WOMEN IN GERMANY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 March 1939, Page 8

WOMEN IN GERMANY

PAGEANTRY OF NAZIS HAS TONIC EFFECT.

“German women are not just women,” writes an American observer, Professor’ Clifford Kirkpatrick, in his book, “Women • in Nazi Germany." “They are German citizens. It is easy to underestimate the psychological satisfactions which National Socialism brought to German women as well as to German men. Many a shrunken ego was inflated by indentification with a great tribal in-group. Millions of humble mothers were made to feel that the pangs of child-birth and the cares of child-bearing had at last been appreciated as a noble service to the folk state. National Socialism brought a sweet sense of belonging to an intimate in-group made up of comrades of the same blood and the same belief. It brought the comfort of a simple faith, the religious experience of yielding to something larger than oneself, conflict could be eliminated and personality integrated by devotion to a father, lover, saviour, protector and leader combined in the person Adolf Hitler. The pageantry of Nazi Germany gives to women the tonic effect of a religious revival and the hope of salvation in a nation reborn.”