The ‘Private’ became ‘Public’: Wives as Denouncers in the Third Reich

Feminist historians have so far projected the ‘Aryan’ family as a ‘doll’s house of ersatz goodness’, as an institution which acted like ‘a shield against all-pervasive Nazi ideology’. Some have even declared all housewives and mothers innocent and ignorant of nazi crimes. They assert that the ‘Aryan’ family remained a unified front unaffected by the destructive politics of the era. Such interpretations ignore the fact that the regime managed to intrude into family life and sniff out dissent from within this personal sphere by a number of means, including the provision of political denunciation. A view from below, in addition, suggests that this intrusion was made possible with the active co-operation of spouses, particularly wives. ¹ This important gender behaviour has, however, neither been properly thematized nor quantitatively researched.