Introduction

This is not a history of the Nazi Party; others, on whom I have greatly depended, provide this. ¹ Nor is it intended to be of the ‘women’s history’ genre. Rather, it is a brief account of the origins, development and functions of the women’s groups associated with the NSDAP from near its beginning until its end, which, it is to be hoped, will do more than ‘only serve the negative purpose of demonstrating the dominance of men in Nazism’, ² even if that conclusion is inescapable. For one thing, vague or misleading remarks have been made about the early years of Nazi women’s activity by some writers, including myself, ³ which Chapters 1 and 2 should clarify. And consideration of Nazi women’s organisations is timely because of the publication, late in 1978, of a book by the former leader of the official women’s organisations in the Third Reich, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. Die Frau im Dritten Reich ⁴ gives a clear picture neither of ‘women in the Third Reich’ nor of the organisations over which Frau Scholtz-Klink presided. By reproducing a large number of contemporary publications and some (often abbreviated) documents interspersed with at times bitter comments, she has certainly not produced ‘the pioneering work of the highest order’ that her publisher has claimed; ⁵ on the contrary, she has shown that while she has, over the years, forgotten a few things, she has learned nothing. She would have done well to read the genuinely pioneering study of her system by Clifford Kirkpatrick, first published in 1938, ⁶ whose insights and appraisals are, not always but often enough, still valid today. But as a contemporary, pre-war study, Kirkpatrick’s is necessarily incomplete.