Gender Roles In Adolf Hitler's Speech

During Adolph Hitler’s speech to thousands of German women at the National Socialist Women’s Organization in Nuremberg in 1934, the Nazi vision was expressed while mobilizing support amongst Protestant and Catholic Germans to produce multiple children. Hitler’s speech reveals how rejection of emancipation and an increase in childbearing is required to secure the German homeland through expansion of military size and strength. Primarily, women were persuaded to reject Jewish intellectual ideas of emancipation which were deemed hostile for marital relationships and Germany’s future. Moreover, an urge for women to embrace traditional patriarchal values reaffirmed their duty to bear children on behalf of providence to increase the German population.

Women were told that embracing masculine roles was an unnatural invasion of male territory, and was incongruent with nature. Therefore, to restore prosperous relationships, women must recognise that which “has been assigned by nature and Providence”. Repetition of the significance of a natural role to bear and raise children throughout the speech reinforced the idea that this decision was out of their hands and had already been determined as their eternal duty. Emphasizing the importance of childbearing allowed the Nazi party to increase the size of the German Volksgemeinschaft. To motivate women to have children, praise and recognition for traditional roles was provided by Hitler, who stated that “what man offers in heroism on the field of battle, woman equals with unending perseverance and sacrifice”. Fear was used as another tactic to deter feminist resistance by applying negative connotations to masculine societal roles. To prevent political competition with women, Hitler claimed women would not be ennobled but dishonored in parliament. In an effort to deter aspiring women from entering government, Hitler stated that political life was degrading and “a life that, in our eyes, is unworthy of her”. Thus, women who may have offered a more compassionate and humane approach to politics were demoralized, viewed as trespassing on men’s territory and irresponsibly disobeying religious life