Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State

Abstract

By presenting some largely unexplored features of women's lives under National Socialism in Germany, this essay considers larger questions about the complex connections between racism and sexism. It does not presume to exhaust the issue or even touch upon all its aspects. Instead, it approaches the issue through the perspective of one part of women's lives affected by state policy: reproduction or, as I prefer to call it, the reproductive aspect of women's unwaged housework. It can be no more than a contribution for two reasons. First, dealing with racism in Germany during this period involves assessing an unparalleled mass murder of millions of women and men, anl undertaking beyond the scope of any single essay. Second, this analysis is a first approach, for neither race nor gender, racism nor sexism-and even less their connection-has been a central theme in German social historiography.' When historians deal with women in modern Germany, they generally do not consider racism