Women in Nazi Germany

Adolf Hitler's attaining power as Chancellor marked the end of numerous women's rights, even though Hitler had succeeded in his social rise in part thanks to the protection of influential women and female voters.[10][11][12] Hitler's socializing within affluent circles, and with socialites such as Princess Elsa Bruckmann, wife of the editor Hugo Bruckmann, and Helene Bechstein, wife of industrialist Edwin Bechstein,[13] early on brought the Nazi party significant new sources of financing. For example, Gertrud von Seidlitz, a widow of a noble family, donated 30,000 marks to the party in 1923;[14] and Helene Bechstein, who had an estate on the Obersalzberg, facilitated Hitler's acquisition of the property Wachenfeld.[15]

In regards to the role played by women voters in Hitler's rise to power, Helen Boak notes that the "NSDAP had been gaining proportionately more support from women than from men from 1928 onwards, not because of any concerted effort on its part nor because of its leader's charisma nor because of one specific element of its propaganda. Women chose to vote NSDAP for the same reasons men voted for the party - out of self-interest, out of a belief that the party best represented their own idea of what German society should be, even if they may have disagreed with the party's stand on individual issues. The larger increase in the share of women's votes than in that of men's votes cast for the NSDAP from 1928 owes much to the party's growing prominence and respectability, as the party's dynamism, the contrast of its young leadership with the elder statesmen of the other parties, its growing strength, the disintegration of the liberal and local, conservative parties and the general disillusionment and dissatisfaction with what the [Weimar] Republic had brought or failed to bring all contributed to the reasons why German men and women turned to the NSDAP...Because of the preponderance of women in the electorate, the NSDAP received more votes from women than from men in some areas before 1932 and throughout the Reich in 1932. Claims that Hitler and his party held no attraction from women voters and that the NSDAP benefitted little from female suffrage cannot, therefore, be maintained.[16] Historian Wendy Lower makes it clear that while "Women were not a majority of those who voted for Hitler...In the presidential election of March 1932...26.5% [of German women voted] for Hitler. In the 1931 September elections, 3 million women voted for NSDAP candidates, almost half of the total of 6.5 million votes cast for the NSDAP."[17] In terms of voting patterns however, a higher proportion of male voters supported the Nazi party compared to female voters.[18]

In 1935, during a speech to the National-Socialist Women's Congress, Hitler declared, with regard to women's rights:

in reality, the granting of so-called equal rights to women, as demanded by Marxism, does not confer equal rights at all, but constitutes the deprivation of rights, since they draw women into a zone where they can only be inferior. It places women in situations where they cannot strengthen their position with regard to men and with society – but it only weakens them.[19][20]

The fact that Hitler was unmarried and that he represented a masculine ideal for many Germans led to his erotisation in the public imagination. In April 1923, an article appeared in the Münchener Post stating "women adore Hitler ";[2] he was described as adapting his speeches to "the tastes of women who, since the beginning, count among his most fervent admirers".[21] Women were also sometimes instrumental in bringing their husbands into the Nazi political fold, thus contributing to the recruitment of new NSDAP members.[22]

In a society that was beginning to consider women as men's equals, Nazi policies constituted a setback, forcing women from political life. The Nazis' policies pertaining to women were one aspect of their efforts to stem what they viewed as the decadence of the Weimar Republic. In their eyes, the Weimar regime, which they perceived as having a Jewish character, in effect appeared as feminized, as well as tolerant of homosexuality – the veritable antithesis of German virility.

Heinrich Himmler declared as much to the SS-Gruppenführer, on February 18, 1937:

On the whole, in my view, we have too much masculinized our life, to the point that we are militarizing impossible things [...] For me, it is a catastrophe that women's organizations, women's communities and women's societies intervene in a domain that destroys all feminine charm, all the feminine majesty and grace. For me, it is a catastrophe that we other poor male fools - I speak generally, because this does not mean you directly, we want to make women an instrument of logical thought, to educate them in everything possible, that we want to masculinize with time the difference between the sexes, the polarity will disappear. The path to homosexuality is not far. [...] We must be very clear. The movement, the ideology cannot be sustained if it is worn by women, because man conceives of everything through the mind, whereas women grasp everything through sentiment. [...] The priests burned 5,000 to 6,000 women [for witchcraft], because they preserve emotionally the ancient wisdom and ancient teachings, and because, emotionally, they do not let go, whereas men, they are logically and rationally disposed.[23]

Officially, the status of women changed from "equal rights" (Gleichberechtigung) to an "equivalence" between men and women (Gleichstellung).[24] Historian Pierre Ayçoberry points out that "this offensive offered the double advantage of pleasing their male colleagues worried by this competition, and returned to private life more than 100,000 people proud of their success, the majority of whom were voters who supported the political left". This policy created worry among the militants in the NSDAP, who were concerned that it would harm the number of female graduates, a reservoir needed for future party ranks.[25]

In 1933, school programmes for girls were changed, notably with the goal of discouraging them from pursuing university studies. The five years of Latin classes and three years of science were replaced by courses in German language and domestic skills training.[24] This did not bear productive results; on the one hand, a significant number of girls enrolled in boys' schools, while on the other hand, the " enrollment restrictions " of 10% at the university level were generally ignored. Thus, the measures only decreased the enrollment in medical schools from 20% to 17%.[25]

Some women's associations, notably communist and socialist groups were banned, and in some rare cases members were arrested or assassinated.[26] All associations were requested to turn in Jewish members, such as the Union of Protestant Women, the Association of Household and Countryside, the Women's German Colonial Society Union and the Union of Queen Louise.[26] But rapidly, the majority of the associations disbanded or chose among themselves to disappear, such as the BDF (Bund Deutscher Frauenverein), established in 1894 and which disbanded in 1933 to avoid being controlled.[27] Only one women's association persisted under the regime (the association of Gertrud Bäumer, Die Frau, or Woman), until 1944, but placed under the guardianship of the Reich Minister of People's Education and of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.[8] Rudolf Hess established the Deutsches Frauenwerk which, with the women's branch of the Nazi party, the NS-Frauenschaft, had the purpose of becoming a mass organization for the regime.[27]

In 1936, a law was passed banning certain high-level positions in the judicial system to women (notably judge and prosecutor, through Hitler's personal intervention[28]) and the medical field. Female doctors were no longer allowed to practice, until their loss had a harmful effect on health needs and some were recalled to work; also dissolved was the Association of Medical Women, which was absorbed into its male counterpart.[25] Under the Weimar Republic, only 1% of university posts were filled by women. On June 8, 1937, a decree stipulated that only men could be named to these posts, if it was not in a social field. Nonetheless, on February 21, 1938 " in an individual and exceptional capacity " following lobbying by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink,[29] one female scientist Margarete Gussow obtained a post in astronomy. Mathematician Ruth Moufang was able to receive her doctorate, but could not obtain the right to teach and was forced to work for national industry.[30] Emmy Noether, another mathematician, was terminated from her post by virtue of the "German law for the Restoration of the Public Service" of April 7, 1933, for having been active in the 1920s in the USPD and the SPD. Physics researcher Lise Meitner, who directed the Department of Physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, was able to remain in her post until 1938, but this was only due to her Austrian nationality, which ended with the Anschluss); she then left for the Netherlands, and then Sweden. In the scientific field, there were almost no nominations of women; in 1942, a woman was not permitted to direct a scientific institute, despite the fact that no male candidate had applied.[31] The exile of women from political life was total: they could not sit in either the Reichstag, the regional parliaments or municipal councils.

There was no substantial resistance to this control. The bourgeois women's associations reasoned, as did many others, that the Nazi government was a vulgar phenomenon that would soon fade, and that through their participation they could still exert some influence.[8] They thus deluded themselves into believing that they were obtaining an "acceptable arrangement", as they were accustomed to do under a patriarchal system. With respect to the widespread tendency to underestimate the threat that the regime presented, the historian Claudia Koonz highlights the popular proverb of the era: "The soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked".[8] Women who were the most resolute in their opposition either set their sights on emigration, or, if they took an active stance, risked being arrested and interned, and possibly executed, the same as male opponents of the regime.[8]

Noticing the need for women in certain professions and their usefulness in the country's economy, the anti-emancipation policy in terms of the workforce was rapidly blunted. Women were otherwise invited to adhere to Nazism and reassured with the idea that they could be a mother and be employed, Joseph Goebbels even attacking anti-lipstick propaganda campaigns in Völkischer Beobachter and attacking the most zealous ideologues.[24]

The Nazi woman was an important part of Adolf Hitler's vision of German society (the Volksgemeinschaft) and should mirror its ideals: racially pure and physically robust. She should not work outside of the home, and should be devoted to motherhood, following the slogan of the former emperor William II of Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche, meaning "Children, kitchen, church". In a document published in 1934, The Nine Commandments of the Workers' Struggle, Hermann Goering bluntly summarizes the future role of German women: "Take a pot, a dustpan and a broom and marry a man".[32][33] These ideals were embodied in various Nazi institutions such as the bride schools of the Deutsches Frauenwerk, aimed primarily at prospective brides of SS and Nazi Party members, and the Faith and Beauty Society for women aged 17 to 21.

This was anti-feminism in the sense that the Nazis considered political rights granted to women (access to high-level positions for example) as incompatible with the nature of reproduction, the only role within which they could blossom and best serve the interests of the nation. Magda Goebbels declared in 1933: "German women were excluded from three professions: the army, as elsewhere in the world; the government; and the judiciary. If a German girl must choose between marriage or a career, she will always be encouraged to marry, because that is what is best for a woman".[33][34]

These ideals differed to the conservative and patriarchal norms that had prevailed during the Second Reich, in that rather than being sidelined in society, women were expected to participate at a foundational level in the roles of mother and spouse. Indeed, the fact that the mobilisation of women (Bund Deutscher Mädel then Frauenschaft) was so highly organized indicates that women did not have the same status as they did in the nineteenth century. The new regime would have appealed to a conservative electorate and a fringe part of the population very critical of the image of the emancipated woman from the 1920s. But the goals were now different, asking each woman to take part in the building of the "Reich of 1000 years". Female liberation found itself therefore necessarily limited, with Heide Schlüpmann stating in Frauen und Film, that the films of Leni Riefenstahl, the official film director of the regime, "value quite a negation of female sexuality and only offer women a deceptive autonomy".

The wearing of makeup was generally prohibited, and a certain modesty was demanded of women, contrasting with the Weimar Republic period, which experienced more freedom on a moral level. In 1933, meetings of the NSBO (part of the German Workers' Front) proclaimed that women "painted and powdered were forbidden at all meetings of the NSBO. Women who smoke in public – in hotels, cafés, in the street and so on – will be excluded from NSBO".[35][36] Activities considered traditional were encouraged only in appropriate places: music, manual labour, gymnastics. Sexuality was banned, unless for a reproductive goal; liberated young women were considered "depraved" and "antisocial". Mothers were encouraged to have children, and the "Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter" (in English: Cross of Honour of the German Mother) was created for mothers having more than four children. A "German Mothers' Day" was also created, and in 1939, three million mothers were decorated on that day.[36] Concerning abortion, access to services was quickly prohibited, and in 1935, the medical profession became obliged to report stillbirths to the Regional Office for State Health, who would further investigate the loss of a child. In 1943 the ministers of the Interior and Justice enacted the law "Protection of Marriage, Family and Motherhood", which made provisions for the death penalty for mothers convicted of infanticide.[37]

Statues of the ideal female body in the streets of Berlin, raised on the occasion of the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Young women of the BDM practising gymnastics in 1941.

In line with Nazi racial theory, the Nazi government promoted the "Aryan" (Nordic) archetype as the ideal physical appearance: women were to be blonde, beautiful, tall, thin and robust all at once. This image was spread as much through advertising as through official art, then through ancient art, and more specifically through Greco-Roman statues. Academic Monique Moser-Verrey notes: "a revival, during the course of the Thirties, of mythological themes such as the Judgement of Paris."[38] Moser-Verrey notes however:

Yet it is striking that the image of women projected by women's literature of the 1930s is clearly contrary to traditional views of sweet housewife spread by Rosenberg and Goebbels. The heroines of women's novels during this period are often a strong and tenacious type of woman, while the sons and husbands are quickly delivered to death. Everything happens as if one perceives through these fictions a true antagonism between the sexes generated by the constant mobilisation of these two groups independent of one another.[39]

Fashion for women in Nazi Germany was problematic for Nazi officials. The Nazi government wanted to propagandize the "Aryan" woman. In various posters and other forms of media, this ideal Nazi woman was strong, fertile, and wore historically traditional German clothing.[40] However, Nazi officials also did not want to hinder the German clothing or fashion industries from creating profit, as the government also sought to create a consumerist society based for the most part on German domestic products.[41] These differences in goals often led to disparities in what was considered fashionable, nationalistic, and politically correct for women in Nazi Germany.

However, although there was disagreement over how to ideally fashion German "Aryan" women, anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-French Nazi rhetoric played a key part in molding German women's fashion ideology.[40] The Nazis severely criticized the Western fashions of the 1920s, claiming the Jazz Flapper fashion to be "French-Dominated" and "severely Jewish." Additionally, the Nazi Party was strictly against the Flapper style because they felt it masculinized women and created an immoral ideal.[42] The desire to abolish 1920s fashion in Nazi Germany was consistent with Nazi propaganda which was insistent on limiting women to the private sphere as housewives and mother figures.[40]

Yet, while the Nazi government sought to create a maternal ideal for the Aryan woman, they also sought financial gain from the textile industry.[41] While Hitler urged women to consume, he concluded that women must only consume German products.[40] The creation of the German Fashion Institute (Deutsches Modeamt) that sought to create a Western high-fashion niche market, created varying opinions on how fashion and Nazi politics should interact.

Service flag for women's work (Deutscher Frauenarbeitsdienst).

Women could be members of the Nazi Party, but newcomers to the party were only admitted if they were "useful" (nurses or cooks for example).[24] They numbered 5% of women in 1933 and 17% in 1937.[24] But since October 1931 the NS-Frauenschaft (NSF) existed, the political organization for Nazi women, that sought above all to promote the ideal of the model woman of Nazi Germany; at its foundation, it was responsible for training in housekeeping.[24] Young women joined when they were 15 years old. On 31 December 1932, the NSF counted 109,320 members. In 1938, it had 2 million, corresponding to 40% of the total number of party members.[51] The NSF was directed by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, who had the title of Reichsführerin; she called the members "my daughters" and acquired a strong influence over them and a certain credibility. Her views on women were obviously in agreement with those of Adolf Hitler, but she still defended access to some positions of responsibility. She did not participate in major meetings of the party but was invited to the party congress.

School textbooks were edited beginning in 1934, often under the supervision of the doctor Johanna Haarer, an author notably for The German Mother and Her First Baby, which was widely published, and promoting the driving role of the German mother in building the regime, or Mother, tell me about Adolf Hitler (Mutter, erzähl von Adolf Hitler), to lead women to indoctrinate their children in Nazi values:[52]

Housekeeping training was promoted through Frauenwerk (German Women's Work), which opened thematic courses for "ethnically pure" women. It is notable, however, that although there were numerous courses for domestic training, gymnastics and music, they deserted those oriented towards antireligious teaching.[24]

The NS-Frauenschaft "played no political role and did not oppose the loss of hard-won women's rights. It defended the role of the mother of the family at home, conscious of their duties at the heart of the community. Provided, containing women within the private sphere does not hide their responsibilities under the Third Reich ; we know today that the Frauenbewegung (women's movement) thought the place of a woman in society was at the heart of a community that excluded Jews and performed a civilizing mission in occupied Eastern Europe to preserve the race".[54]

Women auxiliaries of the Wehrmacht in Paris during the occupation (1940).

In 1945, there numbered 500,000 women auxiliaries in the Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtshelferinnen),[32] who were at the heart of the Heer, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine. About half of them were volunteers, the others performing obligatory service connected to the war effort (Kriegshilfsdienst). They took part, under the same authority as prisoners of war (Hiwis), as auxiliary personnel of the army (Behelfspersonal) and they were assigned to duties not only within the heart of the German Reich, but also within the German-occupied territories, for example in the General government of Poland, in France, in Spain and later in Yugoslavia, in Greece and in Romania.[62]

They essentially participated :

• as telephone, telegraph and transmission operators,
• as administrative clerks typists and messengers,
• in anti-aircraft defense, as operators of listening equipment, operating projectors for anti-aircraft defense, employees within meteorology services, and auxiliary civil defense personnel
• in military health service, as volunteer nurses with the German Red Cross or other voluntary organizations

SS women camp guards in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 19 April 1945

The SS-Gefolge was the women's wing of the men's SS, but in contrast it was only confined to voluntary work in Emergency Service (Notdienstverpflichtung). SS Women belonged either to the SS-Helferinnen (de) or the SS-Kriegshelferinnen. They were in charge of auxiliary transmissions (telephone, radio operators, stenographers) in the SS and sometimes in camps (these were the Aufseherin, see next section). There was an internal hierarchy in the women's wing of the SS, which had no influence on the male troops, although the titles designated to the women sometimes had an influence upon the owners. However, whereas female camp guards were civilian employees of the SS, the SS-Helferinnen who completed training at the Reich-school in Obernai (Oberehnheim) were members of the Waffen-SS.[63][64]

The SS-Helferinnen were trained at the Reichsschule-SS at Oberehnheim in Alsace.[65][66][67][68] The Reichsschule-SS (in full, the Reichsschule für SS Helferinnen Oberenheim) was the training centre for the SS, reserved for women, and opened in Obernai in May 1942 upon the order of Heinrich Himmler.[69][70] The SS-Helferinnenkorps has also been termed by historians as the 'SS-Frauenkorps'.[65][70] 7,900 women were employed in the clerical unit of the SS, the SS Frauenkorps, and 10,000 as SS auxiliaries or Helferinnen.[71] The training was more difficult than that for women enrolled in the German Army. They had to meet certain physical criteria determined by the regime: they must be aged 17 to 30 years and measure more than 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in) tall, while over the long term, the enrollment criteria were relaxed (the age limit was raised to 40 years and minimum height dropped to 1.58 metres); they even accepted 15 Muslim students.[72] Having been in a privileged status, war widows were favoured before the admissions were opened up to other social classes. Women enrolled at the Reichsschule-SS came from various economic, class and educational backgrounds and included a member of the aristocracy in the ranks, Princess Ingeborg Alix.[68] The Reichsschule-SS appealed to female Nazi ideologues who foresaw the possibility of social ascent by becoming an SS-Helferin, and candidates were often from families with other SS and NSDAP members.[73][68] It has been noted by historians that "some SS-Helferinnen knew about the persecution of those whom the Nazis deemed to be worthless; Hermine S., who worked as an administrator at Auschwitz, stated that she knew the word Sonderbehandlung meant the gassing of prisoners."[74] In her review of Jutta Muhlenberg's book, Das SS-Helferinnenkorps: Ausbildung, Einsatz und Entnazifizierung der weiblichen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS 1942–1949, Rachel Century writes:

Mühlenberg is very careful not to generalise and tar all the SS-Helferinnen with the same brush. Although all these women were a part of the bureaucratic staff, and were ‘Mittäterinnen, Zuschauerinnen und zum Teil – auch Zeuginnen von Gewalttätigkeiten’ [accomplices, spectators and sometimes even witnesses of violence] (p. 416), she notes that each woman still had individual responsibility over what she did, saw and knew, and it would be very difficult to identify the individual responsibilities of each SS-Helferin. Mühlenberg focuses on de-Nazification in the American sector, although the British zone is also discussed. A detailed report was drawn up by the Americans about the school, indicating how the women of the school should be dealt with; they were to be automatically detained... Mühlenberg concludes that the guilt of the former SS-Helferinnen lies in their voluntary participation in the bureaucratic apparatus of the SS.

— Rachel Century, review of Das SS-Helferinnenkorps: Ausbildung, Einsatz und Entnazifizierung der weiblichen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS 1942–1949, (Reviews in History, review no. 1183, December 2011).[75][68]

The school closed in 1944 due to the advance of the Allies.[76]

The Aufseherin of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Ilse Koch, after her arrest.

Women were within the ranks of the Nazis at the Nazi concentration camps : these were the Aufseherinnen and generally belonged to the SS. They were guards, secretaries or nurses. They arrived before the start of the war, some of them being trained from 1938 in Lichtenburg. This took place due to the need for personnel following the growing number of political prisoners after the Kristallnacht on 8 and 9 November 1938. After 1939, they were trained at Camp Ravensbrück near Berlin. Coming mostly from lower- or middle-class social origins, they previously worked in traditional professions (hairdresser, teacher, for example) but were, in contrast to men who were required to fulfill military service, the women were driven by a sincere desire to reach the female wing of the SS, the SS-Gefolge. Of the 50,000 total number of guards at all the Nazi camps, there were 5,000 women (approximately 10% of the workforce).

They worked at the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps beginning in 1942. The following year, the Nazis began the conscription of women because of the shortage of guards. Later, during the war, women were also assigned on a smaller scale in the camps Neuengamme Auschwitz (I, II and III), Plaszow Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen Vught and Stutthof and in the death camps of Bełżec, Sobibór Treblinka and Chełmno. Seven Aufseherinnen served at Vught, 24 were at Buchenwald, 34 at Bergen-Belsen, 19 at Dachau, 20 at Mauthausen, three at Mittelbau-Dora, seven at Natzweiler-Struthof, twenty at Majdanek, 200 at Auschwitz and its sub-camps, 140 at Sachsenhausen, 158 at Neuengamme, 47 at Stutthof, compared with 958 who served at Ravensbrück, 561 at Flossenbürg and 541 at Gross-Rosen. Many supervisors worked in the sub-camps in Germany and some in Poland, France, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

There was a hierarchy within the Aufseherin position, including the following higher ranks: the Rapportaufseherin (head Aufseherin), the Erstaufseherin (first guard), the Lagerführerin (head of the camp), and finally, the Oberaufseherin (senior inspector), a post only occupied by Anna Klein and Luise Brunner.

• 
  Eva Braun, companion and then wife of Adolf Hitler.
• 
  Magda Goebbels, wife of Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and known as the "First Lady of the Third Reich".
• 
  Funeral altar of Carin Göring, first wife of Air Force Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring.
• 
  Actress Emmy Göring, second wife of Air Force Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring.
• 
  Margarete Himmler, wife of Reichsführer-SS then Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler.
• 
  Lina Heydrich, wife of Deputy Protector of Bohemia-Moravia Reinhard Heydrich.
• 
  The Goebbels children with Joseph and Magda Goebbels: Helga, Hildegard, Heldwig, Holdine and Heidrun.
• 
  The daughter of Heinrich Himmler, Gudrun Himmler (right), with her mother Margarete Himmler.
• 
  Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, president of the NS-Frauenschaft.
• 
  Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl with Heinrich Himmler.
• 
  Screenwriter Thea von Harbou.
• 
  Aviator Hanna Reitsch.
• 
  Opera singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Herta Oberheuser at the trial for doctors, August 20, 1947.

The question of the culpability of the German people in their support of Nazism has long overshadowed the women, who had little political power under the regime. Thus, as explained by the German historian Gisela Bock, who was involved with the first historians to highlight this issue, by asking women during the Nazi era.[85] In 1984, in "When Biology Became Destiny, Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany", she wrote that women who are enslaved economically and morally, cannot exercise their freedom by being confined in the home and placed under the rule of their husbands.[86] Thus, we associate studies on the subject during the 1980s mainly with perceptions that women were victims of "machismo" and a "misogynist" fascism. In terms of voting patterns, a higher proportion of male voters supported the Nazi party compared to female voters.[18]

However, the simplicity of this analysis tends to disappear with recent studies. In 1987, historian Claudia Koonz, in "Mothers in Fatherland, Women, the Family and Nazi Politics" questioned this statement and acknowledged some guilt. She states as follows: "Far from being impressionable or innocent, women made possible State murder in the name of interests that they defined as maternal."[86] For her, the containing of housewives just allowed them to assert themselves and grasp an identity, especially through women's associations led by Nazi Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. They therefore helped to stabilize the system. The women took pleasure in politics and eugenics of the state, which promised financial assistance if the birth rate was high, so they would help to stabilize the system "by preserving the illusion of love in an environment of hate."[86] In addition, if Gisela Bock denounced the work of her colleague as "anti-feminist", others as Adelheid von Saldern refuse to stop at a strict choice between complicity and oppression and are more interested in how Nazism included women in their project for Germany.[86]

Kate Docking, in her book review of Female Administrators of the Third Reich writes that, "The key merit of this monograph is that it makes visible the women who ultimately allowed the Holocaust to occur: as the author notes, while these women did not execute orders for the persecution of Jews themselves, the genocide could not have been accomplished without those who typed the orders, answered the telephones, and sent the telegrams. Female administrators had the opportunity to question their orders and find out more about the Holocaust, but generally, they did not. They had some awareness of the Holocaust, and did nothing. Many recalled their time working for the Third Reich with fondness and nostalgia."[87] Recent work from historian Wendy Lower (consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), demonstrates that a substantial number of women were accomplices to Nazi atrocities, and sometimes direct participants.[88] Lower writes:

The entire population of German women (almost forty million in 1939) cannot be considered a victim group. One-third of the female population, thirteen million women, were actively engaged in a Nazi Party organisation, and female membership in the Nazi Party increased steadily until the end of the war. Just as the agency of women in history more generally is under-appreciated, here too - and perhaps even more problematically, given the legal and moral implications - the agency of women in the crimes of the Third Reich has not been fully elaborated and explained. Vast numbers of ordinary German women were not victims, and routine forms of female participation in the Holocaust have not yet been disclosed.[89]

Such realities make it abundantly clear that by the time the war ended, German women had traversed the full-circle of being once sheltered incubators for the Aryan future to effectual contributors in the Nazi concentration camp system.

There are many militant neo-Nazis or defenders of former Nazis, such as the Germans Helene Elisabeth von Isenburg or Gudrun Himmler (daughter of Heinrich Himmler), who are active through the organization Stille Hilfe, and the French citizens Françoise Dior and Savitri Devi.