Women and young people

The Nazis believed a woman's most important role was as a wife and mother. They summed this up as 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche': children, kitchen, church.

They wanted women to have many children, to make Germany stronger and to increase the 'Aryan' population. They disapproved of women wearing make-up or trousers, smoking, or working in professional jobs.

Significance: these views were the opposite of the 'new woman' of the Weimar years.

• Marriage and family: the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage (1933) gave loans to newly married couples if the wife gave up work. A quarter of the loan was cancelled for each child born.
• The Mother's Cross: from 1938, mothers of large families were awarded a medal: bronze for four or five children, silver for six or seven, and gold for eight or more.
• Employment: women were pushed out of jobs such as doctors, lawyers and civil servants, and could not become judges.
• Appearance: women were encouraged to look natural and healthy, without make-up or fashionable clothes.

Change: the birth rate rose during the 1930s, marriages increased, and many women left professional jobs.

Continuity and limits: from 1936, rearmament caused a shortage of workers, and many women were needed back in factories and offices. By 1939, more women were working than in 1933.

Judgement: Nazi policies changed women's lives most in the professions and in what was expected of them. But economic needs limited how far the Nazis could keep women at home.

Hitler wanted young people to be loyal to him and to believe in Nazi ideas. Boys were to be trained to become soldiers, and girls to become wives and mothers.

The Hitler Youth was for boys. Members did sport, camping, marching and, as they got older, military training, and learned Nazi ideas.

The League of German Maidens was for girls. Members did sport and camping too, and learned cooking, housework and how to be good mothers.

The 1936 Hitler Youth Law made the Hitler Youth the only legal youth organisation. From 1939, membership was compulsory.

Teachers: teachers had to join the Nazi Teachers' League and teach Nazi ideas. Jewish teachers, and those who opposed the Nazis, were dismissed.

The curriculum:

• History taught German greatness and the injustice of Versailles.
• Biology taught Nazi racial ideas.
• PE was given much more time, to make young people fit to serve.
• Girls learned domestic skills such as cooking.

Textbooks were rewritten, and even maths problems could carry Nazi messages.

Significance: schools became a way to shape young people's beliefs from an early age.