ADOLF HITLER always spoke about his mother, Klara, who died in 1907 when she was only 47, as a saintly figure. Her major accomplishment, as he saw it, was to give birth to him. “Compared to all those educated, intellectual women, my mother was certainly only a little woman…but she has given the German people a great son,” he declared. Her birthday, August 12, was designated as a “day of honor for the German mother.”
Hitler’s broader message for German women flowed from his view of his idealized mother. According to Nazi doctrine, their role was to serve their husbands and raise children, leaving nearly everything else to men. Specifically, they were to raise the boys who would become warriors and the girls who would become the mothers of future warriors. Speaking to the National Socialist Women’s League in 1934, Hitler insisted that “every child [a woman] bears is a battle she endures for the life and death of her people.” As a reward for having many children, the Nazis handed out the Cross of Honor of the German Mother—a bronze one for four or five children, silver for six or seven, and gold for eight or more.
