A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1026 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and Dictatorship

Yet sectors of the German economy remained weak. German industry
depended on imports of iron ore, copper, oil, rubber, and bauxite. Many Ger­
mans found that their share in the “national community” was small. And
although Hitler liked to identify the German people with what he consid­
ered rural virtues—“blood and soil”—the number of small farms continued

to decline. There was no marked return to the soil as Germany continued

to urbanize.

Like Mussolini, the Fiihrer preached that a woman’s place was in the

kitchen or in the delivery room. A Nazi book for children announced, “The

German resurrection is a male event.” The state offered attractive financial

benefits to families with children, and the German birthrate continued to

rise, bolstered by an improving economy. Just months after becoming chan­

cellor, Hitler forced women to give up industrial jobs and excluded them

from public service and teaching. Fewer women went on to university. Cer­

tain occupations were classified as “women’s work,” primarily those involv­

ing traditional textile or handicraft production or farm work. But, despite

the slogan “Women at home,” the reality in Nazi Germany, as in Mussolini’s

Italy, was increasingly otherwise. The campaign to remove women from

paid employment ended in the late 1930s, as women were needed to replace

men conscripted into the army. The number of women working in German

industry rose by a third between 1933 and 1939.

Hitler and the Nazis did not rule by sheer terror alone. Hitler also sought

and won overwhelming popular approval. After defeat in the Great War,

humiliation by the Treaty of Versailles, and years of Weimar instability in

which the Nazis and other right-wing groups played a major part, Germans

applauded as he dismantled the treaty piece by piece. But most ordinary

Germans also approved of police action undertaken by the well-organized

apparatus of the Nazi state. Regular police units drawn from every walk of

German life assisted. The Nazi state won approval with a harsh campaign

against crime, which had increased during the Depression. Most ordinary

Germans approved of and indeed many collaborated in the arrest and

imprisonment of common criminals. The Gestapo and the “Kripo,” or

criminal police, who became ever more aggressive, also arrested people

considered “work shy,” or others like gays who did not seem to them to fit

in. Doctors used sterilization as a form of punishment and social control,

part of Nazi “racial hygiene.” Germans looked the other way or were indif­

ferent to the rounding up of political dissidents and Jews. A contemporary

described a Gestapo office:

Grimy corridors, offices furnished with Spartan simplicity, threats,

kicks, troops chasing chained men up and down the reaches of the

building, shouting, rows of girls and women standing with their noses

and toes against the walls, overflowing ashtrays, portraits of Hitler and

his aides, the smell of coffee, smartly dressed girls working at high speed