Continuing the chapter of the Third Reich reform, excerpted from the book "Germany's Hitler". I am curious how contemporary men in the movement will react to what was said about the role of women:
Then came ordinances to regulate school matters. In no direction more than in this is the new spirit and bent of National Socialism to be discerned. The High Schools were overcrowded. Their overflow to the Universities had to be facilitated. At the same time Hitler resolved to check the superfluidity of girls seeking facilities for the higher education.
An entire book could be written of Hitler's theory of education; on his estimate of the place and function of woman in the State; and on the great youth movement resultant from both, known in Germany as Hitler Jugend. He says the most important thing for girls is the right training of the body, next that of character, and third that of the intellect. A striking proof of the self-sacrificing enthusiasm and unanimity with which such data are accepted by the female intelligenzia in Germany today has, for instance, been afforded by the willingness of the University women of Heidelberg largely to forego, at Hitler's behest, and in favour of men, the learned professional careers to which they had looked forward.
To those who imagine that Hitler has set back the clock five hundred years for German womanhood there is this to be answered: if German girls do not retire from competitive life with men, there will be neither work nor food for either in another few decades. A country with a dense and growing population and no colonies must narrowly restrict the labour market, in the learned professions as well as in the trades. Again, there is no parallel to be drawn between the type of woman and the number of women frequenting the Universities in England and America to those in Germany. The German Universities - and their name is legion - were swarming with women. Some went thither for the purposes of serious study. For those who do not go thither for the purposes of serious study, it is obvious enough that the quicker they are driven home again the better.
In May the German Labour Front took the place of the old system of Trade Unions. It would require many pages to give an adequate idea of this reorganization in Germany of the relationships between employer and employé. The idea underlying it was typical of the "Socialism" in Hitler's programme.
By the time summer had come round, most of the previous existing separate (and highly antagonistic) political parties in the State had ceased to exist. The Social Democrats were suppressed, and for the most part the rest extinguished themselves. A law was passed forbidding the formation of fresh parties. The public were relieved at last to be free of the veritable pest of so many parties and groups, and the Gordian knot of German disunity was cut at one blow.
Then came the organization of the air, both for purposes of ordinary communication and for defence. This ministry was confided to General Goering.
The lot of the ordinary man in the street, the everyday person, claimed its share of the Chancellor's attention. A law was passed which, among other things, aimed at making life easier for the weak and unfit, for those impoverished by the war, for War widows and orphans.
Hitler looks to early and healthy marriage, State aid for struggling young families, to assist in stamping out many of those abominations which St. Paul says should not even be named among Christians, but which have been more hideously rife in the world since the Great War than at any previous period.
Severe measures were enacted to put down immorality, and further, a law was framed with the object of preventing unfit children coming into the world.
Hitler's much discussed Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, passed on July 14, 1933, is based upon the German policy of "regeneration" which aims at promoting the propagation of valuable, innately healthy children, while preventing an offspring of hereditarily diseased persons insofar as those descendants are likely to be of inferior quality. Considering the fact that the average ratio of children of healthy families to diseased families is from 1 to 2 to 5 to 7, the necessity of such a policy seems clear. (...)
In spite of all that has been written and said to the contrary, the action of the Chancellor in unifying the Protestant sects of Germany has had no anti-Christian significance. "The rock bed foundation of the German Evangelical Church," says the Instrument which achieves this purpose, "is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as witnessed for us in the Sacred Scriptures, and as enlightened afresh by the Confession of the Reformation."
The Chancellor sought by a Concordat with Rome to define the relationships and rights of the Catholic Church and the State respectively, so as to secure smooth working in both spheres.
The Party Day in Nuremberg, 1933, witnessed such a demonstration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler as had never yet been seen. For the first time the Party Day had become a State function and had developed into an assembly of the nation.
Hitler can never lay stress enough on the importance of the agricultural classes, of the plough-driving peasant. Upon them, and upon him, is built the superstructure of the State. Agriculture is the source of the country's strength.
All the great cities would soon be nothing but arid deserts of brick and mortar were they not to receive, year after year, an influx of fresh healthy life from the country. On the other hand, this migration to the towns, if carried too far, is a curse in itself against which the National Socialist theory of the State sedulously sets its face. Hitler envisages for the future not a gathering of the population into endless great cities, but their re-establishment, right down to the roots, in their native soil. National Socialism has already achieved a great deal, and with much success, in this direction.
The law touching hereditary farmlands seeks to relieve the small farmer of many of the uncertainties and troubles which have hitherto weighed him down. His land is to be inalienable and no longer the easy prey of the financial speculator.
(To be continued tomorrow)
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Thought for the Day:
"Cities shall suffer siege, and some shall fall, But man's not taken. What the deep heart means, It's message, of the big round childish hand, It's wonder, it's simple, lonely cry,
The bloodied envelope addressed to you
is history, that wide and mortal pang.
(Stanley Kunitz)