Summary
Title: Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics
Author: Claudia Koonz
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 0312022565
Pro:
• Wealth of information and research not available elsewhere
Con:
• None
Description:
• History of women's role in Nazi politics, power, and growth
• Explores how women could support a movement that opposed women's equality
Book Review
Critics of America’s Christian Right often wonder about the prominent role of some women in the movement, given how opposed the Christian Right can be to women’s equality and leadership. An even more extreme example of this phenomenon is how involved women could be with the Nazi Party and promoting the Nazi agenda throughout society. How could this have happened? Why did women defend and advance a cause so inimical to their own well-being? The same questions bothered Duke University history professor Claudia Koonz, and the fruits of her research are in her book Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics.
Some of the appeal the Nazis had to women was the same as the appeal they had to men. Women, no less than men, were distrustful of democracy, liberalism, and modernism. Women, no less than men, were intensely nationalistic and sentimental about Germany’s rural past. Some of the appeal, though, was made directly to women: Nazis promised to turn back the clock on women’s rights (women received the right to vote in Germany before almost anywhere else in the world, including America) and restore women to their previously “privileged” position in charge of the home and hearth.
Instead of being thrust into the raucous political sphere where they had to compete with men, women were to be accorded their own sphere of power. It was not, however, to be a sphere of autonomous power. Men were still in charge and women weren’t able to make any real decisions or changes without the approval of men. An interesting demonstration of this is provided by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, former head of the women’s department under the Nazis whom Koonz was able to interview. Scholtz-Klink was very proud of her power and the power of other women under the Nazis; she never ceased to be a true believer in Nazism, and despite Koonz’s prodding she never acknowledged that her power was limited by the fact that all decisions ultimately had to go through men.
Claudia Koonz’s book is a model of historical research. She not only takes a fresh look at things taken for granted, but also brings out numerous resources which have been unexamined for decades. Most histories of Nazi Germany, even today, well after Koonz’s book was published, tend to focus on men as if their behavior were the norm and a model for all society. Half of the population of Nazi Germany were women, and as voters, they were instrumental in the creation of the Third Reich.
It’s common to think of women as being especially nurturing and loving; in Nazi Germany, though, they could be as callous and unfeeling as anyone. It’s important to try to understand why. The Nazis, and Germans in general, were not strange aliens from another planet. They were regular human beings who acted in ways not unlike other human beings. What we learn about them, even in their unique historical and cultural circumstances, can provide insights on how the rest of us behave today.
