Status of Women, Treatment of Minorities, and Religious Groups

Role of Women in the Third Reich

• Women played a vital role in Hitler's plan to create an ideal German Community (Volksgemeinschaft)

• Hitler believed a larger, racially purer population would enhance Germany's military strength and provide settlers to colonize conquered territory in eastern Europe

• The Third Reich's aggressive population policy encouraged "racially pure" women to bear as many "Aryan" children as possible 

Role of Women in the Third Reich

• This policy took its most radical form in 1936 when SS leaders created the state-directed program known as Lebensborn (Fount of Life)

• In an extension of the SS Marriage Order of 1932, the 1936 Lebensborn ordinance prescribed that every SS member should father four children, in or out of wedlock

• Lebensborn homes sheltered illegitimate offspring and their mothers, provided birth documents and financial support, and recruited adoptive parents for the children

Role of Women in the Third Reich

• The state encouraged births, whether through wedlock or not:– Restrictions on entry into certain jobs– Marriage loans– Family income supplements for each new child– Bestowed the Cross of Honor of the German Mother

on women bearing four or more babies– Increased punishments for abortion

• In the end, women were needed in the workplace, while men were needed at the front

Role of Women in the Third Reich

• The National Socialist Women's Union and German Women's Agency used Nazi propaganda to encourage women to focus on their roles as wives and mothers

• Besides increasing the population, the regime also sought to enhance its "racial purity" through “species upgrading”

• Laws prohibited marriage between "Aryans" and "non-Aryans" while preventing those with handicaps and certain diseases from marrying at all; some deemed unfit were sterilized

Role of Women in the Third Reich

• Girls were taught to embrace the role of mother and obedient wife in school and through compulsory membership in the League of German Maidens

• However, rearmament followed by total war obliged the Nazis to abandon the domestic ideal for women

• The need for labor prompted the state to prod women into the workforce (there was a compulsory-service plan for all women) and even into the military (the number of females in the German armed forces approached 500,000 by 1945)

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• Believed that Jews’:– Blood was tainted and therefore subhuman– Didn’t work, but lived off the country– Evaded military service– Egoistic– Are corrupting Germany morally– Are corrupt in business– Used people to achieve their ends (to make a life)– Wanted to dominate the globe

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• Germany was a police state where political opponents were arrested and imprisoned by the SS or the Gestapo

• Under the command of Heinrich Himmler, the SS were responsible for suppressing hostility to the regime at home and organizing concentration camps

• The Jews were a particular target of SS hostility

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• Jews were the long-standing targets of Hitler’s hatred and an obstacle in his design for a new Germany

• As early as April 1933, Jews were excluded from:– Holding public office– Joining the civil service (Career Civil Service Act)– Being a teacher, doctor, journalist, being an

officer in the armed forces

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• The Nazis also set up the first concentration camp at Dachau to hold 200 Communists

• In 1934, Jewish newspapers could no longer be sold in the streets

• In 1935, Jews were deprived of their citizenship and other basic rights (Nuremburg Laws)

• Jews were also prevented from marriage with Germans (Blood Protection Act)

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• In 1936, the Nazis boycotted Jewish-owned businesses

• Jews no longer had the right to vote in Germany

General Eisenhower

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• In 1938, on Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria

• 30,000 Jews were arrested• Jews:

– Were forced to carry identification cards and Jewish passports were marked with a “J”

– Had to wear the Star of David– Could no longer head businesses– Could not attend plays or concerts– Were moved to Jewish schools– Were forced to hand over drivers’ licenses and car registrations

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• In 1940, Goring ordered Heydrich to begin the enslavement of all Jews in the German occupied territories

• In 1941, corps of SS men known as Einsatzgruppen accompanied the Wehrmacht into the USSR to eliminate Jews and other “undesirables”

• In January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference, the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was considered

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• Shortly afterward, the first gassings began by use of cars

• Later, gas chambers were built at Death Camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau), Belzec, Chelmo, Maidenek, Sobibor, and Treblinka)

• In 1944, the camps were threatened by the advance of the Red Army. The Germans forced the prisoners to march to the interior of Germany

• Six million Jews died in the Holocaust

Jews also died of hunger in ghettos

Auschwitz

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• The T-4 or euthanasia program was set up to oversee the identification and elimination of defectives and the sterilization of those weaker members of society who might pass on hereditary diseases

• Handicapped, mentally disabled, homeless were included

• It was responsible for 70,000 deaths

Nazi Treatment of Minorities and Religious Groups

• 5 million others were killed besides the Jews, including:– Sinti and Roma (gypsies)– Poles– Soviet POWs– Mentally or physically disabled– Homosexuals– Blacks– Jehovah’s Witnesses– Political dissidents– Trade unionists– Priests and clergy

MemorialsMiami, FL

San Francisco, CA

Harrisburg, PA

Baltimore’s Holocaust Memorial was built to resemble a train which is how Jews were taken to the concentration camps. It was built through a teacher who told the Baltimore Jewish Council that his class didn’t believe in the Holocaust

This flame, memorializing Kristallnacht, is also at the Baltimore Holocaust Memorial. It’s located on the corner of Water and Gay Streets

Warsaw Ghetto Memorial

Berlin Holocaust Memorial