ABSTRACT
Their obsession with race and ‘value’ led Nazi leaders to deny the significance of social class. The DAF claimed to represent ‘all workers of hand and brain’, and ‘Aryans’ who were ‘hereditarily healthy’, ‘politically reliable’ and socially responsible – by Nazi definition – all belonged to the ‘master race’. This included working-class women. Whatever Tröger says about middle-class women being regarded as likely ‘to produce … “racially more valuable” offspring than women from the lower strata’ (1984: 246), the majority of recipients of marriage loans were from the poorer sections of society, and the first family allowances were restricted to those in precarious financial circumstances (see Chapter 2). If middle-class women were under particular pressure to reproduce, it was probably because the trend towards small families was more strongly established in the middle classes, who were also generally better placed to afford the expense of a large family.
