ABSTRACT
Politics for the Nazis was a strictly male affair. According to the ideologues, the divide between public and private life was one that divided the sexes and on which the proper functioning of society and state had to rely. Women were expected to be aware and supportive of the political life of the nation, but were ascribed no active role in the public sphere of politics. This chapter focuses on just one aspect of that propaganda: their efforts to influence women's patterns of consumption in the interests of the Volk. One was in the shape of cookery programmes and market reports that attempted to influence the shopping habits of the nation's women. Nazi propaganda has in many ways come to stand as the benchmark for what we understand by propaganda as a genre – that blatant, dishonest manipulation of public opinion associated with the passionate demagoguery and mass spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies.
