faced by the country, particularly through the mid-war years, should have been warning enough as to the outcome of a war that Germany had started. Women rose bravely to every challenge they faced, despite steadily increasing privations, as well as the death and destruction that surrounded them. They had made the transition from housewives and as bearers of children to defenders of the Third Reich and, convinced through indoctrination and propaganda, that theirs was a divine task, they followed the leadership into the flames of war. Even the young girls of the Jungmadelbund (Young Maidens League) and Bund Deutscher Madel (League of German Maidens) could not escape the mobilisation of the home front. As the war against Germany neared its climax in 1945, every possible resource had been exploited. When the end came it was neither merciful nor pleasant.

Ultimately Hitlers housewives experienced mixed fortunes throughout the years of the Second World War: there were those whose loved ones went off to war never to return; those who lost children not only to the influences of the Hitler Youth but the Allied bombing; those who sought comfort within the arms of other young men; and those who would serve above and beyond the call of duty on the German home front. Their stories form intimate and intricately woven tales of life, love, joy, fear and death. Hitlers Housewives: German Women on the Home Front 1939-1945 is not only an essential document towards a better understanding of one of the twentieth centurys greatest tragedies but also, and for the first time, tells the story of the role played by Germanys women on the home front in their own words.