CAMPAIGN FAILS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20907, 6 October 1942, Page 3

CAMPAIGN FAILS

GERMAN BIRTH RATE TRENDS REVIEWED (9 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 5. When Herr Hitler seized power in 1933, the German birth rate was 31 per cent below the rate requisite to maintain the population of the Reich at the existing level, says The Times, in reference to the failure of the German birth-rate campaign. Then began the most tremendous experiment ever undertaken to control and direct biological trends. Every conceivable weapon was used — marriage loans and allowances, tax rebates, free holidays, a reduction of educational fees, and travelling rates, house rents, the closing of birth-con-trol clinics, and the outlawing of birth control advice. German women were degraded by a deliberate attempt to encourage illegitimacy and promiscuous relationships. Dr. Ley announced that “the unmarried mother who gives birth to a child from a healthy impulse should enjoy the same protection as a married mother. Statistics show that the German birth rate actually increased between 1933 and 1939. Nevertheless, at no time since Hitler’s accession .has the birth rate been high enough to maintain the population, let alone provide for an increase. The birth rate tor greater Germany, including Austria, the Sudetenland, Memel, and Danzig, in 1939-40, was 20.4 per cent. The birth rate in 1941 was 19.1 per cent. The rate continued to fall more steeply in the first four months of 1942 This reduction, compared with the four-month period of 1939-40 represented a decline of 40 per cent. The level to which the rate dropped bv April, 1939, means the loss of more than 450,000 births in a single year. The decline in 1942 is far heavier than that experienced early in 1930 during the world slump. • The marriage rate in Germany in January and February, 1942, was lower than in the corresponding period of any year since 1920.