Recent Changes in the Status of Women and the Family in Germany

Abstract

I F, AS SOME THINK, economic and social forces are driving the world to a grim choice between Communism and Fascism it is important to consider the status of women and family life in the new Germany. There is theoretical interest in the possibility that the totalitarian state with its absolute control of propaganda agencies might provide a less ambiguous definition of the situation in regard to marriage.' Of interest too is the conflict between patriarchal theory and economic trends. Furthermore, do the changes justify the Nazis in their claim to have solved the problem? For the sake of clarity of discussion the present writer would arbitrarily define the woman problem as the lack of balance between the unique reproductive function of and her work function, so complicated by individual differences and diversity of public opinion that there is confusion and unhappiness for herself and for other members of her group. There is good evidence that women, in spite of constituting only three percent of the total party membership, lent powerful support to a movement that seemed to have little to offer them. There was an increased share of women in the N.S. vote from I928 to I932 and in the latter year apparently about half of the N.S. votes were from women.2 The salve which the movement provided for hurt national pride was soothing to women as well as men. Almost two million women were deprived of husbands by the war. It was not hard to convert the daydreams of a hard-working to a belief that she would be rescued by a blond S. A. hero and carried off to a comfortable home and children. Nazi propaganda is filled with appeals to mother love and to romanticism. A confidential bulletin to women leaders gives directions for winning converts among women which include showing pictures of Hitler and talking about his great deeds.' Women experienced a great longing for simplicity that made them turn deaf ears to the cool intellectual warnings from the leaders of the woman's movement.4 For the simple mothers attracted to National Socialism the older woman's movement was too high brow. For the fiery young girls, the old leaders were dreary spinsters with an aura of the war defeat about them. The deep