UC Santa Barbara > History Department > Prof. Marcuse > Courses > Hist 133B Homepage > 133B Book Essays Index page > Student essay
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Women's Involvement in Different Sectors of the Nazi State Book Essay
on: Matthew Stibbe,
by Darcy Alcantara for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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& Abstract |
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About Darcy Alcantara I am a fourth year Psychology and Chicana/o Studies double major at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Throughout my years I noticed that the voices of women in history have not been as predominant as those of males, especially when dealing with women from marginalized communities. I am interested in this topic because during the Third Reich, women were disregarded as active political members of society. Therefore, I wanted to understand how they fulfilled their limited roles and what they did to counter that stereotype. Abstract (back to top) Matthew Stibbe's book Women in the Third Reich, describes the lives women had in terms of issues such as labor, sexuality and religion, class, and marital status. He begins by saying that race and gender were difficult to set apart because of the political climate of the time. However, there is substantial evidence that women also played active roles during the Third Reich. He highlights the different lives women led based on their privileges. The main problem with his analysis is that he only compares certain life styles with issues that affected women on a daily basis. For example, those who were "Aryan" in contrast to those who were Jewish. He does, however, demonstrate how Nazi policy regarding women ran into various contradictions. While Nazis did not want women involved in party politics, they sought their assistance for maintaining the status quo at home. All in all, Stibbe sheds light on the variety of experiences led by women during the Nazi regime, which is often regarded as secondary. |
Essay (back to top) When thinking about the Nazi era in Germany, one usually thinks about the racial tension and violence ensued over Jewish people by the “Aryans.” The gender relations are hardly discussed or thought about, as the focus lies more on the systematic extermination of hundreds of thousands of people. However, centering the research on women’s daily lives can also give us insight of what it was like to live in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. Matthew Stibbe’s book, Women in the Third Reich, gives attention to the daily lives women in Germany lived during the infamous time of Hitler’s reign. He strives to demonstrate the diversity of the experiences women had. There was no such thing as dichotomies but a complex variety of participation and exposure to harm. Stibbe does a great job at giving more than one perspective, however the book fails to really grasp the differences among certain classes of women by only focusing on two extremes when analyzing history. Women in the Third Reich is also primarily a collection of previous research rather than Stibbe’s own analysis as such, the book serves as a great consolidation of various sources into a thin book that allows for a quick read. Stibbe also exposes the contradicting policies Nazi Germany enforced and how these affected women. One of the purposes of Stibbe’s book is to really diversify the experiences of women in the third Reich. He does this by dividing the book into chapters dealing with distinct subjects and how they affected women. He also differentiates women’s experiences on the basis of “age, class, religion, race, sexuality, and martial status” as they all contribute to “determining the impact of Nazi policies on women’s lives” (Stibbe, 2). He also stresses the fact that although race was the major player in Germany, gender was also involved in deciding the role men and women took in society. During the Weimar Republic, German women were influenced by the “American wave” of the concept of the new woman (Stibbe, 10). While in some places this new identity was embraced, in others it posed a threat for the national identity. This was especially true during the Nazi reign, as nationalism became an important part of the party. They wanted to be able to control women’s identity and hence women’s bodies by taking away their agency. Another issue was that families were having fewer children. Hitler stressed the need for women to become the mothers of the nation. Their purpose was to stay at home and procreate so that the future of the “Aryan” race would be cultivated. Women were in support of this since older thoughts about gender roles were still in place. A major contradiction of women supporting Nazism is that the party was extremely anti-woman. They did not have any women in the party and did not want any of them involved in party matters. Those of the middle and upper-middle classes would not mind this policy, as they were comfortable living their daily lives. They supported the party indirectly by cooking or sewing for the soldiers or the party members (Stibbe, 18). There were others who began small groups of women involved in politics. Most of their work centered on anti-communist sentiments but several groups were Nazi sympathizers. The main purpose of these groups was to conserve the gender roles already set up by Hitler; they were to procreate, stay at home, and care for their husbands. Ordinary women were also involved in these groups but “less evidence is available” of their reasoning (Stibbe, 20). However, Stibbe also claims that they “showed a strong tendency to identify with middle-class values and aspirations, were fiercely anti-communist and anti-socialist, and came overwhelmingly from Protestant backgrounds” (Stibbe, 20). Hitler and the Nazi party realized that women’s political power was rising and should be kept under careful observation. The party was inconsistent with their stance on keeping women away from politics when they actually wanted women to vote for them during elections. However, this was the only active way that women were supposed to be involved with politics, according to Hitler. During the depression, women were forced to stay at home so that the unemployed men could take their jobs. Most well-off women did just this, however those that were in need were unable to survive on just one wage. Middle class women who were active in women’s group experienced more of a split in ideology than having to deal with economics. There were some that wanted to continue the “anti-women” ideals, there were others that were adopting feminist ideology, there were women that were not involved but wanted more options when voting for different political parties, and there were some more inclined to vote for the NSDAP because of its pro-Church stance. During and after the depression, the women’s voice was scattered around different issues and because the state was concerned with the economic situation, the women were left to deal with their own problems. Discontent came from women academics who felt they were limited on what they could do within the party, after the creation of the NSF which was supposed to consolidate all of the women’s groups. When dealing with race, Stibbe notes that it is difficult to separate racism with sexism, hence, he only focuses on “Aryan” and impure women. It affected women’s lives specifically through the control of their bodies by policing women’s “choices in the sexual and reproductive sphere” (Stibbe, 59). In this area he draws a distinct contrast with “Aryan” women and those that were racially impure. While the “Aryan” women were encouraged to produce more children, those that were unfit for the race were forced to halt their procreation through unwanted sterilization or abortion. Class was not a factor in the dehumanizing process, as many women were forced to take humiliating jobs regardless of their education. Women who were married to Jews also had to divorce their husbands and face public humiliation (Stibbe, 68). The way the social hierarchy was organized was “ the ‘Aryan’ over the Jew, the wife over the husband and the mother over the childless woman” (Stibbe, 70). With this, the author describes how various elements intertwine to oppress women of Germany at the time. He compares these groups of women’s experiences with the overarching theme of race and then goes into class and marital status. Women in the workforce also had a hierarchy in social status according to Nazi policy. Middle class women and wives of prominent Nazis were not recruited for work as much as poor working class women during the war years (Stibbe, 95). However, even recruiting women for work was contradictory to the Nazi party as the need to have more women in the labor force was important, they also thought that women should only be used as an “emergency measure” (Stibbe, 87). Jewish women were not part of this measure; in 1941 all Jews regardless of gender were order to enter the work force so that their labor could be exploited to the fullest (Stibbe, 97). “Aryan” women also worked in much better conditions than the Jewish women did and had more comfortable posts and flexible working hours. Polish and Soviet women were also victims of slave labor and were sometimes treated worse depending on the region they were working in. Those living in the eastern side were treated more harshly than those in the west. The education sector and its impact on the youth are also described in the book as not having a clear-cut purpose in establishing gender norms. Although in theory, girls were supposed to be trained in housework, after the war began more girls were pushed into agriculture and nursing to assist in the war effort. The conflicting ideology clashed when Nazis wanted to keep women out of higher education but needed more women in the “caring professions” such as social work, nursing, and teaching (Stibbe, 111). Joining youth groups like BDM (League of German Maidens) increased as more pressure was put on having a national identity and girls saw this as an act of rebellion in order to be incorporated in activities usually reserved for boys (Stibbe, 114). However, this was not the case in bigger cities such as Berlin where girls had more entertainment opportunities. During the war work draft, many girls began to be in opposition of the state because of the lack of liberties they once had. By the end of the war, many of the girls no longer supported the state as strongly as they had before (Stibbe, 124). The final chapters discuss the sentiments of opposition women had towards the state. Stibbe notes that women who were in resistant groups joined because of feelings of discontent with the state, not because they had a feminist agenda per se. Another group of women who were involved were highly religious women who were opposed to “euthanasia” procedures and racism (Stibbe, 130). There was another group whose acts of kindness were seen as acts of resistance and hence reprimanded. Although men were persecuted more than women, women were still subject to the same treatment as men dissidents. Those women who were more actively involved with leadership positions in oppositional parties were seen as secondary to the men in those parties (Stibbe 134). Sometimes they had protection by other party members but women who would resist in solitary acts would take a more lonely road; especially those who were in opposition because of religious beliefs since the church did not support any acts of resistance towards the state (Stibbe, 136). This chapter mainly highlights the lives of women or groups of women who remain in history as heroic dissidents of the state. It is different form the rest of the book where distinct groups of women’s experiences were compared. The last chapter is an overview of how women dealt with the “woman question” during the final stages of the war. The food shortages sometimes pitted women against each other, especially those with privileges (i.e. Germans) and those without (i.e. Russians). Marriage was also difficult to maintain especially when husbands were at war or if single women did not have a place or time to meet other single men. Sexuality still continued to be policed as contraceptives were banned and women were encouraged to have more children, even if their husbands were at war (Stibbe, 156). Although prostitution was banned, official brothels were allowed for soldiers. These contradictions in Nazi policy created confusion were women were random victims of humiliation and torture. By the end of the war “suicide, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases” were prevalent as soldiers raped women to “retaliate” against Germany (Stibbe, 156). A significant fact in post-war Germany was that the population of women was greater than that of men. It hence became a country of women. Stibbe’s Women in the Third Reich covers problems women faced during the Nazi reign: education, labor, and sexuality among others. He recounts their experiences through different social lenses in which women were observed by the state. One of the take home messages in the book is that whether racially or by class, women did not share a homogenous experience in the early 20th century. Another point that is maintained throughout the book is that of the contradictory nature of Nazi policy, highlighting women’s agency in the state. His narrative covers various sources in a compact book that allows one to read through it and make inferences or create questions than can be further investigated. This book emphasizes that although gender was intertwined with other social identities, it should still be looked at and analyzed on its own.
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Bibliography and Links (back to top)(links last checked 3/x/09) Book Reviews: Kuehn, Thomas. “Review of Stibbe, Matthew, Women in the Third Reich.”
H-German, December 2004. Pages 1-2. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10063 Renton, David. “‘Eyes Closed! Everyone Face the Door!’ Women in Nazi
Germany.” Journal of Contemporary History. Volume 40, 2005. Pages 389-395
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036330 Rosenhaft, Eve. “Book Review: Women in the Third Reich.” European History
Quarterly. Volume 36, 2006. Pages 335-337. http://ehq.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/36/2/335.pdf Web Sites: Cohen, July. “Women and the Holocaust.” 2007. http://www.theverylongview.com/WATH/ “Women in Nazi Germany” http://www.educationforum.co.uk/womennazi.htm Mesna, Angela, Smith, Britney, & Evans, Jessica. “Nazi Women.” December
2003. http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/projects/naziwomen/NaziWomenMainPage.htm Books and Articles: Gupta, Charu. “Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany.” Economic and Political Weekly. Volume 26, November 1991. Pages WS40-WS48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4397988 Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. 600 pages. (amazon page) Owings, Alison. Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich. Newark: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 542 pages. (amazon page) |
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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