Women in Nazi Germany / Edition 1

by Jill Stephenson

Overview

From images of jubilant mothers offering the Nazi salute, to Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels, women in Hitler's Germany and their role as supporters and guarantors of the Third Reich continue to exert a particular fascination. This account moves away from the stereotypes to provide a more complete picture of how they experienced Nazism in peacetime and at war and offers a penetrating account of what life was really like for women living under the Third Reich. What was the status and role of women in pre-Nazi Germany and how did different groups of women respond to the Nazi project in practice? Jill Stephenson looks at the social, cultural and economic organization of women's lives under Nazism, and assesses opposing claims that German women were either victims or villains of National Socialism. Women in Nazi Germany goes beyond the stereotype to present more authentic and comprehensive portrait and includes a fascinating selection of contemporary documents including official papers, memoirs, and articles from Nazi women's magazines. For readers interested in German history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900582418362
Publication date:	10/05/2001
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Jill Stephenson is Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh.

Table of Contents

	List of tables	x
	List of maps	x
	Author's acknowledgements	xi
	Publisher's acknowledgements	xii
	Chronology	xiii
	Maps	xviii
Part 1	Introduction	1
1	German women and National Socialism	3
	Introduction	3
	The Nazis' inheritance	6
	Who were 'women in Nazi Germany'?	11
	Nazi ideology and its limitations	16
Part 2	Women in the Racial State	21
2	Reproduction, family, sexuality	23
	Reproduction as racial policy	23
	Marriage and motherhood in 'valuable' families	27
	Motherhood in 'hereditarily unhealthy' and 'asocial' families	33
	Birth control: contraception and abortion	37
	'Sexual deviants': single mothers, lesbians, prostitutes	40
	Wartime marriages and wartime liaisons	46
3	Women at work	50
	Patterns of employment from depression to war	50
	The employment question in wartime	55
	The modern economy: industry	58
	The modern economy: white-collar and clerical work	61
	The modern economy: the professions	63
	The traditional economy: domestic service	65
	The traditional economy: small-scale farming	67
4	Education, socialization, organization	70
	Education and opportunity	70
	Youth organizations	75
	Service schemes	79
	Non-Nazi women's organizations	82
	Nazi women's organizations: growth and 'co-ordination'	83
	Nazi 'women's work', 1934-39	88
5	The crisis of war	94
	War on the home front	94
	Bombing of towns	96
	Consumers and the 'black market'	97
	Migrants, evacuees and refugees	100
	Nazi women at war	103
	The last days of the war	106
6	Opponents, perpetrators and the persecuted	109
	Opposition and reprisals	109
	Perpetrators: warders, professionals, denunciators	112
	The persecuted: non-'Aryan' women	116
	The persecuted: inmates of prisons and camps	118
	The persecuted: non-German women workers	121
	Can women be classed as either victims or perpetrators?	124
Part 3	Assessment	129
7	Three issues: class, empowerment and international comparisons	131
	The salience of class in Nazi Germany	131
	Was there anything 'emancipatory' about the Nazi women's organizations?	133
	Were women in Nazi Germany discriminated against to a greater extent than women elsewhere?	136
Part 4	Documents	139
	Glossary	181
	Who's who	184
	References	186
	Guide to further reading	195
	Index	199