Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  The organization that claimed to speak for all the rest was the Bund Deutscher Frauen (BDF), a loose confederation of many different groups. Its head was Fräulein—not Frau—Gertrud Bäumer, a veteran campaigner for women’s rights. Nowadays she even has a school named after her! Under the Kaiserreich she had anticipated us by opposing both abortion and contraception. In 1919 she helped rewrite the program of the BDF, injecting it with a right-wing, nationalist ideology that suited us quite well.

  Bäumer’s organization was never terribly important. Still, by 1932 it was advocating the abolition of democracy and the establishment of a corporate state modeled on Fascist Italy. It also called on women to help undo the consequences of the Great War by giving our nation as many children as they could. They were just the things we National Socialists also wanted. Conversely, the social ills associated with the Weimar Republic, such as sexual libertarianism, pornography, abortion, and the spread of venereal diseases, were to be combated and defeated.

  To these objectives we National Socialists added our racial consciousness. It was the one feature, I am proud to say, that formed the greatest difference between us and many other totalitarian regimes both at the time and since. Translated into concrete terms, that meant the need to save women from being debauched and corrupted at the hands of Jews and other enemies of true Germandom. Healthy family values, the kind that had prevailed throughout German history, had to be restored. The most important objective of girls’ education should be to prepare them for motherhood. Marriage was merely a means for multiplying and maintaining the race. We definitely saw childless women (and men) as harmful to the Volk. Ultimately, though, all we did was tax them more heavily. That was a measure a great many other governments have also adopted and still adopt. Briefly, nature had made man for the world, for society, and, last, but not least, for politics and for war. As for woman, it had made her for her husband, her family, her children, and her home.

  Our program did not repel women. To the contrary, right from the beginning it attracted them. And no wonder. The Weimar Republic was headed by pacifist cowards. Not to say criminals and traitors. We, and in their different way, the Communists, were the only real men prepared to fight for the future, including the future of women and their offspring. Women donated money to the party (and to me personally, but that is another matter). Women kept the party running when I was in prison. Women helped us organize meetings and conduct propaganda. Always by means of hard work, and sometimes by taking risks in the streets. After all, a brick thrown at a demonstration does not always hit its intended target. Above all, growing numbers of women voted for us. In the decisive elections of September 1930, almost half of those who did so were women.

  Women, it should never be forgotten, are governed by emotions rather than the intellect. I knew exactly how to talk to them. They, in turn, cheered me as loudly as anyone, often while weeping uncontrollably. If anything, women’s adoration—I can think of no better word—of my person intensified during the years after 1933. The crowds that followed me wherever I went were made up in large part of women. Other women made the pilgrimage to Berchtesgaden. They waited for hours to give the German salute or to hold out their children for me to touch. Nor did the flow cease even during my absences. So numerous were they that, come 1938, I had Bormann forbid the practice and fence off the place where they used to wait for me. Nothing could disturb the love affair between German women and myself. And until the end, nothing did.

  Women were as opportunistic as men. In 1933 alone, 800,000 new members joined the Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft. To be sure, the NSF wielded little real power. However, as its head, Frau Scholz-Klink, said much later, it enjoyed as much autonomy as any other organization in our totalitarian state did. Compared to similar organizations in other countries, the funding it received was generous indeed. We also gave it substantial leeway in its own areas of activity, such as women’s welfare and health. There was hardly a single German woman whom it did not reach in one way or another.

  I well knew that, by punishing women too harshly, one risks rousing sympathy for them. That is why we treated female opponents of our regime with kid gloves. Out of the numerous concentration camps established before the war, only one was earmarked for women. It was not until 1938 that we executed the first female political criminal, the Communist agitator Lieselotte Hermann. She was arrested for passing classified information to the headquarters of the banned German Communist Party in Switzerland. Convicted of treason, she and three of her male colleagues were guillotined. That served them right.

  We instituted and celebrated Mother’s Day. We awarded medals to fertile women. At the time, similar measures were common in other countries too; in France, they persisted until the 1990s. But we went considerably further than most. Long before most other countries, we allowed working women to deduct a certain sum used for child care from their taxes.

  In principle, though, we did not want mothers to work. To encourage them to stay at home we instituted the famous marriage loans. Provided a woman did not work during the first two years after her wedding, with the birth of each additional child a quarter of the sum was written off. Later, the regulations were quietly changed so that she would receive the benefit even if she did work. Much as subsequent feminists might rail against them, most of these measures proved to be immensely popular. The leader of the Catholic German Women’s Association, Antoine Hoppman, called the loans “a stroke of genius,” which, in their own way, they were.

  We also tried other ways to help women. By their very nature, women are unsuited either for the rough and tumble of politics or for the kind of dirty work lawyers often do. The more they try to be like us men, in fact, the less we, and I, personally, like them. That, not any desire to oppress them or humiliate them, is why we banned them from both professions. At all costs, we wanted to protect them and to keep them pure. Female professors—unhappy creatures, most of them, working in fields for which they were not suited—were also dismissed. Jewesses apart, all those who lost their jobs received full pensions. Many also found other kinds of work. In any case the number of those affected only amounted to less than one percent of the female workforce. Whatever critics may say, all these measures received the full support both of the Frauenschaft and of the grande dame of German feminism, Fräulein Bäumer. A greater tribute to our policies would be hard to find.

  In December 1933, we took our one and only measure against female students by establishing a numerus clausus of ten percent for them. Once again, Fräulein Bäumer welcomed the decree to the best of her mediocre ability. For many years past she had supported higher education for women. Now, however, she felt that declining academic standards called for a partial retreat. Our enemies have often cited the decree as an example of our “hatred” for women, particularly intellectual women. They overlook or conceal the fact that, as early as February 1935, the decree was rescinded. Thus the only female students affected were those in the graduating class of 1934. And even those could earn retroactive credit provided they wanted to and provided they had been registered with the university as “listeners.” Later, during the war, the fact that practically all young men were serving in the armed forces enabled women to take over and to form the majority of students, even in faculties such as law, from which we had initially tried to remove them.

  Contrary to the legend concerning “oppression,” in 1933 proportionally far more German than American women worked outside the home. With the Great Depression in the background, many countries sought to alleviate the situation by dismissing women in double-income families. Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United States all either passed such measures or contemplated them at some point. Brüning had tried them as well, but to no avail. Whatever the situation abroad, in practice few, if any, German women ever lost their jobs for this reason.

  From my time in Vienna and Munich I knew how little dancing girls were paid. They earned so little
, in fact, that many were driven to make a living on the streets, selling their bodies. It made me furious! That is why, as soon as I had the opportunity, I personally saw to it that their wages should be raised. As the economy started picking up, we found ourselves in a position to provide employment to any woman who wanted a job. The number of those who took the opportunity rose and rose. By the end of the 1930s, proportionally more women worked in Germany than in any other European country except France. Step by step, too, our welfare state expanded. By the late 1930s it had come to embrace almost all working women. As someone said, five years of National Socialist rule in some ways did more to help German professional women than a decade of feminist pressure in the Republic had.

  Not only did we not refuse to employ women, but we did more to protect female workers than any other country did. One law prohibited employers from requiring women to work on pedal-operated machinery. Others prohibited women from working underground, dealing with poisonous materials, or carrying heavy weights. Nor could they be employed for shift work or night work. In the late 1930s, moreover, the developing shortage of labor forced employers to woo their female employees. As a result, their wages rose faster than those of men did. In industries such as textiles, mining, metal, electronics, and bricks, women began receiving equal pay with men. Of this achievement, our National Socialist trade union was very proud.

  We also put in place arrangements designed to help working women. Among them were special facilities for mothers at work, a “birth premium” and a “breastfeeding premium” as well as free nursing services, medical treatment, and medicines for themselves and their babies. Many of these measures proved so advanced that they remained part of German law long after 1945. Some were so advanced that a great many other countries are still debating whether they should or should not be adopted.

  As preparations for war started in earnest, and also during the war itself, I came under intense pressure to make greater use of our female labor force. Among those who tried to persuade me were Göring in his capacity as Plenipotentiary for the Four Years Plan; Fritz Sauckel, who was responsible for labor; and General Eduard Wagner, the Chief of the Army General Staff Economic Department. Later, they were joined by Speer in his capacity of Minister of Munitions. I, however, always refused. My reason was that our long-limbed German women were not suited for the kind of physical work our factories demanded; this, after all, was long before the production of steel was automated and robots took the place of men at the assembly lines. German women could undertake such work, if at all, only at the cost of very great physical and psychological hardship. I also wanted to protect them against the kind of sexual harassment which, working in the factories side by side with men, they were bound to suffer. That was something, I felt, we owed them as well as their fathers, husbands, and brothers who were serving in the armed forces.

  Against the advice of some, I did not encroach on family life by ordering children to be evacuated from the cities. Voluntary evacuation, of course, was something else. I did not want to imitate Russia where, during the Second World War, women formed the majority not only in the factories but even among miners. That was the only time in history this happened. As a result, they died like flies. Instead, to take the place of our men at the front, I had Sauckel bring in millions of foreign workers, both male and female, from all the occupied territories. That was why he was later hanged at Nuremberg. I personally made sure that many of the workers were employed in the countryside so as to lighten the burden our peasant women were bearing.

  We ensured that, in proportion to their absent husbands’ income, German women received twice as much money as English and American women did. Not to mention the fact that we National Socialists were the only government in the entire world which paid the widows of fallen soldiers for any illegitimate children they had by them. Unfortunately, the war prevented me from protecting German women as much as they deserved to be and as much as I wanted to. Some compromises had to be made. But I never lost sight of my long-term goal: namely, to make sure that, in the not-too-remote future, no German woman would have to do hard work in a factory.

  As part of his declaration of “total war” in 1943, Goebbels wanted to close down all kinds of factories and facilities that catered to women, such as fashion houses, the plants where cosmetics were produced, beauty parlors, and the like. The way he saw it, the objective was not just to save labor and resources but to raise the nation’s spirit by showing that waste was being eliminated. When Eva heard that, she was appalled! I stepped in and made sure it would not happen. Most women—real women, not feminists—are content with home and family. Politics only interest them on the margins. But will a maiden forget her ornaments? Never. Women are very addicted to their little luxuries and vanities. Grant them those, and they are content. Deny them, and they will become, if not dangerous, sullen and resentful.

  Necessity knows no bounds. No one was a stronger opponent of using women as soldiers than I. As the war went on and our sources of manpower were exhausted, though, I gradually dropped my objections to using women as auxiliaries in all kinds of defense-related work. Toward the end those who served may have numbered as many as half a million. And that figure does not include 400,000 Red Cross auxiliaries. They did a sterling job as civil defense organizers, air traffic controllers, telephone operators—at that time, they were not yet known as “communicators”—and the like. But when Goebbels, shortly before our final defeat, came up with the idea of issuing them weapons and sending them into combat, I sent him packing. In any case most of the weapons in our arsenal were too big and heavy for them to use. Nor could women stand the physical demands of combat itself. As is shown by the fact that, in their silly attempts to turn women into warriors, all modern Western forces have done is to vastly increase the number of injuries they suffer.

  Rather than denounce me for somehow mistreating them, women ought to thank me. At a time when German men, including Hitler Youth boys not yet eighteen years old, were dying in masses, I saved the lives of God knows how many young women who might have otherwise been sent to the front. My objections rested on three principal considerations. First, personally I have never been able to overcome the feeling that it is women’s task to give life, not to take it in a variety of mostly horrible ways. Call it romanticism; call it sexism; call it male chauvinism; call it whatever you wish. Once again, honni soit qui mal y pense! Second, for women to fight and suffer large numbers of casualties goes against the very purpose of waging war, which is to preserve the nation and strengthen it for the future.

  Third, as someone who has been to war and seen more of it than all the world’s feminists put together, I feel entitled to say this: for a man to be made to participate in combat alongside a woman is the ultimate insult to his manhood. The desire to defend women is very thing that makes him fight in the first place. A handful of women around can do no harm. They may even help motivate the men, as women have always done. However, beyond a certain point an army that has too many women in its ranks will simply fall apart. Once again, look at the armies of developed countries which, tamely surrendering to the idiotic claims of ignorant academics and half-demented feminists, have taken this road. They are nothing but hopeless crybabies.

  None of this means that we prevented women from using their talents in the service of the community. Far from that being the case, it was one reason why they felt attracted to us. Frau Wagner apart, the best known was Leni Riefenstahl who produced the most famous propaganda films ever made for a political movement. I personally patronized her, made sure she got the resources she needed, and thanked her for her efforts. I did the same for the writer and poetess Agnes Miegel. In 1933 she was among eighty-eight writers who, on their own initiative and without being asked, swore an oath of allegiance to me.

  Frau Miegel owed her fame to the numerous poems and short stories she wrote about East Prussia. In them she grieved about the separation of that province from the rest of the German Motherland, praised moth
erhood, glorified war, and preached hatred for the Poles. Knowing them as she did, she rightly suspected they were trying to steal her native land from us. As, to our eternal shame and regret, they ultimately succeeded in doing. Two of her odes were specifically dedicated to me! In return, I publicly listed her among the twenty-five people who were Germany’s greatest national assets. And she was by no means the only female artist for whom I publicly expressed my appreciation; far from it.

  Two other talented women with whom I often consulted were Elsa Bruckmann and Frau Gerdy Troost. The latter in particular acted as my interior decorator, advising me on every detail of my domestic arrangements from the rugs to the cutlery; when it came to these topics, no one was as knowledgeable as she was. Following in my footsteps, some of my collaborators also engaged her. Nor was our support for outstanding women limited to the arts. During the war British and American female pilots were only permitted to fly aircraft on transport missions behind the front. Not so our German ones. At least three of them became test pilots, a dangerous and very responsible job. One, Hanna Reitsch, flew the world’s first helicopter in 1937. Later, she was involved in a crash which she only barely survived. Another, Melitta Schiller, flew no fewer than 1,500 missions testing Stuka dive-bombers as well as test-flying the world’s earliest jet and rocket planes. A third female test pilot who flew jets and rockets was Flight Captain Beate Köstlin. After the war, she took on the name Beate Uhse. I was amused, but also a little piqued, to learn that, under that name, she became rich and famous by establishing a very successful company dealing in pornography and sexual aids.

  Our movie industry also produced numerous female heroines and held them up as examples for the German people. In return most German women, to their everlasting credit, gave our National Socialist cause their unqualified support. Some feminist organizations, aware of where the wind was blowing, started expelling their Jewish members even before we required them to. Others, especially middle-class ones, had long favored the compulsory sterilization of their inferior sisters. When we finally implemented that policy, they were ecstatic. Here it is important to remember that the program in question depended almost entirely on denunciation; we did not have the manpower needed to screen every household. Had it not been for our brave women, who kept an eye open, it never could have been carried out.