Life in Nazi Germany: Women, Youth & Persecution
Nazi Views on Women
The Nazis had a clear ideology about women’s role in society. They believed women should focus on the “three Ks” — Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Children, Kitchen, Church). Women were expected to be wives and mothers, not workers or professionals. This was a deliberate reversal of the freedoms women had gained during the Weimar Republic, when women had voted, entered professions, and enjoyed greater social independence.
The Nazis introduced marriage loans of 1,000 marks for couples where the wife gave up work. For each child born, a quarter of the loan was written off. Women who had four or more children received the Motherhood Cross (bronze for 4, silver for 6, gold for 8 children).
Employment: Women were discouraged from working in professions. Female doctors, lawyers, and civil servants were dismissed. Women were encouraged to leave their jobs and return home. However, by the late 1930s, as rearmament created labour shortages, the Nazis quietly reversed this policy and encouraged women back into the workforce.
Appearance: The ideal Nazi woman wore no make-up, did not smoke, wore flat shoes, and had her hair in a bun or plaits. Trousers, high heels, hair dye, and slimming diets were all frowned upon. The ideal Nazi woman was healthy, natural, and devoted to producing children for the Fatherland.
The birth rate did increase — from 15.1 per thousand in 1933 to 20.4 per thousand in 1939. Marriage loans and the Motherhood Cross appeared to have some effect. However, the policies were not entirely successful. Many women resented losing their jobs and independence. By 1939, there were actually more women in employment than in 1933, because rearmament created such a demand for workers that the Nazis had to abandon their own ideology. The contradiction between Nazi ideals and economic reality was never resolved.
Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens
The Nazis aimed to control young people from an early age. The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) was the main organisation for boys aged 14–18, while the League of German Maidens (Bund Deutscher Mädel, or BDM) was for girls of the same age. Younger children joined the German Young People (ages 10–14) or the Young Girls (ages 10–14).
Membership of the Hitler Youth became compulsory in 1936. By 1939, over 8 million young Germans were members. Boys were trained in physical fitness, camping, map-reading, and military skills. They were also indoctrinated with Nazi ideology — loyalty to Hitler, racial superiority, and anti-Semitism. Girls in the BDM learned domestic skills, childcare, and fitness, preparing them for their future role as mothers.
Education Under the Nazis
Schools were transformed to serve the Nazi state. The curriculum was rewritten: history lessons glorified Germany’s past and blamed the Jews for Germany’s problems; biology taught racial theory and the superiority of the “Aryan race”; physical education was increased to five periods per week to prepare boys for military service; and girls focused on domestic science.
Teachers were required to join the National Socialist Teachers’ League. Those who refused were sacked. Teachers attended training camps where they learned how to teach the Nazi curriculum. Jewish teachers were dismissed. Textbooks were rewritten to include Nazi propaganda — even maths problems involved calculating the cost of keeping disabled people in institutions.
Nazi textbooks included questions like: “A mentally ill person costs the state 4 marks a day. There are 300,000 mentally ill people in care. How much do they cost the state annually?” These questions were designed to make students accept that disabled people were a burden on society, preparing public opinion for the later euthanasia programme. This is a chilling example of how education was used as a tool of indoctrination.
Reducing Unemployment
One of the Nazis’ most popular policies was their apparent success in reducing unemployment. Official figures showed unemployment falling from over 6 million in 1933 to under 500,000 by 1938. However, the reality was more complicated.
Nazi unemployment figures were misleading. Invisible unemployment meant that Jews, women who left work, and men in the National Labour Service (RAD) were not counted. If these groups had been included, the real figure would have been significantly higher.
The main methods used to reduce unemployment were:
- National Labour Service (RAD) — all men aged 18–25 had to do six months of manual labour, such as building autobahns, planting forests, and draining marshes. Pay was low, and conditions were harsh.
- Autobahns — a massive motorway-building programme that employed 125,000 workers. The autobahns also served military purposes, allowing rapid troop movements.
- Rearmament — from 1935, Hitler openly rearmed Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Weapons factories, shipyards, and the new Luftwaffe (air force) created millions of jobs.
- Conscription — introduced in 1935, military service removed hundreds of thousands of young men from the unemployment register.
The German Labour Front and Strength Through Joy
After banning trade unions, the Nazis created the German Labour Front (DAF), led by Robert Ley. Workers could not strike or negotiate wages, but the DAF ran two schemes to keep them content:
Strength Through Joy (KdF) organised leisure activities for workers — subsidised holidays, theatre trips, sporting events, and even cruises. The most famous KdF project was the Volkswagen (“People’s Car”), which workers could save towards. However, not a single Volkswagen was ever delivered to a civilian — the factory switched to military production when war broke out. Beauty of Labour improved working conditions by installing better lighting, canteens, and washing facilities in factories.
The Persecution of Minorities
Nazi racial ideology placed the “Aryan race” at the top of a racial hierarchy. Groups deemed racially “inferior” or socially “undesirable” faced systematic persecution:
- Slavs — considered racially inferior; millions would later be murdered or enslaved during the war.
- Roma and Sinti — classified as “asocials” and subjected to forced sterilisation, deportation, and later genocide.
- Homosexuals — at least 10,000 men were sent to concentration camps. Gay men were forced to wear pink triangles.
- People with disabilities — seen as a burden on the state. From 1934, over 350,000 were forcibly sterilised under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.
The Persecution of Jewish People
Anti-Semitism was at the core of Nazi ideology. The persecution of Jewish people escalated throughout the 1930s:
Boycott of Jewish Shops
SA members stood outside Jewish-owned businesses, warning people not to enter. The boycott lasted one day officially, but harassment continued.
Professional Exclusion
Jewish people were banned from the civil service, teaching, journalism, and other professions.
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jewish people of German citizenship and banned marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Jewish people were no longer citizens — they were “subjects.”
Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”)
Kristallnacht saw the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues, 7,500 Jewish businesses, and the arrest of around 30,000 Jewish men who were sent to concentration camps. At least 91 Jewish people were killed. The Jewish community was then fined 1 billion marks for the damage.
The persecution of Jewish people escalated from social exclusion (boycotts, 1933) to legal discrimination (Nuremberg Laws, 1935) to organised violence (Kristallnacht, 1938). Jewish emigration rose sharply after Kristallnacht; by September 1939 about 282,000 Jewish people had left Germany since 1933. Those who remained faced even worse treatment during the war.
Several factors explain why most Germans did not oppose the persecution of Jewish people. Anti-Semitism had deep roots in European culture and was not unique to the Nazis. Nazi propaganda blamed Jews for Germany’s economic problems, reinforcing existing prejudices. The police state made any form of protest extremely dangerous — helping Jewish people could result in imprisonment or death. Some Germans benefited directly from persecution, buying Jewish property or taking over Jewish businesses at below-market prices. Others simply looked away, telling themselves it was not their concern.