Hitler and the Nazis had set ideas as to what they believed women should do.
They would promote women being involved in roles in the home, and in raising children
for Hitler’s empire.
The Nazis even gave out medals to women who had a specific amount of children.
But during the Second World War, there would be many different women who served inside
of different armies.
Women in Britain were enrolled inside of Special Operations Executive and they worked as spies
and undercover agents linking up with the French Resistance.
In the Soviet Union, women took up arms and there were regiments of women and many were
considered talented snipers and ruthless and feared soldiers.
But Adolf Hitler’s ideas of what women should be doing was very different, and he ordered
any woman that was captured on the battlefield to be executed immediately and he was offended
that they were fighting against his country.
He would because of this to begin with ban women to join the German Army, but over times
the policy was changed and there were a number of women who were involved in the army and
the German war effort.
Join us today as we look at the women that fought for Hitler.
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The Germans would change their policy during the Second World War to allow women to join
the German Army.
Hitler said in a speech that, ‘We possess a generation of healthy men and we National
Socialists are going to watch.
Germany will not form any section of women grenade throwers of any corps of women elite
snipers.’
With this women were not assigned to combat units during the conflict, and the were considered
military personnel who would carry out logistics tasks and admin roles.
They would make up the numbers often for men who were sent into combat, and they also worked
inside of the ammunitions factories.
Gertrud Scholtz Klink who was referred to as the Female Fuhrer would state, ‘We often
hear, even from the women, the most diverse objections against work in arms factories.
The question of knowing whether we can require such work of this or that particular women
is now well past.’
Propaganda would call women to come and work in different industries and inside of different
war industries.
Goebbels would call on women to abandon working in different businesses such as beauty salons,
and he would tell them to go and work inside of factories on armaments.
But many women who were inside of the arms industry were treated poorly by their bosses
and the working conditions got worse as the war went on and as demand increased massively.
However there would be a number of German women who worked as mentioned as auxiliaries
in the Wehrmacht, and these were known as the Wehrmachthelferinnen.
These women were important to the different military organisations including the Luftwaffe
and the Kriegsmarine.
Half of these were volunteers and the other half were conscripted into the war effort
being forced to take part in the service they were doing.
Many were also prisoners of war, and were auxiliary staff of the army, and they were
assigned to duties within different German occupied lands and countries.
German women would work inside of Poland for the Nazis, and they would also work in France,
Spain, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia.
They would perform administrative tasks and work as typists and messengers for the German
Army, and also work as telephone and transmission workers.
Their roles in communication was imperative for the Wehrmacht, and they also worked in
anti aircraft defence, and they would operate listening equipment and would also be employed
in spotting aircraft and in civil defence.
But many women were also drafted into the military to work as nurses, and many would
also join different voluntary organisations including the German Red Cross.
In the Concentration Camp systems it was known that many of them were not effective as they
would not be allowed to give out much health care and support to the prisoners.
Women were also a part of the SS.
The women’s wing of the SS was known as the SS-Gefolge, and they were usually volunteer
workers who served in the Emergency Services.
But SS women belonged to the SS Helferinnen or the SS Kriegshelferinnen.
They were also used as telephone, radio operators and in stenographers within the SS and they
would often live amongst other SS groups and units.
The women’s group had no power over the male soldiers, but there were female concentration
camp guards who were classed as civilian employees of the SS, and many of these women would be
schooled in how to become evil and barbaric guards at camps such as Bergen-Belsen.
The SS women of the Helferinnen were trained at the Reich school in Obernai, and they were
considered members of the Waffen SS after their training.
The SS Helferinnen trained at the school, and there were other training centres open
for SS women.
For example many of the women who became concentration camp guards would go and learn at Ravensbruck
concentration camp.
Many women who trained in the SS group had to meet specific criteria, as they had to
be between 17 and 30 years old and must have been over 5 feet 5 inches tall.
The age limit was later raised, and many women who had become widows during the war were
favoured to join the detachment and group.
Many of the SS-Helferinnen were collaborators, and they knew about the evils that many of
the Nazis had been conducting.
One Historian stated, ‘all of these women were a part of the bureaucratic staff and
were accomplices, spectators and sometimes even witnesses of violence.’
The Americans would later write a report about the SS women’s school, and they would state
that the women should be detained, but their roles inside the SS went into the concentration
camps.
The female concentration camp guards became notorious for their evil and brutality.
Women were considered well respected guards of the concentration camps, and many of them
were trained from 1938 at Lichtenburg which is considered the first female concentration
camp.
They were drafted into the system as they would need to guard many female political
prisoners, and after 1939 they were then sent to Ravsnebruck and all female camp where they
were trained.
Many women answered the call to work inside of the camps, and they left lives behind them
where they worked as teachers, hairdressers and they had a variety of jobs.
The women were motivated by a desire to be part of the female detachments of the SS,
as opposed to men who were ordered to fulfil military service.
Around 5,000 women would serve in the concentration camps and this was around 10% of the entire
workforce.
Over time they would be perpetrators and brutal guards who would take part in the executions
and exterminations of people on a daily basis.
Women were assigned to Auschwitz and Majdanek, and they then became guards at Stutthof, Flossenburg,
Gross Rosen and inside of the different extermination camps such as Treblinka.
The women who worked here were considered some of the most evil, and within minutes
they would be driving people to the gas chambers and they would exhibit brutality.
Women such as Maria Mandel would school other women in how to be brutal and evil guards,
but she would also be responsible for the executions of many women in public at sites
such as Auschwitz.
Many women were involved inside of the German war efforts and they were even members of
the SS.
Women had a more limited involvement in the war effort than men, but many became perpetrators
of the evil crimes of the SS and the Nazis.
They would at the end of the war be executed for their roles, but Htiler would do a u-turn
on his policies of banning women from having roles inside of the military and the war effort.
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