Nazi ideology of Women

• Strong mother and housewife.
• Women were urged to have more children as a vital way of strengthening the Nazi Volkgemeinschaft.
• 1935 Organisation to Aid Mothers and Children promoted, 'Germany grows through strong mothers and healthy children'.
• A portray of the ideal German family was painted in 1930- showing a married German couple with light hair and eyes, and four healthy and happy children of the same breed, thus, hair and eye colour.

A women's role in the home was to:

• Raise many children
• Look after her family
• Be a good housemaker
• Cook using left overs

Third Reich and Nazi Slogan on Role of Women

• Women's experience of the Third Reich was complexed and varied, and was not simply a reflection of Nazi ideology
• The Nazi slogan on the role of women consisted of the 3Ks. Kinder, Kirche and Kuche, meaning, Children, Church and Kitchen.

• Nazis wanted to reverse recent trends that had increased opportunities for women throughout Europe. Including, increased female employment in the non-agriculture sector and declining birth rate due to a wider access to contaception and increasing opportunites for women.

• These trends were present under the Weimar Republic, many of whose supporters advocated further Emancipation.

• The Nazis acted against these trends as they had a clear vision of wome performing what the Nazis considered to be their traditional role as homemaker and child bearers.

• In the Nation Struggle for Survival (economic depression as well as World War Two), women had a vital, yet different, role from the warrier men, to breed genetically pure Germans to ensure German supremacy.

• Nazis emphasised the role of family as 'the germ cell of the nation'-had clear implications for the position of women in the state.

Contradictions

• Conservative and stabilising elements of Nazi ideology (to keep them in their place and maintain them as a pillar of traditional, hierarchical society, could not be reconciled with the political, social and racial ambitions of the Nazi regime.
• Women who satisfied the political, radical and social requirements, of which the vast majority did, did not percieve the Third Reich as a women's hell.

Success

• Anti-feminist policies of the regime were partially successful after 1933, as they secured the approval and gratitude of many German people, men and women alike. 
• They were too, partially successful in blocking and turning back the social, economic and educational pressures, which had been conduive to gradual process towards emancipation in the preceding decades.
• Third Reich offered women novel opportunities for participation and recognition in public life, and, indeed, many women benefited in an unprecedented fashion from such socio-political innovation.