BURDEN GERMAN WOMEN CARRY

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21041, 17 February 1940, Page 17 (Supplement)

BURDEN GERMAN WOMEN CARRY

Exhausted at Beginning of the War

QN German women the Reich’s leaders have imposed the crushing task of feeding the war machine, writes Judith Grunfeld in Independent Woman, the organ of the United States National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs.

While eliminating women from responsible and professional positions, the Nazis more and more pushed them into strenuous manual tasks. Instead of sending them back to the home the National Socialist Government has ruthlessly pulled women out of it. To build up their gigantic war machine, Nazis have been hunting for the very working wives they formerly dismissed, plus many of their sisters. Since 1938 headlines in the controlled German Press have demanded more and more female labour. Note the following sentence from an editorial in the Angriff, propaganda Minister Goebbel’s paper : “We must mobilise for the labour market not only women who never before were gainfully employed, but also those who gave up their jobs because of marriage. The slogan ‘double earners,’ which condemned the employment of married women a few years ago, is now out of date because we urgently need their labour power. It has become a necessity for the State.” And appealing to “only housewives,” the same paper pointed out on November 17. 1938. that it is the duty of married women to join the labour market instead of remaining “useless” at home. Indeed, nobody did more to unmask the falsity of the Fascist “woman-back-to-the-home” slogan than Hitler himself in his policy toward retail stores and small shops. Many thousands have been closed down by the Nazi Government to compel independent business women and the wives of storekeepers and artisans, who had been helping their husbands, to become dependent labourers in munitions plants. The State Secretary of Labour, Dr. F. Syrup, announced at the beginning of 1939 : “Retailers represent an additional labour reserve and the abolition of one-third of retail stores is planned.” Thus the same Nazis who promised security to the middle class and a “woman’s life at home,” have ruined numerous business men and women, subjecting both to hard toil outside their homes. Work Beyond Their Strength The increasing work burden placed on women is fully recognised. Even Dr. Goebbel’s Angriff admitted in May, 1939, that women are often required to do work “which is beyond their strength.” The Berlin weekly, Der Witschaftsring, stated on April 7, 1939 : “The reports of the Ministry of Labour show not only an increase in the number of employed women, but also the extent to which female labour has penetrated into industries when it has hitherto been almost unknown; in steel works and foundries women are to be seen in large numbers; in the paper-making industry they are often engaged in barking timber; in the quarrying industry they are employed for loading broken stone; the brick-making industry is largely dependent on female labour since the men have moved to better occupations. Women are generally cheap, and manufacturers appreciate cheap labour.”

Is that not quite an Impressive illustration of Hitler’s muchadvertised protection of the feminine nature and family life ? Step by step, the author continues, the degradation of Germany’s woman-power has been pursued. Whereas in 1914 Germany entered the war with large reserves of women who had been really enjoying “home life,” leisure, adequate food, educational and professional opportunities, women who voluntarily offered their unused energies to their Fatherland in its war emergency, Germany, in 1939, is in quite a different position. Worn out by over-work, under-nourishment, and the numerous sacrifices imposed by Hitler’s dictatorship, German women face this war without unused energies to offer, few of them free for voluntary service.

Will the Nazis’ short-sighted policies regarding women prove the determining factor in this war ? May not, perhaps, the opposition of women be delaying Hitler’s war ? British and French women, in contrast, are voluntarily bringing fresh reserves of accumulated energy and the full strength of the democratic spirit to the defence of humanitarian civilisation against totalitarian aggression and slavery.