The Nazi Regime and its Influence on Political Ideologies
by How did gender shape political ideologies in the interwar period and how did the Nazi Regime deal with women ideologically and politically?
After World War One, there was a deep yearning by European society at large for women, though they performed a valuable wartime service, to return to the domestic sphere. This thinking would affect the speed at which women received political franchise, in countries like France women would only obtain “the vote” after a second world war. Germany, under Nazi Dictator Adolph Hitler’s regime would handle women’s sexuality in perplexing ways, which is what I seek to analyze.
Dagmar Herzog, in his essay
Hubris and Hypocrisy, Incitement and Disavowal: Sexuality and German Fascism
define rather concisely what the Nazi sexual theory was. He said: “Sexuality in the Third Reich was, after all, also about the invasion, control, and destruction of human beings”. Furthermore, the author claimed rather acutely that, in order to consolidate power the Nazi’s “sanctimoniously to be restoring law and order returning marriage and family life to there proper dignity”. So that was the Nazi’s plan, exploit reproductive capabilities of women to further an Aryan cause and to cement their role as mother. Furthermore, the Nazi’s goal, unlike popular imagery, “was not so much to suppress sexuality. Rather the aim was to reinvent it as the privilege of non-disabled Aryans”.
However, the definition and exploitation of women’s role of mother changed as the Nazi state deemed necessary. According to Claudia Koonz, in her essay Mothers in the Fatherland “[the Nazi] definition of the [motherly] role expanded and contracted according to the needs of the Nazi party and the German state”. Women were ordered, en masse, to give up their jobs in favor of mothering the next generations of children. This thought fell under the Lebensraum or “living space” doctrine prostrated by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf. Moreover, although they voted and joined the Nazi party, women could “at no time expect to exert the slightest influence over the policies that affected their lives”. This was most likely due to the fact that women, like men, were unaware of the consequences that choice brought and probably welcomed the return the tradition.
In the end, the so-called women question was answered in a warped way by the Nazis. Everything, political rights and sexuality identity, was subverted to the needs of the state. Under programs such as Lebensraum German citizens were controlled and manipulated to perform their “traditional” roles for the furtherance of the state. Women would only regain the vote in practice after the war.
Liked it
