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Women In Nazi Germany Essay

Decent Essays

In Nazi Germany, women played a crucial role in expanding the Nazi ideology in Eastern Europe. Women who were sent to Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe were called “Hitler’s Furies”, and were seen as “`racist motherliness': the women were urged to devote themselves selflessly to their German charges while banishing from their minds any sympathy for the non-German population.” This indoctrination was not always involuntary, many women of the time felt empowered at a time when many of these women were still finding their identity. The services offered by the Nazi’s gave them a sense of belonging to society, as well as high hopes for making a difference in it. To travel appealed to many women during 1939, and into the 1940’s, but for others it was …show more content…

One could argue, “They believed that their violent deeds were justified acts of revenge meted out to enemies of the Reich; such deeds were, in their minds, expressions of loyalty. To Erna Petri, even helpless Jewish boys fleeing from a boxcar bound for the gas chamber were not innocent; they were the ones who almost got away.” There is a fog over this part of history that needs to have light shed on it. The Nazi's may have trained these women, but it was the women themselves who carried out these acts of terrorism. Some German women were complicit because they feared the Gestapo, but it is more common that these acts of injustice and violence were committed with compliance by the average German woman. Women were active participants in atrocities against Polish and Jewish civilians. Certain woman would, in the future, hide behind the Swastika, and say they were doing 'womanly work'. At the same time they denied altogether their significant role in the persecution and

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