Women of the Third Reich
The memory of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany will live on forever as one of the darkest and most horrific regimes in history. This has led to the brutal deaths of millions of innocent people across Europe.
When we think of the Third Reich, we immediately think of the “Führer” himself, Adolf Hitler, who led this repressive and brutal movement, as well as some big names close to him, such as Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann. Goering.
What about the women of the Third Reich? Did they play a role at all? The purpose of the article is to show the inhumanity of Nazism in this aspect.
Official Nazi Position on Women
Although the Nazi regime did not officially allow women to hold political or military positions, the women of the Third Reich played a far more important role than most of us realize.
Some influenced events from behind the scenes as wives, mistresses, or secretaries. However, others played a more active role, working as spies, aviators, or even concentration camp guards. And, of course, there were several courageous women who courageously stood up to the Third Reich in various forms and died heroically and tragically for their efforts.
We now know that women had a huge impact on the bloody machine of the Third Reich. In fact, it’s fair to say that the Nazis would never have been able to reach such heights of power without the women who helped them.
Here is a breakdown of the role of women in the Third Reich.
The Role of Nazi Women in the War
Under the Nazi regime, women were expected to fulfill the traditional roles of wives and mothers.
However, as the brutality of World War II intensified, women had to fight at the front in various positions.
Hitler, however, made it clear that only men should take responsibility for major combat roles in the war.
A woman’s position was auxiliary and predominantly administrative. But that didn’t stop Nazi women from distinguishing themselves in the war in a variety of ways.
Hannah Reich
Even the patriarchal Nazi regime could not deny Hanna Reitsch’s skill. She was an experienced pilot who became the chief test pilot of the German Luftwaffe.
Hannah Reich
She fully embraced Nazi ideology and became one of the best fighter pilots. She was the only woman ever to receive the Iron Cross.
After Hitler’s suicide, Hannah flew out of Germany to bomb Russia. And yet, against all odds, Hannah survived the war.
Vera Volauf
Vera Wollauf was married to one of the top officers responsible for the extermination of Jews in eastern Poland.
On her honeymoon in 1942, Vera joyfully witnessed and celebrated a full day of mass murder and deportation of Polish Jews.
After this event, Vera joined other German military families who drank and played builds to celebrate.
Ilse Koch
As men were sent to fight in the war, the Nazis had to hire women as guards in their death camps. One of the most infamous female security guards was Ilse Koch.
With her husband Karl Koch, Ilse played the role of the famous “of Buchenwald”. At the end of the war, Ilse was sentenced to life imprisonment for her role in the torture and extermination of prisoners in this notorious concentration camp.
Ilse Koch
Finally, at the age of sixty-one, Ilse decided that she could no longer live with the consequences of her actions and hanged herself in a prison cell in Bavaria.
Irma Grese
Another famous female concentration camp guard was Irma Grese. Irma served in Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
Legend has it that Grese was so fanatical in her support of the Nazis that her own family kicked her out for insisting on wearing an SS uniform.
It was also said that she had an affair with Josef Kramer, the commandant of Bergen-Belsen. At the end of the war, the British arrested Irma Grese, then tried, convicted, and finally hanged in December 1945.
Irma Grese
For a time, Hermine Braunsteiner worked in various Nazi concentration camps and even ran the Majdanek camp in Poland.
Although she served three years in an Austrian prison for infanticide, Braunsteiner was not fully held accountable for the consequences of her crimes until 1973, when she was extradited from the U.S. to Germany and then sentenced to life in prison for war crimes.
This is despite the fact that she married an American engineer and lived in New York City.
Ilse Hirsch
Ilse Hirsch played an important role in Operation Carnival, the assassination of the American-appointed burger master Aachen.
After she was parachuted into the city, it was Ilse who led the assassination team to the home of this diplomat, who was considered a traitor to the Nazi movement. He was killed while standing on the porch of his house.
Ilse Hirsch
Ilsa was later tried and found guilty of war crimes at the famous “Werewolf Trials”. However, she turned out to be the only member of this remarkable assassination team who was eventually allowed to go free.
Jenny-Wanda Barkmann
Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, also known as Stutthof’s “Beautiful Ghost,” was a female Nazi concentration camp guard who was extremely cruel to prisoners during World War II.
She became notorious for her willingness to beat prisoners to death and select women and children for the gas chambers.
The Crucial Role of Nazi Mothers
Despite the fact that there were many women in the military, the Nazis had very specific ideas about the ideal Nazi woman.
In a culture where the purity of the “Aryan” race was valued above all else, motherhood was the highest calling for Nazi women.
In this context, their primary responsibility was to give birth to a multitude of racially pure Germans.
Large German family, 1937.
This responsibility was essential to Hitler’s grand plan to increase the Aryan population with the ultimate goal of sending it to colonize the conquered territories of Eastern Europe.
Under the Lebensborn program, established in 1936, each member of the SS was required by law to have four children, both in and out of wedlock.
Special homes were set up where single Lebensborn mothers could find shelter for themselves and their children.
They were provided with financial support, birth certificates, and even, sometimes, adoptive parents for their children.
To this end, Nazi women were forbidden to pursue higher education, political office, and careers. Young women were encouraged to give up their careers for marriage in order to fulfill this role.
To a large extent, this was a reaction to the great advances in women’s rights made in Germany throughout the 1920s.
The Nazis glorified motherhood and even idealized it. The German Mother’s Cross of Honour was awarded to any mother who gave birth to more than four children.
Sexuality for any purpose other than reproduction was strongly discouraged. Abortion was considered a felony, and doctors were required to report any cases of stillbirth for thorough investigation.
In 1943, the Marriage, Family and Maternity Protection Act established the death penalty for infanticide committed by the mother.
At the same time, any “immodest” female behavior was strictly forbidden. This included wearing makeup (any makeup) or smoking in public.
In addition, women had to maintain rigid physical standards. As the mother of the Aryan race, women were expected to be tall, strong, thin, beautiful, and blonde.
The girls learned about their responsibilities as mothers through membership in the Nazi League of German Girls, which they were required to attend from the age of ten.
The Nazis found other ways to encourage Germans to have many children.
They provided an income supplement for each child born. They continued to increase the penalties for abortion. And they gave public recognition to large families.
In order to conform to their grand plan to create a master race, alliances between Aryans and non-Aryans were actively discouraged. And people with illnesses or disabilities were not allowed to have children at all.
The most odious women of the Third Reich did their best to live up to these expectations.
Magda Goebbels was the mother of seven children, each of whom was given an “N” name in honor of Hitler.
Sadly, she killed six of these children when she committed suicide in Hitler’s bunker in the final days of the war because she could not accept the thought of them having to live with the humiliation of being children of the despised Third Reich.
A family portrait of the Goebbels family with their eldest son will be added later.
Gerda Boardmann, the wife of the Nazi leader, was the proud mother of ten children, the eldest of whom was named “Adolf” in honor of Hitler.
As if that wasn’t enough, she also encouraged her husband to have illegitimate children with his mistress to ensure that he would have another child each year.
As can be seen from these stories, Nazi women served a variety of roles. Despite the lack of prestige (and notoriety) of their male counterparts, these women played a crucial role in influencing the history of the Third Reich, each in their own way.
Women Who Stood Up to the Nazis
While many women supported the Third Reich and even contributed to its success, this discussion would not be complete without a brief mention of the courageous women who influenced the resistance movement.
These women bravely stood up to the growing power of the Nazis and even protected and sheltered Jews who tried to escape.
Sadly, while many of them survived and told the story, many others perished when the Third Reich executed them or sent them to concentration camps to be gassed.
One of the most famous of these opponents was Sophie Scholl, who founded the anti-Nazi movement known as the White Rose.
She boldly published pamphlets exposing the senseless cruelty and oppression of the Third Reich.
Sophie and her brother Hans became martyrs of the Nazi resistance when they were executed by guillotine in 1943. At the time of her tragic death, Sophie was only twenty-two years old.
Another female martyr of the Resistance was Liselotte Hermann, a student who openly defied the Nazis and secretly passed information about German armaments to foreign governments.
In 1938, she was arrested and became the first woman to be executed by the Third Reich.
Another woman who spoke out against the Nazi regime was Mildred Fish-Harnack. Together with her husband, Arvid Harnack, Mildred secretly worked to support the Resistance movement through espionage.
Unfortunately, her efforts came to an end when she was discovered by the Nazis and sentenced to prison. Eventually, she was beheaded in 1943.
This was all the more tragic because Mildred wasn’t even German. She was an American from Wisconsin who married the German scientist Rockefeller.
In 1970, she was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class. In addition, her husband Arvin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Martha Wertheimer was a German journalist who was fired from her job because she was Jewish. She then went into social work and, as director of the Center for German Jewish Children in Frankfurt, helped thousands of Jewish children escape from Nazi concentration camps by bringing them to England during the Kindertransport of 1938-39.
She also opened a soup kitchen and a nursing home in Frankfurt to take care of the Jewish people. On one occasion, the Gestapo instructed Wertheimer to take control of some 1,500 Jews to be deported. No one ever heard from her or any of the deported Jews again.
Hilde Maisel lived in England at the time Hitler came to power, but courageously returned to Germany to help the resistance movement.
After establishing contact with a spy network, she unfortunately encountered an SS patrol while trying to cross the border into Germany.
After the shooting, Hilde, instead of enduring the torture of the Nazis, took a poison pill.
After obtaining British citizenship through her marriage to the famous writer Thomas Mann, Erika Mann actively expressed her opposition to the Third Reich in many works, most notably in her book A School for Barbarians, published in 1938.
This book showed the world the true nature of the Nazi regime. In addition, she continued to educate the public by giving a series of lectures in the United States. Erika survived the Nazi regime and died peacefully in 1969 of a brain tumor.
Not all women opponents of the Third Reich were political activists. Some clashed with the Nazis simply because they lived contrary to their limited ideals of the female role. For example, thousands of women have been executed just for trying to have an abortion.
