German Women's Life Writing and the Holocaust

Abstract

In both the popular imagination and much scholarly literature, the Second World War is constructed as an exclusively male endeavor. It is assumed that women were far from the front lines, relegated to the household and nursery by National Socialist policies. In truth, however, the much-touted National Socialist ideal of the housewife was a fiction that soon fell victim to the very real needs of conducting a world war. As Karen Hagemann points out, the Second World War was a total war "that mobilized both the 'front' and the 'homeland.'" 1 Before long, women not only assumed public functions that newly deployed men had left unfilled but also moved closer and closer to the front lines themselves. In doing so, they became complicit in the Nazi war and genocide.Even though the Nazi mobilization of women lagged behind that of England, the United States, and Russia, it reached proportions that were previously unheard of in German lands. 2 According to Franka Maubach, both the number of women involved in war-related work and the variety of functions women fulfilled are without historical precedent. 3 And yet, to this day, the writings of women who served in Hitler's army have received little attention, their voices drowned out by the blanket assumption that women are "marginal to the military's core identity, no matter how crucial in reality are the services they perform." 4 As I show in what follows, this omission is highly problematic: thinking about war from a different, female, perspective not only corrects androcentric views of the Second World War 5 but also offers insights into the workings of a totalitarian regime. In particular, an analysis of texts by women who served in Hitler's army helps us understand why and how women became complicit in the German war of conquest and genocide and how they account for (or fail to account for) their contribution to the Nazi reign of terror.In the following, I provide information about the status, functions, and self-perceptions of female army auxiliaries in the service of the Third Reich. In order to do so, I draw on recent scholarship and on a wide range of Women in Hitler's ArmyDespite much Nazi rhetoric about the true domestic calling of the female sex, women's lives in the Third Reich were highly militarized. Members of the League of German Girls were "drilled to march in formation and trained in field exercise and sometimes marksmanship with air rifles" 10 while adult women were recruited to perform various services for the fatherland. On February 15, 1938, Hermann Göring announced the Duty Year (Pflichtjahr) for young women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, which included farm work and domestic help and was required in order to be eligible for employment in factories or offices. 11 Similarly, as of the spring of 1934, prospective female students were required to participate in the Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) (RAD) for a minimum of six months. 12 They too worked mostly on farms and as family helpers. Although the RAD became compulsory for all young...