The execution of female Nazi war criminals by hanging....................
CUNTICA
Many of the staff from the Nazi concentration camps were arrested and
tried for murder and acts of brutality against their prisoners after
the War. Some 3,600 women worked in the concentration camps and
around 60 stood trial for before War Crimes Tribunals between 1945 and
1949. Of these 21 were executed and their cases are detailed below.
(In total, 5,025 men and women were convicted of war crimes in the
American, British and French zones and over 500 of these were
sentenced to death with the majority executed.)
It was decided that those sentenced to die should suffer death by
hanging for both sexes, although no standard execution protocol was
agreed. Each country carried out executions in accordance with its
normal procedure. This led to the use of British style measured drop
hanging in private, for those executed in the British sector, short
drop hanging in public or private for those in the Polish and Russian
sectors and standard drop hanging in semi-private for those executed
by the Americans at Nuremberg, Dachau and Landsberg. Some of the
American hangings were televised and shown on the news. No women were
executed in the US Sector.
Executions under British jurisdiction.
A total of 190 men and 10 women were hanged at Hameln Prison (near
Hanover) in Germany under British jurisdiction. The executions were
carried out by Albert Pierrepoint who was flown in specially on each
occasion. Generally he was assisted by Regimental Sergeant Major
O'Neil who was a member of the Control Commission there. The hangings
took place in a purpose built execution room at the end of one of the
prison's wings. The gallows having been specially constructed by the
Royal Engineers to allow the execution of prisoners in pairs.
Belsen Concentration Camp staff.
Bergen-Belsen was started as late as April 1943 in Lower Saxony near
the city of Celle as a transit centre. It was turned into a
concentration camp by its second commandant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef
Kramer, and was used to house those prisoners who had become too weak
to work as forced labour in German factories. It was liberated by the
British army on April 15th, 1945. The British soldiers found 10,000
unburied corpses and 40,000 sick and dying prisoners of whom a
staggering 28,000 subsequently died after liberation.
As a result of these atrocities, 45 former members of staff from
Bergen-Belsen, including some inmates who had taken part in acts of
brutality against other prisoners, were charged with either being
responsible for the murder of Allied nationals or the suffering of
those in Bergen-Belsen in Germany (first count) or Auschwitz
concentration camp in Poland, (see below for details of this camp)
(second count). Some defendants were charged with both counts.
The accused comprised of 16 men and 16 women, including Josef Kramer,
Belsen's commandant, plus 12 former prisoners (7 men and 5 women).
The Belsen Trial as it was known was conducted by the British Military
Tribunal at No. 30 Lindentrasse, Lüneburg, in Germany from September
17th to November 17th, 1945 under court President Major-General H.M.P.
Berney-Ficklin, sitting with 5 other officers. The prosecution was in
the hands of a team of 4 military lawyers and each prisoner was
represented by counsel. All the prisoners were tried together and sat
in the large dock, each wearing a number on their chest.
On the afternoon of November 16th the verdicts were delivered. Thirty
one prisoners were convicted on one or both counts and 14 acquitted of
all charges. Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath were found guilty on
both counts, Juana Bormann guilty only on the second charge. The
following day the sentences were read out to the prisoners. Eleven of
them were sentenced to death and 19 others to various terms of
imprisonment.
The death sentences were pronounced as follows by Major-General Berney-
Ficklin:
"No. 1) Kramer, 2) Klein, 3) Weingartner, 5) Hoessler, 16) Francioh,
22) Pichen, 25) Stofel, 27) Dorr. The sentence of this Court on each
one of you whom I have just named is that you suffer death by being
hanged".
He then passed sentence on the women as follows "No. 6) Borman, 7)
Volkenrath, 9) Grese. The sentence of this court is that you suffer
death by being hanged." Click here for photos.
The sentence was translated for them into German as "Tode durch den
strang," literally death by the rope. All the prisoners were returned
to Lüneburg prison. Nine of the eleven condemned appealed to the
convening officer, Field-Marshal Montgomery, who rejected their
appeals for clemency. Elizabeth Volkenrath and Juanna Borman decided
not to appeal. On Saturday the 8th of December the appeals of the
others were rejected and the condemned were transferred to Hameln jail
the following day to await execution, being housed in a row of tiny
cells along a corridor with the execution chamber at its end. The 11
from Belsen had been joined by two other men, Georg Otto Sandrock and
Ludwig Schweinberger, sentenced for the murder of Pilot Officer Gerald
Hood, a British prisoner of war at Almelo, Holland, on the 21st of
March 1945.
The executions were set for Friday, December the 13th, 1945 and were
to be carried out at half hour intervals starting at 9.34 a.m. with
Irma Grese, who at 21, was the youngest of the condemned prisoners,
followed by Elisabeth Volkenrath at 10.03 a.m. and Juana Bormann at
10.38 a.m. The men, including Joseph Kramer, were hanged in pairs
afterwards, all 13 executions being completed by 1.00 p.m. In view of
the proximity of the condemned cells to the gallows, each one of them
must have heard the preceding hangings. I have read contemporary
newspaper reports stating that Elizabeth Volkenrath was executed
first, with Irma Grese second but this does not accord with Albert
Pierrepoint’s recollection of the events.
For a detailed account of Irma Grese's case click here and here for
Juana Borman’s
Elisabeth Volkenrath was 26 years old. She was convicted of numerous
murders and made selections for the gas chamber. She was described as
the most hated woman in the camp. Juana Borman was known as “the woman
with the dogs” and took sadistic pleasure in setting her wolfhounds on
prisoners to tear them to pieces.
The afternoon before execution each prisoner was weighed so the
correct drop could be calculated for them. Irma Grese smiled at
Pierrepoint when he asked her age. Elisabeth Volkenrath was steady but
looked nervous and Juana Borman limped down the corridor looking old
and haggard.
Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Ravensbrück concentration camp near Furstenberg in Germany was the
only major Nazi concentration camp for women and also served as a
training base for female SS supervisors. Some 3,500 women underwent
training there. They then worked in Ravensbrück or were sent to other
camps. The camp was established in 1938 and liberated on April 30th,
1945 by the Russian Army. The estimated number of victims there were
92,000!
Sixteen members of the staff of were arrested and were tried between
December 5th 1946 and February 3rd 1947 by a court in the British zone
on charges of murder and brutality. All were found guilty on Monday,
the 3rd of February 1947, except one, who died during the trial.
Eleven were sentenced to hang, including five women, head nurse
Elisabeth Marschall, Aufseherin Greta Bösel, Oberaufseherin Dorothea
Binz and Kapos Carmen Mory and Vera Salvequart.
41 year old Mory cut her wrists during the night of April 9th with a
razor blade she had concealed in her shoe and thus escaped the noose.
She was buried within the prison grounds. Swiss born Mory was unusual
in that she had worked as a spy for the French, the Nazis and finally
the British before and during the War and had been sentenced to death
by each in turn but always managed to dodge her execution, by good
fortune on the first two occasions. She was a prisoner in Ravensbrück,
having been reprieved by the Nazis, and here she made the most of her
situation by becoming a Kapo and spying on other prisoners and
assisting the staff. Due to a shortage of personnel, the SS frequently
used German prisoners (Kapo’s) to supervise other non German inmates.
On the 2nd of May 1947, Albert Pierrepoint hanged the remaining three
women, one at a time starting with Elisabeth Marschall who was nearly
61 years old, followed by 39 year old Greta Bösel at 9.55 a.m. and
then by 27 year old Dorothea Binz.
Elisabeth Marschall had been born on the 24th of May 1886 and became a
nurse in 1909. She rose to the rank of Oberschwester (Head Nurse) in
the Revier (hospital) barracks at Ravensbrück. Here she maltreated
sick prisoners and also took part in horrific experiments. She also
made selections for the gas chambers.
Greta Bösel was born on May 9th, 1908 in Elberfeld, Germany and was a
trained nurse. She went to work in Ravensbrück in August 1944. Her job
was to supervise female working teams. She is supposed to have said:
"Let them rot if they can't work." During her trial, she made
contradictory statements about her role in selecting prisoners for the
death camps.
Dorothea Binz had been born on the 16th of March 1920 in the town of
Dulstarlake and had never married. She had joined the staff of
Ravensbrück in April 1939 and worked as an Aufseherin in the women's
camp before being promoted to Oberaufseherin. She was arrested in
Hamburg in May 1945 and came to trial at the first Ravensbrück trial.
The third woman, 28 year old Czechoslovakian born Vera Salvequart had
not been an SS guard, but rather a prisoner herself in Ravensbrück.
She was born on the 26th of November 1919 in Wonotsch and had trained
as a nurse. She had also served several periods in prison. She claimed
to have stolen plans for the V2 rocket and passed these to Britain.
She was sent to KZ Ravensbrück in December 1944 and as a Kapo worked
as a nurse in the camp's hospital wing. Here she was said to have
administered poison in form of a white powder to some of the patients
although most survived.
Vera Salvequart petitioned the King for a reprieve in view of her
passing secrets to the British. She was granted a stay while this was
considered but the Royal prerogative of mercy was withheld and on the
26th of June 1947 she followed the other 3 to the gallows, her body
being buried with the rest in the grounds of Hameln prison. Click here
for photos.
The third Ravensbrück trial, the so called "Uckermark trial", was held
between April 14th and April 26th 1948 to hear the cases of five women
officials from the Uckermark concentration camp and extermination
complex. This was a satellite camp that housed girls aged 16 – 21.
Two of the women were acquitted, two received prison terms but Ruth
Closius was condemned to death. Ruth Closius, (married name Neudeck)
was born in July 1920. She had belonged to the SS guard staff of
Ravensbrück and had worked there in various capacities from the 3rd of
July 1944, including work in the punishment barracks in late 1944. She
was promoted to Oberaufseherin (senior supervisor), at Uckermark in
early 1945 and worked there until the camp was liberated. She was
convicted of the torture and murder of men, women and children and of
selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. She was hanged on the 29th
of July 1948.
The seventh series of Ravensbrück trials was held between July 2nd and
July 21st, 1948 to hear the cases of Aufseherin accused of
maltreatment of prisoners and making selections for the gas chambers.
Two of the six were acquitted, two given prison terms and two
sentenced to death. These were 60 year old Emma Zimmer, nee Menzel,
and 36 year old Ida Bertha Schreiber (or Schreiter) who were hanged on
the20th of September 1948. No other women were executed as result of
the other Ravensbrück trials although others received death sentences
which were later commuted to prison terms.
The bodies of the first 93 executed up to 1947 were originally buried
at Hameln but transferred to Wehl cemetery in 1954. The bodies from
the later 127 executions were interred directly at Wehl.
Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
Auschwitz was established in May 1940, on the orders of Heinrich
Himmler, on the outskirts of the town of Oswiecim in Poland. The
Germans called the town Auschwitz and this became the name of the
camp. It was expanded into three main camps, Auschwitz I, Birkenau,
Auschwitz II - Monowitz and had some 40 satellite camps. Initially,
Auschwitz was used to house Polish political prisoners, Soviet
prisoners of war and gypsies. From June 1942, it was used as an
extermination camp for European Jews who were killed in the gas
chambers at - Birkenau. It is thought that around one million people
died in this camp. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27,
1945.
The trial of the staff who had been captured took place at Krakow in
Poland in the autumn of 1947 and concluded on the 22nd of December of
that year. Twenty one defendants, including ex-commandant
Liebehenschel, and two women, Maria Mandel, head of the women's camp
and Therese Rosi Brandel, were condemned to death by the Supreme
People's Court in Krakow.
SS-Oberaufseherin Maria Mandel, a 36 year old blonde, was born at
Munzkirchen in Austria in January 1912 and joined the SS in 1938. From
October 1938 to May 1939, she was Aufseherin at KZ Lichtenburg and
then from May 1939 to October 1942 she was Aufseherin in KZ
Ravensbrück. She then transferred as an Oberaufseherin to KZ Auschwitz
where she worked until the 30th of November 1944. She was moved on to
KZ Mühldorf where she continued until May 1945. Her arrest came on
August 10th, 1945. She was reported to be highly intelligent and
dedicated to her work. The prisoners, however, referred to her as "the
beast" as she was noted for her brutality and enjoyment in selecting
women and children for the gas chambers. She also had a passion for
classical music and encouraged the women's orchestra in Auschwitz. The
orchestra were kept busy playing at roll calls, to accompany official
speeches, to welcome transports and at hangings. Click here for photo.
Therese Rosi Brandel been born in Bavaria in February 1902 and began
training at Ravensbrück in 1940. She worked as an SS Aufseherin in KZ
Ravensbrück before transferring to Auschwitz in 1942 and then to the
KZ Muehldorf (a satellite camp of Dachau). She beat her prisoners and
made selections for the gas chambers. In 1943, she received the war
service medal for her work there. She was arrested on the 29th of
August 1945 in the Bavarian mountains. Click here for photo of her.
On January 24th, 1948, all twenty one prisoners were executed in
groups of five or six within the Montelupich prison in Krakow. The
hangings commenced at 7:09 a.m. with Maria Mandel and four male
prisoners, Artur Liebehenschel, Hans Aumeier, Maximilian Grabner and
Carl Möckel. Each prisoner in turn was made to mount a simple step up.
When they were noosed, this was removed leaving them suspended, slowly
strangling to death. The four men were hanged one at a time, followed
by Maria Mandel. It is reported that it was 15 minutes before they
could be declared dead.
A second group of five prisoners, all men, were hanged at 7.43 a.m.
with a further five men following them at 8.16 a.m. The final group
comprising of five men and the other condemned woman, Therese Brandl,
went to the gallows at 8.48 a.m. Again, they were hanged one by one
and were certified dead 15 minutes later.
After execution, the 21 bodies were all taken to the Medical School
at the University of Krakow for autopsy and as specimens for the
students to practice anatomy on.
A further woman to be hanged at Krakow was 46 year old Elizabeth
Lupka. (Click here for photo of her) She was born on the 27th of
October 1902 in the town of Damner and married in 1934. The marriage
was childless and soon ended in divorce. From 1937 to 1942, she worked
in Berlin in the aircraft industry before becoming an SS Aufseherin in
the KZ Ravensbrück. From March 1943 until January 1945, she worked in
the KZ Auschwitz Birkenau. She beat her prisoners (women and children)
and participated in the selections for the gas chambers. She was
arrested on the 6th of June 1945 and brought to trial on the 6th of
July 1948 at the district court in Krakow where she was convicted of
war crimes and sentenced to death by hanging. She was executed on the
8th of January 1949 at 7.05 a.m. in the Montelupich prison in Krakow.
Her body was also taken to the Medical School at the University of
Krakow for use as an anatomical specimen by the medical students.
Margot Drexler (also given as Dreschel) was another SS Aufseherin in
Auschwitz who was particularly feared by the women inmates, whom she
beat and starved to death. She had last worked at the Ravensbruck
subcamp of Neustadt-Glewe. After the war, she tried to escape but was
caught in Pirma-Bautzen in Czechoslovakia in the Russian zone in May
1945 and hanged in May or June of that year in Bautzen. Maria Mandel
told her trial that Drexler had made selections for the gas chambers.
Stutthof Concentration Camp.
Stutthof concentration camp, 34 km. from Danzig , was the first
concentration camp created by the Nazis outside Germany, in September
1939. From June 1944, Stutthof became a death camp as part of Hitler's
programme of exterminating European Jews. It expanded rapidly over its
5 year life and had many satellite camps. This expansion required a
commensurate increase in staff and local people with Nazi sympathies
were recruited.
Altogether some 110,000 men, women and children were sent to Stutthof.
It is estimated that as many as 65,000 of these were put to death in
the gas chamber or by hanging or shooting, while many died of disease
and ill treatment.
The camp was liberated by the Russians on May 10th, 1945 and the
Commandant, Johann Pauls, and some of his staff were put on trial by
the Polish Special Law Court at Danzig between April 25th and May
31st, 1946. All were represented by counsel. Eleven of the defendants,
five women and six men, were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced
to death. These were Johann Pauls, SS-Aufseherins Jenny Wanda
Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Ewa Paradies, Gerda Steinhoff
and five other men who had been Kapo's in the camp. Click here for
photo of them in the dock.
They had all pleaded "not guilty" to the general charge of war crimes
and the women did not seem to take the trial too seriously until the
end. After the sentence, they appealed for clemency but these appeals
were rejected by the Polish president.
Thus all 11 were publicly hanged before a large crowd, estimated at
several thousand, at 5.00 p.m. on July 4th, 1946 at Biskupia Gorka
hill near Danzig. A row of simple gallows had been set up in a large
open area, four double ones with a triple gallows in the middle. A
fleet of open trucks brought the prisoners to the execution ground,
their hands and legs tied with cords. The trucks were backed under the
gallows and the condemned made to stand on the tailboards or on the
chairs on which they had sat. A simple cord noose was put round their
necks and when the preparations were complete, each truck was driven
forward leaving them suspended. They were not hooded and given only a
short drop, and as can be seen from the photos, some of them struggled
for some time after suspension. It is alleged that one man and two
women (un-named) struggled and fought with their guards prior to being
hanged, although the others seemed to accept their fate calmly. The
whole event was recorded by official press photographers, hence the
clarity of the pictures. Click here for photo.
Twenty four year old Jenny Wanda Barkmann was thought to be from
Hamburg and was nicknamed "The Beautiful Spectre" by the camp inmates
who considered her to be a ruthless killer. She was arrested in May
1945 at a railway station near Danzig trying to escape. At her trial
she is reported to have flirted with her male guards and wore a
different hairstyle each day. She is reported to have said after being
condemned: "Life is a pleasure and pleasure as a rule is a short
distance".Click here for photos.
Elizabeth Becker was not quite 23 years old and had been born locally
on the 20th of July 1923 at Nowy Staw near Danzig. She had married in
1936 and had been a member of the NSDAP and the BDM from 1938 to 1940.
She worked in agriculture from 1941 to 1944 in Nowy Staw and joined
the staff of Stutthof in September 1944 becoming an SS Aufseherin in
SK-III Stutthof (the women’s camp) where she made selections for the
gas chambers. After she was condemned, she submitted an appeal for
commutation of her death sentence to the Polish president. The court
recommended the commutation and substitution of a 15 year term of
imprisonment because she had committed far fewer and less dreadful
crimes than the others. The president, Boleslaw Bierut, however,
rejected this request and she was executed with the rest of the women.
Click here for photos.
Wanda Klaff (nee Kalacinski) was of German origin but had been born in
Danzig on the 6th of March 1922. When she left school in 1938 she
initially worked in a jam factory, leaving in 1942 to get married to
one Willy Gapes and becoming a housewife. In 1944 Wanda joined the
staff at Stutthof satellite camp at Praust, moving later to Russoschin
sub-camp. She contracted typhoid and was hospitalised in Danzig where
she was arrested on the June the 11th, 1945. It would appear form the
photos that Wanda, unlike the other four, was hanged by a woman,
rather than a male former camp inmate. Click here for photos.
Gerda Steinhoff was 24 and also from Danzig. She worked on a farm in
Tygenhagen and later in a baker's shop in Danzig until 1944. She
married in January 1944 and had one child. She went to work for the SS
at Stutthof in October 1944 and was quickly promoted to Oberaufseherin
at KZ Danzig (a satellite of Stutthof). In January 1945, she moved to
KZ Bydgoszcz (another satellite camp) where she remained until it was
liberated. She received the “Iron Cross” for her wartime efforts.
Click here for photos. She was arrested by Polish police on the 25th
of May 1945.
Ewa Paradies was born at Lauenburg, (now Lebork) in Poland on the 17th
of December 1920 and had various jobs after leaving school in 1935.
She joined the staff of Stutthof SK-III in August 1944 and was trained
as an Aufseherin, being transferred to the Bromberg-Ost subcamp of
Stutthof in October 1944 and returning to Stutthof in January 1945.
She was arrested in May 1945 at Lauenburg. Click here for photos.
Other camps.
There are records of at least four other women who were executed.
Else Lieschen Frieda Ehrich, who had been the women's camp commandant
at Majdanek concentration camp, was hanged on the 26th of October 1948
in the prison at Lubin in Poland. Click here for photo.
Ruth Elfriede Hildner was tried by the Extraordinary People's Court in
Písek, Czechoslovakia on the 2nd of May 1947 and hanged 6 hours later,
presumably using the pole hanging method. She had been a guard at
Zwodau, a subcamp of Flossenburg, in Czechoslovakia.
Sydonia Bayer. Virtually nothing is known about this woman other that
she trained at Ravensbrück and was tried and hanged in Poland.
In conclusion.
One can only wonder, looking back from 50 years later what turned
these women into virtual monsters. Was it their total belief in the
rightness of Hitler's policies or did they possess a latent sadism or
perhaps a mixture of both? It is terrifying the acts that people can
commit when they are out of control and have no fear of the
consequences. I suspect that these women thought that Germany would
win the war and that they would rise in the regime. Typically, they
viewed their prisoners as "dreck," the German for rubbish and as sub-
humans. Therefore, the prisoners' lives and feelings were completely
irrelevant, and it was just a simple matter of controlling them
through fear and brutal repression. One wonders too whether they just
became inured to the continuous acts of cruelty. Many of the people
tried for war crimes insisted that they were just carrying out orders
from above but this doesn't really ring true, either now or to the
judges at their tribunals, when one looks at the acts of sadism that
they visited on their prisoners.
It is easy to have sympathy with the young women from Stutthof, whose
unnecessarily cruel executions were so well documented, but one must
remember what they did. As a young soldier said to Pierrepoint on the
eve of the hangings of the Belsen women, "if you had been in Belsen
under this lot, you wouldn't be able to feel sorry for
them." (Pierrepoint had expressed some sympathy for the prisoners.)
Had it not been for the war, one suspects that these women would most
probably have lived normal lives with jobs, husbands and children.
It is notable that in many cases it was quite junior people who were
caught, tried and in some cases executed. A lot of the more senior
ones were able to escape justice. However, the Commandants of many of
the concentration camps were caught and in most cases given the death
penalty.
Topaz
Here are some quotes from the account of the women's rally at the 1936
Nuremberg Rally, taken from the official party proceedings. The
speakers were Gertrud Scholz-Klink, the head of the Nazi women's
league, and Hitler himself, who outlines the Nazi view of the role of
women.
The enormous hall was filled two hours before the meeting began. Many
thousands of women were unable to enter, and gathered outside to hear
the proceedings over loudspeakers. The leaders of the women's labor
service and those of the League of German Girls took their places on
the platform, and the officials of the NS Women's League and the
German Women's Work filled the seats. To the side one could see
numerous representatives of German women's groups from abroad in
colorful and elaborate costumes. The farmers among the participants
also wore their beautiful traditional costumes. After a piece by the
Reich Symphony Orchestra, Hilgenfeldt opened the meeting and greeted
the participants and foreign guests in the name of the National
Women's Leader. The 20,000 women rose to sing "Our Fate was to be a
Free People."
Speech by Gertrud Scholz-Klink:
"The Soviet Union declared the legal equality of men and women in all
areas in a law of 18 November 1918. That meant the same right to work,
the same duty to support oneself, the right of control over one's own
body, which for the woman meant the right to abortion. The view was
that men and women had full freedom only when the state stayed as far
as possible form personal relationships. The state provided no legal
rights in marriage, which meant that there were only two forms of
marriage. One could register a marriage before a government office, or
one could be married without virtue of state ceremony.
The result was that, even when one had been married officially, the
individual partners had the right when they were unhappy to go to the
same office and, for a very small fee, dissolve the marriage. Should
there be children, they would be housed in collective homes, since
both father and mother worked and housing was in short supply, given
the migration from the countryside to the cities. The absence of
resources in such homes led of necessity to demanding money from the
economically stronger partner. The result was constant legal battles
and enormous misery for the children.
Simultaneously, women were increasingly absorbed in industry and the
military. In 1918, 24 of every 1000 miners were women. By 1932, 153 of
1000 were women, a number that had grown to 321 by 1935! In automobile
and tractor manufacturing, women are 30.4% of the work force, 63.5% of
the drilling industry.
The full equality of the sexes had the further result that girls are
given the same military training as boys in the communist youth
organization and schools. The Red Army is the only army in the world
in which both men and women are trained as soldiers and officers to
wage aggressive wars...
We Germans had 14 years under an attempt to impose Bolshevist
principles on us. The German woman took her place alongside the German
man when she realized that a struggle was going on between God's order
for earthly affairs and universal apostles of humanity who wanted to
replace these eternal laws. It was a battle between good and evil.
Good and evil are equally strong forces in life. They find visible
form in National Socialism and Bolshevism. National Socialism is good
become visible for we Germans. It respects the earth from which our
people have grown. Bolshevism is absolute evil because it is a
universal approach that rejects the eternal laws of nature. "Good" and
"evil" have never stood in such stark contrast before all the world as
they do today in these two forces...
Our work is to spread this idea. It is nothing other than a daily
struggle between these two forces. It is not ultimately a battle of
means or of money, that is of perishable things, rather it is ennobled
by the spirit in whose service we stand: In the battle between good
and evil, we are the obedient servants of the good."
Speech by Adolf Hitler:
Those abroad may say 'That is fine for the men! But your women cannot
be optimistic. They are oppressed and dominated and enslaved. You give
them no freedom of equality." We answer: What you see as a yoke others
see as a blessing. What is heaven to one is hell for another...
As long as we have sound men-and we National Socialists will see to
that-there will be no women throwing hand grenades in Germany, no
women sharp-shooters. That is not equality for women, rather their
debasement...
Women have boundless opportunities to work. For us the woman has
always been the loyal companion of the man in work and life. People
often tell me: You want to drive women out of the professions. No, I
only want to make it possible for her to found her own family and to
have children, for that is how she can best serve our people!...
If a woman jurist does the best possible work, but next to her lives a
woman who has given birth to five, six or seven healthy children who
are well educated, I would say the following: From the standpoint of
the eternal values of our people, the woman who has borne and raised
children has done more, given more, accomplished more for the future
of our people!...
Real leadership has the duty to enable every man and woman to fulfill
their dreams, or at least to make it easier for them to do so. We seek
this goal through laws that encourage the healthy education of
children. But we have done more than simply pass laws. We are
educating for German women and girls a manly youth, the men of
tomorrow!"
"I believe we have found the right way to educate a healthy youth. Let
me say this to all the literary know-it-alls and philosophers of
equality: (laughter) Do not deceive yourselves! There are two separate
arenas in the life of a nation": that of men and that of women. Nature
has rightly ordained that men head the family and are burdened with
the task of protecting their people, the community. The world of the
woman, when she is fortunate, is her family, her husband, her
children, her home. From there she can see the whole. The two arenas
together join to form a community that enables a people to survive. We
want to build a common world of both sexes in which each sees its own
tasks, tasks that it alone can do and therefore can and must do
alone."
"When I see this wonderful growing youth, my work becomes easy, I
overcome every weakness. Then I know why I do everything. It is not to
build some miserable business that will perish, rather this work is
for something lasting and eternal. A vital part of this future is the
German girl, the German woman, the German woman, and thus we meet the
girl, the woman, the mother."
"I do not measure the success of our work by our roads. I do not
measure it by our new factories, or our new bridges, or the new
divisions. Rather, I measure our success by the effect we have on the
German child, the German youth. If they succeed, I know our people
will not perish and our work will not have been in vain."
"I am convinced that no one understands our work better than the
German woman. (long-lasting, jubilant applause) Our opponents think
that Germany has tyrannized women. I can only reply that without the
support and true devotion of the women of the party, I could never
have led the movement to victory." (renewed enthusiastic applause)
The Reich Women's Leader thanked the Fuehrer after the jubilation at
the end of his speech had calmed down. In the name of all German
women, she promised to work hard to ease his concerns. Not only the
Reich Women's Leader's words, but also the jubilation of the crowd
followed the Fuehrer as he left the hall.
http://www.ihr.org/ www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/
http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
