Kinder, Kirche,und Kuche & the 3rd Reich
What you see as a yoke others see as a blessing. What is heaven to one is hell for another. . . For us the woman has always been the loyalcompanion of the man in work and life. People often tell me: You want to drive women out of the professions. No, I only want to make it possible for her to found her own family and to have children, for that is how she can best serve our people! If a woman jurist does the best possible work, but next to her lives a woman who has given birth to five, six or seven healthy children who are well educated, I would say the following: From the standpoint of the eternal values of our people, the women who has borne and raised children has done more, given more, accomplished more for the future of our people!" ...Hitler, 1936
Children, Church & Kitchen
One would not expect motherhood to be a favored issue of the Nazis, but it was, and it was highly noted and promoted. While the Nazis fought to rid European bloodlines of Jewish traces, it conversely
sought to promote the notion of German Motherhood and general
proliferation of German progeny. German mothers were treated with special regard: they were giving birth to the generation which Hitler felt could be fully his. (See Hitlerjugend Hitler wanted to see the proliferation of large German families with excellent bloodlines: a theme that echoed throughout his years as Fuhrer. Mothers of large families were honored and give special privileges: in some cases they were given financial benefits for large families. A Mother's Cross was a blue "Iron Cross' on a ribbon which was awarded to German Mothers. In order to produce large families, Young couples were given the option of low interest loans which reduced in repayments with increasing numbers of children. If a family had 4 or 5 children, the loans would not have to be repayed at all. Says one source:
[The]MARRIAGE LOAN (Ehestanddarlehen) In Germany, financial aid was given to encourage young couples to marry and set up house and help raise the birth-rate. Between August 1933 and the end of 1936, a total of 694,367 marriages were financed. From these marriages, 485,285 children were born. 1
Mothers were the hope of Germany's future in the eyes of the Nazis particularly if they raised children adherent to Nazi practices and philosophies. They as well as most women in Nazi Germany were not seen as active participants in society: they were assigned the role, as noted in the title of Kinder, Kirche,und Kuche, or "Children, Church and Kitchen: the three roles the Nazis felt women should fulfill as their main vocation. While there were a few women notable in Hitler's regime such as Leni Riefenstahl, the propagand film maker, most women were seen instead as childbearers or potential childbearers, without a lot of concern for their individuality. Young couples were 'blessed' in 'fertility rites' such as labor day dances around the Maypole. Special programs to encourage the production of 'elite' Aryan babies such as Lebensborn and the 'sanctity' of marriage was less valued than childbearing. A few 'aryan types' of children were selected from among Jews and Poles to be raised in German families. (See Germanization) and photographs have emerged showing even kidnapping of such children in Poland.
While the role of Motherhood is celebrated and protected in most cultures, it was even more so in the Third Reich. The expectation though was not the protection of role or women with children, but the raising of a generation thoroughly and completely indoctrinated in Nazism and untainted by other bloodlines. Motherhood under Nazi Germany had lost its traditional meaning.
1From "Lesser Known Facts About the Holocaust".
