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. Political propaganda, therefore, was ostensibly produced by men, for men, and about men. The official cultural news agency, for example, described the wartime newsreel as “an entirely masculine affair befitting a masculine age”. 1 Yet despite the glut of images of male heroics and the posturing of male politicians, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the propagandists were well aware of the vast numbers of women in the audience and the necessity to address and mobilize them. The various women’s organizations were enlisted to this end, and the whole spectrum of media, from posters to public exhibitions, flysheets to film, were exploited in the dissemination of their propaganda. 2 This chapter will focus on just one aspect of that propaganda: their efforts to influence women’s patterns of consumption in the interests of the Volk.
