Josephine Sales
Waco, Texas, United States

In World War II Germany, National Socialist ideology transformed the private experience of motherhood into a political site where biology was weaponized to serve the state’s eugenic objectives. Under this regime, the “Aryan” woman’s body was declared property of the state for reproduction, while the wombs of those deemed “unfit” were characterized as pollutants in the national racial body.

German Mothers

For German women deemed “racially worthy,” motherhood was incentivized as a vital service to the fatherland. The regime provided robust support to mothers of “pure blood and sound health” through pro-natalist welfare policies, including marriage loans, child allowances, and income tax benefits.^1,2 Prolific mothers were honored with the “Honor Cross of the German Mother,” a military-style medal awarded in three grades to equate childbearing to a soldier’s duty: bronze for four to five children, silver for six to seven, and gold for eight or more children.^3,4 These mothers enjoyed celebrity status and preferential treatment while shopping.²

The Lebensborn initiative provided secret pre- and postnatal care for “racially pure” women and encouraged procreation with Schutzstaffel officers to increase the population of the “master race.”^1,5 Official propaganda posters portrayed the “Aryan” mother in an idealized, positive light, embodying the “Blood and Soil” (Blut und Boden) ideology, which idealized the rural German family as being rooted in the land, as the baby is connected to its mother.^2,4 Rural village women were projected as the prototype of “Aryan” womanhood: innocent, uncorrupted by “polluting” city culture, and essential for boosting birth rates.¹ This push toward agrarian life was fueled by the perception that industrialization and overcrowded urban tenements polluted the population. These urban areas were linked to a rise in venereal disease, prostitution, and alcoholism—conditions that were major concerns for mothers and were viewed by the state as medical threats to heredity and national productivity. To maintain this “racial stock,” mothers were exhorted to avoid alcohol and nicotine during pregnancy and breastfeeding, with propaganda claiming these substances hindered the normal course of pregnancy. Women were instructed that their natural tasks of motherhood and managing the home were indispensable to the race.²

Educational programs further reinforced these roles. The Reich Mothers’ Service (RMD) provided Mütterschulung (mothers’ training) in child rearing, household management, and racial hygiene, reaching an estimated 1.7 million women by 1939.² Public health efforts promoted a “breast is best” policy, using scientific evidence and maternalist empathy to convince mothers to fulfill their “racial duty” to nurse.^2,6 This extended to the development of breast milk collection facilities (Frauenmilchsammelstellen), which collected surplus milk from healthy “Aryan” donors for redistribution to infants.²

Indoctrination began in early childhood through the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM). Girls as young as ten were trained in National Socialist values, including wifely and motherly skills such as cooking, sewing, and infant care. Physical education was prioritized to develop fit girls who would give birth to strong children, with specific exercises designed to strengthen the muscles necessary for childbirth.² By the end of the Reich, the children trained in these programs in the early 1930s would have reached the age to serve as the nation’s mothers.

Even for German women, reproductive autonomy was strictly monitored through negative eugenics, acts that discouraged procreation of individuals deemed “inferior.”² The 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring legalized state-mandated sterilization for approximately 400,000 individuals deemed “racially unfit.”^4,7,8 Midwives and doctors were required to report any person considered “hereditarily diseased” to public health offices, suspending professional secrecy to complete a national “genetic index” from racial and genetic perspectives.⁷ German women classified as “hereditarily diseased,” or those who had relationships with prisoners of war, were stripped of all support and subjected to forced abortions and ostracism.¹

Infants born with disabilities were targeted for “euthanasia” under the “Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenitally Based Illnesses.” Midwives were paid a per capita fee to report newborns with defects and developmental disorders. This program eventually evolved into Aktion T4, headquartered at Tiergartenstrasse 4, with the goal of completely eliminating “life unworthy of life” (Vernichtung von lebensunwertem Leben)—individuals considered an unwarranted economic burden on the state during military operations.⁹

Initially, this mass extermination targeted children in medical facilities. Parents were often notified that their hospitalized children were being transferred to special centers for diagnostic tests. Weeks later, they were informed the child had died, typically citing pneumonia as the cause. In reality, these children were brutally murdered, often via lethal injections of toxic fluid such as phenol or through gradual starvation accelerated by medication. It is estimated that by 1941, over 5,000 German children were murdered in these clinics.⁷

Jewish Mothers

Conversely, Jewish mothers experienced matrescence as a “death sentence” because the Nazi regime viewed their capacity to bear children as a direct threat to the “Final Solution.”¹⁰ Pregnant women who were unable to conceal their pregnancy were sent directly to gas chambers upon arrival at extermination camps because they were capable of bringing forth new generations of Jewish people.¹⁰ In ghettos and labor camps, the regime banned all births to ensure the destruction of “poorer genetic stock.” Under these conditions, undergoing a secret abortion or suffocating their newborns became a desperate means of survival. Giving birth was a capital offense punishable by the death of the entire family and the healthcare provider.¹¹

Narrative accounts from survivors detail the gynecological realities within the barracks, where pregnancies were hidden, and newborns were often killed immediately via drowning or lethal injection as a tragic act of “mercy” to save the mother.^10,11 Infants who survived were often subjected to barbaric medical research, such as medical experiments testing how long a newborn could survive without food.¹¹

The Role of Medical Professionals

The role of medical professionals was pivotal in the biopolitical engineering of the Third Reich, as female physicians and midwives acted as the primary bridge between state eugenics and the domestic sphere. Female physicians leveraged maternalist ideologies to position themselves as unique experts who could influence German mothers through a shared “empathetic psyche.”² Many of these professionals preferred careers in public health and motherhood training because these roles allowed them to balance their professional identities with their own presence in the home—a lifestyle they modeled for the women they influenced. These physicians conducted the initial genetic screenings within the BDM to select which children were fit to become future mothers and which were “unfit” for the national community. Furthermore, they successfully claimed authority over the expansion of breast milk collection facilities (Frauenmilchsammelstellen), framing the donation and redistribution of milk as a “quintessential responsibility” of the female physician to protect the national resource of the master race.²

Female physicians and school doctors served as a “medical surveillance network.” Doctors evaluated BDM members to determine if they were “unfit” for membership due to hereditary diseases or racial features, using exams to judge skull shape, hair, and eye color. For “racially healthy” women, birth control was restricted and abortion was banned. Conversely, the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring mandated sterilization for “inferior” individuals, including those with disorders such as schizophrenia or “mental deficiency.”² Midwives effectively acted as police, mandated to report “defective” pregnancies and suspected abortions to complete a national “genetic index.”²

Simultaneously, Jewish prisoner-doctors such as Dr. Gisella Perl and Dr. Erno Vadasz faced profound ethical dilemmas. Dr. Perl performed abortions in “horrific” conditions to save women from immediate execution, while Dr. Vadasz successfully delivered infants in the final months of the war, insisting that some Jewish children must survive.¹⁰

There were significant associations between state eugenic goals and the systemic stripping of reproductive autonomy. The Nazi state used medicine to promote “positive eugenics” for the “desired stock” while utilizing it as a genocidal tool against those characterized as “pollutants in the racial body.”^1,11

Conclusion

The Nazi regime transformed the womb into a political site, framing the “Aryan” woman’s body as “property of the state” to build an empire, while weaponizing the bodies of those deemed unfit as pollutants to execute a genocide. Motherhood in the Third Reich was not a private experience but a political instrument where biology served state eugenic objectives.⁸ History serves as a blueprint for the present; by analyzing how the Nazi state transformed the womb into a political tool of either empire-building or genocide, women and their children can be better safeguarded today.

References

1. Joshi, Vandana. “Maternalism, Race, Class and Citizenship: Aspects of Illegitimate Motherhood in Nazi Germany.” Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 4 (2011): 832–853. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009411413409.
2. Kravetz, Melissa. Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
3. Rupp, Leila J. “Mother of the ‘Volk’: The Image of Women in Nazi Ideology.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3, no. 2 (1977): 362–379.
4. Karatzas, Konstantinos D. “The Image of the Ideal German Mother in Nazi Era Posters.” Perichoresis 22, no. s1 (2024): 77–91.
5. Shipman, Alec R. “The German Experiment: Health Care without Female or Jewish Doctors.” International Journal of Women’s Dermatology 3, no. 1 Suppl (2017): S18–S20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijwd.2017.02.004.
6. Rittershaus, L. “‘Breast is best’—Infant-feeding, Infant Mortality and Infant Welfare in Germany during the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Health (2013).
7. Benedict, Susan, and Linda Shields. Nurses and Midwives in Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge, 2024.
8. Bock, Gisela. “Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State.” Signs 8, no. 3 (1983): 400–421. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173945
9. Karowicz-Bienias, Sylwia Agnieszka. “Nazi Crimes on People with Disabilities in the Light of International Law—A Brief Review.” Białostockie Studia Prawnicze 23, no. 4 (2018): 187–195.
10. Weisz, G. M., & Kwiet, K. (2018). Managing pregnancy in Nazi concentration camps: The role of two Jewish doctors. Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, 9(3), Article e0026. https://doi.org/10.5041/RMMJ.10347
11. Castelo-Branco, Camil, and J. A. Lejárcegui. “Obstetrics and Gynecology in Third Reich Concentration Camps: A Never-Ending Nightmare.” Gynecological and Reproductive Endocrinology and Metabolism 4, no. 2-3 (2024): 55–61.