Life in Nazi Germany: Women, Youth and Religion

The Nazis did not just want to control Germany's government and economy; they wanted to reshape society itself. Their goal was a Volksgemeinschaft — a "people's community" of loyal, racially "pure" Germans who put the nation before themselves.

To build this, the Nazis targeted three groups whose beliefs and loyalties they most wanted to control:

Group	What the Nazis wanted from them
Women	To leave work, marry and raise many "Aryan" children
Young people	To grow up as loyal Nazis and future soldiers or mothers
The Churches	To support (or at least not oppose) the Nazi state

The exam often asks how far the Nazis succeeded in controlling these groups. The best answers show both the policies and the limits and resistance the Nazis met.

Nazi ideology gave women a very traditional role, summed up by the slogan "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" — children, kitchen, church. A woman's duty was to run the home and produce children for the nation, not to have a career.

To raise the birth rate and push women back into the home, the Nazis:

• Gave marriage loans to couples where the wife left work; part of the loan was cancelled for each child born.
• Awarded the Mother's Cross medal to women with large families (bronze for four, silver for six, gold for eight children).
• Encouraged women to leave professions such as medicine, law and the civil service, and initially discouraged them from university.
• Promoted an ideal appearance: no make-up or trousers, hair in a plait or bun, and a focus on health and motherhood.

The Nazi ideal was the mother of a large "Aryan" family. Policy pushed women out of work in the 1930s to free jobs for men and boost the birth rate.

But this policy was reversed by war. As men were conscripted and labour ran short, the Nazis needed women back in the workforce in factories and farms. Many women resented being pushed out and then pulled back in, showing the limits of Nazi control.

Controlling the young was vital: children shaped by Nazi ideas would become loyal adults. The Nazis organised youth into age-graded movements, split by gender.

Boys — the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend):

• Progressed through junior groups (like the Deutsches Jungvolk) into the Hitler Youth proper.
• Took part in camping, hiking, marching, sport and military-style training.
• Were taught Nazi ideology, loyalty to Hitler, and toughness, all preparing them for future military service.

Girls — the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel, BDM):

• Focused on fitness, domestic skills, and preparing to be wives and mothers.
• Learned cooking, sewing and childcare alongside physical exercise and ideology.

Membership grew rapidly and became compulsory in 1939, with rival youth groups (such as church clubs) banned. Millions of German children passed through these movements.

Yet control was not total. Some young people rebelled, forming groups like the Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Youth who rejected Nazi conformity — evidence that indoctrination did not reach everyone.

Schools were a key tool for spreading Nazi ideas to every child. The Nazis took control of the curriculum, textbooks and teachers.

Changes to what children were taught included:

Subject	Nazi changes
Physical Education	Given far more time, to build fit soldiers and healthy mothers
History	Rewritten to glorify Germany, blame the "November Criminals" and celebrate Hitler
Biology / Race Studies	New "race science" taught pupils about "Aryan" superiority and antisemitism
Maths	Problems framed around military and racial themes (e.g. costs of the disabled)
German	Used to promote nationalism and Nazi values

Teachers had to join the Nazi Teachers' League and swear loyalty to Hitler; those who refused could lose their jobs. Textbooks were rewritten to fit Nazi ideology, and boys and girls were increasingly taught a curriculum aimed at their expected future roles.

Elite schools such as the Napolas and Adolf Hitler Schools trained a future leadership. Through school, the Nazis aimed to make loyalty to Hitler feel natural from childhood.

Around two-thirds of Germans were Protestant and one-third Catholic, so the Nazis could not simply ban Christianity. Instead they tried to control, co-opt or weaken the Churches, whose loyalty to God and their own institutions rivalled loyalty to Hitler.

With the Catholic Church:

• In 1933 the Nazis signed a Concordat with the Pope: the Church agreed to stay out of politics, and the Nazis promised not to interfere with Catholic worship and schools.
• The Nazis soon broke the agreement, closing Catholic schools and youth groups and harassing priests. In 1937 the Pope issued an encyclical ("With Burning Concern") criticising Nazi actions.

With the Protestant Churches:

• The Nazis tried to unite Protestants into a single, pro-Nazi Reich Church led by Nazi "German Christians", which even removed Jewish elements from worship.
• This provoked resistance. The Confessing Church, led by pastors such as Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, rejected Nazi control of religion. Niemöller was imprisoned, and Bonhoeffer was later executed for his opposition.

The Nazis never fully controlled the Churches, and religion remained one of the few spaces where some Germans could resist.

Underlying all these social policies was Nazi racial ideology. The Nazis believed in a hierarchy of races, with a mythical "Aryan" master race at the top and Jewish, Roma and other groups treated as inferior "enemies".

This ideology shaped everyday life:

• Women were valued as mothers of "racially pure" Aryan children.
• Youth and schools taught antisemitism and "race science" as fact.
• The "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft) was defined as belonging only to those the Nazis judged racially and politically acceptable.

(Extra context — the full machinery of persecution and the Final Solution is covered in the next lesson, "Nazi Control, Propaganda and Persecution". Here the key point is that racial ideology was the foundation beneath Nazi policies on women, youth and education.)

Racial ideas therefore did not sit apart from social policy — they defined who counted as a member of the "people's community" in the first place.

1. Ignoring how war changed Nazi policy on women

In the 1930s the Nazis pushed women out of work; during the war they needed women back in factories and farms. Showing this shift is a strong evaluation point.

2. Confusing the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls

The Hitler Youth was for boys (military preparation); the League of German Girls (BDM) was for girls (motherhood and home). Do not mix up their aims.

3. Claiming the Nazis fully controlled young people

Youth movements were powerful, but groups like the Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Youth resisted. The best answers note both indoctrination and its limits.

4. Saying the Nazis simply banned religion

The Nazis could not ban Christianity outright. They tried to control it through the Reich Church and the 1933 Concordat, and met resistance from the Confessing Church. Accuracy matters here.

5. Treating education as unchanged

The Nazis rewrote the curriculum (more PE, "race science", nationalist history) and controlled teachers and textbooks. Give specific examples rather than saying school "stayed the same".