Original subtitles

(loud bangs & explosions) (dramatic music)

NARRATOR: Nazi Germany,

two words synonymous with barbarity, terror,

hate and death.

A shock defeat in World War One

sows the seeds for discontent

in a once prosperous nation.

Adolf Hitler, an unassuming, uninspiring man

seizes the opportunity to take control,

promising to make Germany great again.

- (shouts in German) NARRATOR: But he won't do it alone.

Willing accomplices rally

from the most unlikely of places.

The female Fuhrers,

Nazi she-devils,

cougars, fantasists

and secret lovers...

These are the forgotten Nazis.

These are Hitler's handmaidens.

- (chanting in German)

NARRATOR: When most people think of Nazis,

they conjure up newsreel images

of row upon row of goose-stepping stormtroopers,

invading and violating a terrified Europe.

(dramatic classical music)

NARRATOR: But it's worth remembering,

behind a bad man... - (yells in German)

..sometimes there lurks an even worse woman.

Why has the role of women in Nazi Germany

been almost entirely airbrushed from history?

Why has an assumption been made

that half the population were not active and powerful participants

in the rise of Nazi Germany?

- Well, here's a book from 2019.

It is the authoritative biography of Hitler.

And do you think that any of the women that I'm about to describe

even is in the index? No.

This is all about the public Hitler,

what he looked like from the outside from the men's point of view.

- In approaching this history,

one must kind of, um, unpack all the bias that exists

as far as what we think are

our, kind of, preconceived notions of femininity,

um, or the fact that women...

that's not how they behave,

that women don't participate in genocidal programmes,

that they're a-political.

NARRATOR: Such is the strength of the propaganda from the period.

It's easy to see how historians may have been seduced

by the myth of German motherhood.

Safely cosseted in a world of peace, love

and devotion to husband and family,

German women claimed to be untouched

by the moral and political horrors swirling about them.

These romantic notions can now be laid to rest...

..by the cold, hard facts. (sombre music)

NARRATOR: Women were utterly complicit in the murderous regime.

(women shouting)

NARRATOR: The women who supported Hitler and the Nazis

made an active choice,

driven by selfish opportunism and total conviction.

Many knew exactly what they were doing,

covering the reality of Nazi brutality

with the soft glow of motherhood and domesticity.

(eerie music) (dog barks)

- They played a huge role.

And their role was partly important before the takeover.

They played such an important role,

partly because the Nazi male leaders ignored them.

They were so concerned with masculine activities,

they thought, "Oh, the girls." You know, "The little brown mice."

NARRATOR: Who were the early female leaders

who tethered themselves to Hitler

in the expectation that their influence would rise with his?

Who were the wealthy female financiers

vital to Hitler's radical movement?

And how did the female population of Germany

find themselves instrumental to the Nazis' rise to power,

whether they knew it or not?

(tense music)

NARRATOR: When it comes to Hitler's appeal to women,

it was evident early in his career,

and grew as the Nazi's domination increased.

But what was his own attitude towards the women of Germany?

It didn't take him long to understand

their value to his populist movement.

After cooling his heels in prison,

following a failed coup in 1923,

the so-called 'Munich Beer Hall Putsch',

he found his female support base

was still focused and strong.

In stark contrast to his male associates,

who'd put their energy into squabbling and power plays.

- The men started fighting with other men,

they were rivalling to take over.

Uh, they were rivalling to start their own little mini parties.

But the women followers didn't disagree with one another.

They weren't ambitious like the men.

And so afterwards, then it finally occurred to Hitler

that one of the qualities

that enabled him to pull his party back together again

were those faithful women.

NARRATOR: With the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch,

Hitler and the National Socialists realised

they needed a less violent, more respectable route to power.

The ballot box.

But it was not their natural game.

To be successful, it was going to come down to one thing.

Finance for a decent, vote-winning campaign.

The party was going to have to integrate itself

with German high society.

So Hitler set about opening the hearts, minds

and purses of the moneyed set.

And it worked,

with Hitler catching the eye of some morally unsavoury,

yet outwardly respectable, society queens.

Once on the hook, these matronly women

were to become the devoted patronesses

of the enigmatic Herr Hitler.

- So Bavaria, which is your traditional German homeland.

Bavaria, the women there, which is where, a lot of money down there.

They were absolutely... They were right-wing.

And suddenly, you've got this man, Adolf Hitler,

standing up and saying, "I will make Germany great again."

"I will put Germany where she belongs, top of the tree."

And so, that's what interested the women.

NARRATOR: Soon, Hitler had hit on the perfect line

for his besotted female legion.

There'd never be a woman in his life for them to feel jealous about.

Publicly, at least, he'd stay a bachelor,

telling the Nazi faithful, "My bride is Germany."

- I think Hitler hid his relationships,

partly to embody a kind of pure, masculine ideal.

Someone who wasn't encumbered by domesticity,

by a wife or girlfriend.

And he became this almost personification of masculinity.

Also, a bit like a celebrity or a pop star,

it allowed other women in the general population

to fantasise that they would be Hitler's girlfriend or wife.

I think he wanted to create an image of being without need,

without dependence.

Uh, a pure, self-sustaining, um, hero, really.

NARRATOR: Hitler knew the way to financing his power-play

was through exploiting his hold over women.

(sombre music)

NARRATOR: In 1921, Hitler was introduced to Helene Bechstein,

matriarch of the famous piano-making family,

and prominent member of the German aristocracy.

Not only was she fabulously wealthy,

she was well known for her antisemitic rants.

- She was Bechstein from the piano manufacturers.

I mean, her husband and she, they ran the company.

They were antisemitic, both of them.

And Helene Bechstein was actually, uh, boycotted by some people

because of her antisemitism.

That, of course, appealed to them as well,

because Hitler, right from the beginning, was clear

the stab in the back came from the Jews.

NARRATOR: On receiving Hitler at her mountain villa,

Bechstein took an instant liking to the intense young politician.

And Hitler must've sensed that here was a big fish, ready to reel in.

She began showering him with gifts and donations,

one of which included an open-top Mercedes

that met him at the gates of the prison

on his release for leading the Beer Hall Putsch.

Party insiders were quick to notice that Bechstein,

who was thirteen years his senior,

"lavished on him an ecstatic and faintly maternal devotion."

- People like Helene Bechstein, were attracted very early.

And it really helps, if you're a fundraiser,

if a very prominent, respectable person donates money,

that attracts more money.

And because Helene Bechstein was so well known, and so was her husband,

with the support of Helene Bechstein,

then other friends of the Bechsteins also began to sign on.

(unsettling music)

- Helene Bechstein took Hitler under her wing,

specifically to teach him etiquette,

and how to move in the circles of the aristocracy,

because obviously, the support of the aristocracy

was very important to Hitler gaining power.

One of the reasons he gained power,

he obviously needed the aristocracy on his side.

Most accounts suggest relations between Adolf and Helene

never made it past the platonic.

Yet there was no doubt that this was an intimate bond.

Hitler was to be seen sitting at her feet,

with his eyes closed and his head resting on her bosom,

while she stroked his hair.

The reality was their relationship

was likely more maternal than anything else,

with Helene even stating

she would've liked Hitler to have been her son.

- They all became mother figures for Adolf.

Sitting on the floor, his head on their laps,

they're stroking his head.

You know, one of them actually wished

that Hitler would marry their daughter.

Didn't happen, you know.

- I mean, it would certainly seem that

Hitler's relationship with his mother

would be an important template for later relationships,

and he would find it quite easy

to be the sweet, good, little boy who's seeking help and guidance

and very respectful to an older woman.

I mean, there's an opportunistic, more sociopathic, side

that could be about he saw who was gonna be useful to him.

(tense music) (cheering)

NARRATOR: Helene wasn't the only wealthy matriarch

who would take up the re-shaping of Hitler.

Another was Elsa Bruckmann.

Born in 1865, Elsa was a real-life princess,

courtesy of her father, a Bavarian prince

and a mother from Austrian nobility.

Well-bred, she certainly was.

But she also had a keen interest

in xenophobic nationalism and antisemitic racism.

Importantly, Elsa, wife of a literary publisher,

and incredibly well-connected, ran an influential salon,

where the cream of Munich society would gather

to discuss the issues of the day.

Elsa first encountered Hitler in 1921,

when she was in the audience at one of his early party speeches.

- (shouting in German)

NARRATOR: Elsa was hooked. - (cheering)

NARRATOR: She was to become one of Hitler's first big fangirls,

and even visited him in jail after his failed coup attempt.

- Hitler could have visits every afternoon.

They brought him food, he dressed in lederhosen.

And the Bruckmanns gave him access to a group of people

who met every couple of weeks and discussed ideas in Munich.

And that gave him respectability.

NARRATOR: But just like Helene, Elsa felt it her national duty

to work on Hitler's coarseness, his lack of social graces.

It was from her that Hitler learned the essentials

to being a successful political mover and shaker,

how to correctly eat lobster and kiss a lady's hand.

What was it that drew women like Elsa and Helene

so strongly to Hitler?

They were certainly not the only ones

entranced by his intoxicating power,

they also shared his warped beliefs and ideologies.

They keenly felt Germany's humiliation

after its disastrous defeat in World War One,

and were angered by how the victorious allies

had imposed huge financial reparations on it

and stripped it of territory and its overseas colonies.

Hitler, they were convinced, would make Germany great again.

- What we see in Hitler is

the worst example, possibly the only example,

of somebody achieving absolute power.

This is somebody who came from being a complete non-entity in 1919,

to a man who had the belief that he was going to conquer the world.

So this just segued perfectly into his self-image.

"I am the greatest man in the world, I should control the world."

And it picked up from there.

(Hitler shouts) (crowd shouts)

- This story of a newly heroic, newly arisen Germany

centres at first on Hitler himself,

who has this, kind of, Elvis quality to him.

He's a rock star. He's a superstar.

Women fawn in his presence.

- (chanting in German)

- And he also tells this fairy tale of this racial purity,

of German Aryan superiority,

of this Nordic body that has this great tradition to it,

of the Vikings, conquerors.

And the role of women in this story

is you are both promised this strong country

and you get to be a part of this strong country.

NARRATOR: But one early patroness

was more significant than all the others.

The most influential and long-lasting of Hitler's devotees,

her name was Winifred Wagner.

- (chuckles) Winifred Wagner was terribly influential.

Hitler, when he was in Vienna,

spent his leisure time

at operas by Richard Wagner.

And that's where he got ideas

of saviours and heroes and Germanic myth.

And Winifred carried on the tradition and was very political,

and invited Hitler to come to the annual Opera Festival,

which is still a meeting place for the German elite in Bayreuth.

(grand singing)

NARRATOR: The daughter-in-law of world-famous composer Richard...

- (applause)

NARRATOR: ..Winifred Wagner was born in London in 1897

to an English father and German mother.

Orphaned at the age of three, she grew up in Germany.

Winifred was a nationalist and rabidly right-wing,

fascinated with the Nazi mythology of blood and soil,

the idea of racial Aryan purity, combined with simple country life.

(children chatter & laugh)

NARRATOR: She first met Hitler in 1923

at the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.

Before long, he was a regular fixture in the Wagner home,

part of the family,

his politics in perfect sync with hers.

- Hitler had always been an opera fan. Always.

In Linz, he'd always gone to the opera, loved the opera,

particularly loved the Wagner operas and their themes,

those, you know, great Germanic heroes.

So it wasn't really difficult, then, you know,

to get the, um, the Wagner... Empire, if you like, behind him.

NARRATOR: Winifred soon enthusiastically

joined the Nazi party.

And just like Hitler's other patronesses,

started showering him with donations and presents.

Her effect on him, and his party, was profound.

(shouting & chanting)

NARRATOR: As the 1930s rolled around,

Hitler was still dogged by his roughhouse image,

arising from the Beer Hall Putsch

and violent clashes between his fascist militia

and their communist rivals.

He needed an altogether more sophisticated veneer.

Wagner's music would help him acquire it.

When Winifred's husband, Siegfried, died in 1930,

Winifred took charge of the festival,

an opportunity Hitler wouldn't miss.

- Well, the Bayreuth Festival opened the doors

to all the other elites in the whole country.

Through the twenties, Hitler was always at pains to increase

his, we would call it name recognition, outside of Bavaria.

And he wanted name recognition abroad.

And seeing pictures of the elite at Bayreuth

put Hitler's name

into the category of nationally respected people.

(gentle classical music)

NARRATOR: Winifred allowed Hitler's control over Bayreuth to grow.

(music builds)

NARRATOR: By the time World War Two started,

the Nazis' stranglehold on the event was complete.

Winifred always claimed Hitler was unaware of any Nazi atrocities.

(sombre music)

NARRATOR: She died in 1980,

never wavering in her devotion to him.

Throughout the 1920s and 30s,

more and more members of German high society

were drawn to the Nazi flame.

Anger and fear about the threat of communism

and the dire economic situation

created the perfect environment for Hitler's nationalist vision.

- One of the reasons why wealthy members of society

would have backed Hitler is because he offered a dream.

He promised a dream that was extremely compelling and powerful.

When you think about the political situation,

the humiliation and impoverishment

of Germany after World War One,

the seeds for the rise of fascism were sown.

And so, to have a charismatic leader come along and say,

"I will restore the greatness to this country,

I will avenge all the wrongs that have been done."

NARRATOR: He was their champion,

who would restore and protect their wealth and power.

They thought they would prosper under Nazi authoritarianism,

not realising Hitler secretly despised their elitism

and little guessing the depth of evil

that lay at the heart of the Nazi party.

(gentle music) (birds tweeting)

NARRATOR: The Nazis were working hard

to persuade the majority of ordinary women to support them.

Although women voted for them

in fewer numbers than men in the 1920s,

their contribution to the party's growing popularity was crucial.

- What the Nazi women did for the party was extraordinary.

Every time there was a rally, they showed up.

They showed up with pamphlets to distribute,

badges to distribute.

They collected money, they collected charity.

When poor Nazi families needed help,

they collected charity, they took care of the kids.

They formed children's groups.

NARRATOR: This wholesome community outreach

during harsh economic times made the party look

as if it actually cared about the wellbeing of ordinary Germans.

- When women are taking part in things like

tending to the soldiers, or running soup kitchens,

they are accorded a particular status

and sense of being do-gooders,

helpers, belonging to the cause.

So they're given a very, uh...

acceptable, kind of idealised version of themselves,

and disconnected from the horrors

that that good work is actually supporting.

NARRATOR: The women were relied upon

by the Nazi paramilitary group, the Brownshirts,

for food while on duty,

and medical care following street brawls.

Women's groups provided money and clothing,

as well as support for the families of political detainees.

And there were sewing circles and book clubs

where women would read and discuss

Hitler's writings and other party literature.

- Nazi women created a subculture,

so that if you were a follower of the party,

you could go to the Nazi singing competition,

you could join a chorus, you could play soccer,

you could travel to go and get reduced ticket prices

to the theatre or to the opera.

So the Nazi women created a grassroots network

that made their followers feel that they belonged.

NARRATOR: There was one particular woman who,

on the strength of her work with the sick and wounded,

could be mistaken for someone

who'd misguidedly been swept up in the Nazi mania.

In fact, she was as ideologically motivated as all the rest.

Her name was Eleonore Baur,

also known as Sister Pia.

She would become one of Hitler's favourite Nazis.

Sister Pia had served as a nurse in World War One,

despite not being medically qualified.

She'd always been an extreme right-winger,

but when she was acquitted of a public order offence

after an antisemitic rant at a Munich rally,

everyone, including Hitler, sat up and took notice.

But it was during the Beer Hall Putsch,

when Sister Pia treated wounded Nazis,

that she cemented her place as a hero of the party.

Adolf Hitler decided that he would take a gamble,

and would make a bid for power.

And so, he launched an assault,

an attack on the main parts of Munich,

the railway station, the post office and so on.

Sister Pia was the only woman who actually took part in that.

She was tending to broken heads and bullet wounds

because 12 Nazis were killed in the Putsch.

NARRATOR: She impressed Hitler so much,

she would be given responsibility

for building and running Dachau concentration camp,

where some 40,000 people would die.

While there was never enough evidence

of Baur directly harming prisoners,

former inmates recall extensive bullying and suffering at her hands.

(sombre music)

She invented this "brothel train",

which, uh, with which she peopled prostitutes

who were usually Polish or Ukrainian,

who had no choice, they were- they were brutalised into it.

And they became prostitutes on the train

and it would go around Germany,

offering services to the Aryan officers, on this train.

NARRATOR: Aside from religious radicals like Sister Pia

for whom Nazism was an irresistible magnet,

the big question remains...

What attracted women to these misogynistic men?

- There is something about Hitler that lots of women found appealing.

Lots of women wrote love letters to him.

And I think there was something about his character

that people appreciated.

And perhaps it's hard for us to look back and understand what that was.

But I think they saw him as maybe, erm, a rescuer

taking them out of the difficult situation after World War One.

- (chanting)

NARRATOR: For Hitler, women were politically useful.

Violence and intimidation counted for nothing

if the party could not make a mark at the ballot box.

He needed to woo female voters

with a homespun Nazi image and message.

But how could they do that,

with an underlying ideology of division and violence?

- (yells in German)

NARRATOR: Much of the draw came from Hitler's enigmatic magnetism.

Observers described the rapturous reception women gave him

as something akin to sexual hysteria.

- As soon as he spoke, he changed his personality entirely.

And I think that they, whether man or woman,

I think they were drawn to this,

can we even say, charismatic little guy.

- (yells in German)

- Over these years, like, from 1921,

'til he was arrested and put into prison,

he changed his image

from a little drummer to the leader.

Der Fuhrer. - (chanting)

- The rock star analogy is quite a good one.

He would've been a rock star of the twenties and thirties,

except he wasn't selling music.

He was selling something a lot more dangerous.

Certainly, the remaking of Germany.

And later, of course, all of the abuses and the Holocaust.

That was what he was selling.

NARRATOR: Hitler's powerful oratory,

combined with the pomp and grandeur projected by the party,

thanks to the genius of propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels,

helped to capture the imaginations and emotions of many.

But other social factors were at play too.

- I think support for the Nazi Party, particularly from the women,

was a direct result, really, of the tougher times or the Weimar period.

But again, it was the women

who really witnessed all this chaos right outside their own homes,

the fighting with the different political parties.

And the women wanted stability, they wanted their husbands to have jobs.

And that's why I think they found the Nazi party so attractive.

(dramatic music)

- In the Weimar Republic, thanks to the Constitution of 1919,

women had equal rights. They voted.

They had equal employment opportunities, that was guaranteed.

They had guarantees of equality in the workplace.

They had access that they never had before to higher education.

Women had always gone to universities,

but more women were admitted.

So it was careers open to everybody.

NARRATOR: The problem was, not all women wanted this change.

They were being thrust into the frontline

of the professions and the labour market

right at the time when pay and conditions

had never been tougher or less attractive.

For most, it was exhausting, low paid

agricultural work or assembly line drudgery.

Many married women felt overworked and underpaid.

Discontent was brewing.

As more women poured into the workforce,

conservative groups, who wanted social order, became alarmed.

For them, the real and imagined terrors

of prostitution, abortion, venereal disease,

obscenity and rampant promiscuity

lurked in the shadow of this social revolution.

By contrast, there were the Nazis

and their comforting talk of a society

harking back to a kinder, safer past.

A time when women weren't under pressure to work

but were content to stay at home

and be given status and respect

for fulfilling the sacred roles of wives and mothers.

- Uh, the Weimar Republic was probably

the freest that women ever were in Germany.

It was this great age of freedom and expressing yourself,

not just in Germany, across the whole of the world.

Hitler's view was, "You don't really want to be enfranchised

and go out to have to work eight till five every day.

Be at home, do the job that you're really entitled to do.

Do the job that you really want to do,

which is raising a family and caring for a man."

(tense music)

NARRATOR: Low paid and dreary factory jobs,

or staying home to care for your family?

The Nazis knew for many women what the answer would be.

- And it shows, again, the power of this dream,

this return to some mythical society,

where women would be breeders of children,

educators of children, nurturers of children,

in the church, in the kitchen, in the home.

And although, to us, it would seem crazy

that women would want to give up their emancipation

because it was framed as evidence

of a kind of corrupted, debased society.

(shouting & cheering)

NARRATOR: Leading the Nazi charge against progressive feminism

was Paula Siber.

She predicted a dismal future

for the newly emancipated German woman.

"Emancipation from emancipation" was the Nazi slogan.

- Paula Siber was all about professionalising motherhood.

You might even say she was a forerunner

for Wages for Housework, a movement in the 1970s.

Paula Siber wanted to see motherhood elevated to a profession,

just like other kinds of professions,

and that was her aim.

NARRATOR: Housewives in their thousands joined a movement

in the name of family, rather than freedom.

They worked within religious, patriotic and civil associations

to defend traditional morality and fight against decadence.

- They were saying, "We've had enough of emancipation.

During the Weimar Republic, we've seen emancipation.

And emancipation just left us worse than we were to begin with.

We've lost the supports we've had, the family is weakened,

our children run away, they run off to the cities.

Give us life before emancipation."

And that's what the Nazis promised.

And they thought, with a strong leader like Hitler,

there's going to be order.

NARRATOR: But Siber was by no means the only conservative pioneer

responsible for getting German women to back Hitler's cause.

Elsbeth Zander was another.

She passionately hated socialism

and was a fervent supporter of the Nazis.

- She was a frumpy housewife, oh my goodness.

She was a little overweight, she kind of slumped around.

Then she got in front of a crowd.

And she straightened up, and she spoke brilliantly.

And in a way that's kind of the double personality that Hitler had.

NARRATOR: Under what Zander called the "holy flame of motherhood",

she campaigned for women to join her in purifying German culture

and defend its traditional morality against the decadence of Weimar.

Zander's campaign struck a chord.

Woman were signing up to her party in droves.

Her German Women's Order

was soon officially recognised as part of the Nazi party,

and she received official permission

to consider herself the leader of all female Nazis.

Zander responded by announcing that from now on

women would leave the politics to the men

and concentrate on welfare work and family support.

Elsbeth Zander had undisputed authority

over women from all social levels who were drawn to the party

by the alluring picture it was painting of womanhood.

- And they, all of them said, "We like KKK."

"Kinder, Kuche, Kirche."

"Children, kitchen, church."

We will do what we're good at,

and we will let the men do what they're good at.

And wouldn't you rather rise up

to the top of your hierarchy of all women,

than always be second class citizens

in a world where men pretend to respect you, but they don't?

So, that was Zander.

And then there was Mother...

Mother Guida Diehl.

Her crusade in life was very religious, she was Protestant,

and she was really concerned about

women who had... "fallen".

"fallen women" was the polite term

for women who'd had out-of-wedlock children,

women who'd been abandoned by their husbands,

women who were too poor.

And she started, independently, her own network

of houses called Neuland houses

that would give women a second start.

NARRATOR: Born in 1868,

Guida Diehl grew up in a radically nationalist and antisemitic family.

- (singing)

NARRATOR: Just like Elsbeth Zander,

she was an early fan of Hitler's racial ideology

and formed her very own women's organisation.

But unlike Zander, Diehl was looking to rally

the conservative and well-educated women,

the protestant establishment, to the Nazi standard.

People just like her.

Diehl opened a headquarters with 500 rabid supporters

and began her fight against

what she called the anarchy of values she so despised.

As with other female leaders at the time,

Diehl railed against women's rights, which, she claimed,

denigrated motherhood, housework and women's culture.

She went as far as to call for

the elimination of paid labour for women outside the home.

All of this was music to Hitler's ears.

(grand trumpet music)

NARRATOR: Both Zander and Diehl had felt imprisoned by the Weimar system

and saw the Nazi party's traditionalism

as a German freedom movement.

They preyed on women's fears

about having to compete alongside men in all walks of life.

Hitler offered liberation from this alien, new world.

On behalf of the women of Germany,

these rising stars reached for the blue skies of Nazi ideals.

- Despite the encouragement of the Nazi party

that all German women should be good German mothers and stay at home,

some of the women loved the opportunity

that supporting the Nazi Party would bring them.

There was a sense of belonging,

and also a sense of power.

You're supporting the leading party,

you're volunteering for the leading party,

you're overseas representing them.

And so, despite the narrative

that the Nazi party wanted women to be at home to be mothers,

these women also relished the opportunities

that supporting the Nazi Party gave them.

(cheering and applause)

(curious music)

NARRATOR: Women like Zander and Diehl

were allowed to create a movement within the Nazi structure.

But they were in danger of overestimating

their significance to the party hierarchy.

The truth was, as long as they kept supporting the party...

- (chanting)

NARRATOR: ..the Nazis didn't really care what they were doing.

- Nobody censored them.

Hitler, whenever somebody disagreed with him,

or challenged his viewpoint,

Hitler would expel them, purge them from the party.

Nobody purged women.

Men just didn't notice them.

NARRATOR: So each major female leader

was free to set up organisations

and follow different rules with their own objectives.

They even felt free to interpret Hitler's ideas any way they chose.

Even with all this noise,

female support for the Nazi party still lagged behind the men.

It would take one more massive societal shift

to really move the needle in their favour.

And that was the Great Depression.

- So the Depression hit first. 1929.

It hit Germany faster, even, than the United States.

Unemployment, in two or three years, became the highest in the world.

Imagine living in a country

where one out of three workers lose their jobs.

And the unemployment rate was one third for men,

but only ten-percent for women,

because women worked in the lowest paying jobs.

But this disrupted everything.

It disrupted family life. It disrupted politics.

NARRATOR: As the Great Depression began to bite,

the female Nazi vote rose to equal male support,

and in places, even to surpass it.

The Weimar government was fatally divided

and increasingly impotent in the face of the economic malaise.

- (singing)

NARRATOR: The Nazi party smelt blood,

and amped up the propaganda to take advantage of the chaos.

(tense music)

NARRATOR: It was now between them and the Communists,

while moderates were left to die in a political ditch.

In the election of 1930, the world watched on

as the Nazis leapt from ninth to second place in the Reichstag.

The reason was simple.

Men had been losing their jobs

and were now languishing at home,

while their wives were often still working.

As many of these men grew increasingly desperate,

women could see that conventional German family life

was crumbling around them.

Their hopes and dreams for the future were under threat.

The Nazi promise to reinstate traditional gender roles,

allowing men to again provide for their families,

proved wildly popular.

- Post World War One,

where the German men, uh, Austrian men,

were feeling completely humiliated and useless,

the idea of being re-masculinised

would've been incredibly exciting, exhilarating and seductive.

(dramatic music)

NARRATOR: By 1931, however,

so significant had women's support for the party become,

that the Nazi leadership decided to clip its wings

and bring it closer to the mainstream party organisation.

It was decreed that all women's associations, big and small,

were to be incorporated into what was called

the National Socialist Women's League.

Overnight, these organisations fell under direct control

of the party, and the men who ran it.

Despite all their work and dedication to the cause,

the female leaders were suddenly out in the cold.

In one cynical stroke,

they had been stripped of their power and influence.

- Hitler's in power.

And all of his women followers,

Paula Siber, Guida Diehl, Zander, everybody,

they all think, "Ah, I am going to become the leader."

None of them did.

Suddenly, the Nazi leaders cared about women.

(all shouting in German)

And their concern exhibited itself

because all those women lost their positions.

The Nazis had no idea who was going to be in charge of women.

So their first appointment was a man,

who had no experience with women's anything.

But he seemed to be a good Nazi.

And so did the dirty work of firing

and dismissing and discrediting those women.

NARRATOR: The Women's League eventually had a female leader,

committed Nazi Gertrude Scholtz-Klink.

But for women, the point had been made.

They'd been naive enough to swallow the Nazi ideology

and ignore what the party really thought of them.

It didn't matter that for years they'd proved themselves

to be Hitler's loyal and hardworking supporters.

He'd never let competent, charismatic women gain real power.

There was to be no honour in store,

no final prize,

no gratitude.

Instead, for these women,

it ended in bitter disappointment and betrayal.

(tense music)

NARRATOR: The Nazi's comforting slogan,

"Kinder, Kuche, Kirche",

"Children, kitchen, church",

was revealed to be a hollow lie.

And as the war ground on,

they'd become virtual slaves in Germany's factories,

while their menfolk and children died on the battlefield

or in the ruins of their wrecked towns and cities.

The reward for their unflinching devotion to the Nazis...

- (shouting & chanting)

NARRATOR: ..was sacrifice and death.

(sombre music)

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