Abstract
Feminist historians have so far projected the ‘Aryan’ family as a ‘doll’s house of ersatz goodness, as an institution which acted like ‘a shield against all-pervasive Nazi ideology’. Some have even declared all wives and mothers innocent and ignorant of Nazi crimes. They assert that the ‘Aryan’ family remained a unified front unaffected by the destructive politics of the era. Such projections of the family give a broad but incom-plete picture of family life for they ignore the fact that the regime managed to intrude into family life and sniff out dissent from within this personal sphere by a number of means, including the provision of political denunciation. A view from below, in addition, suggests that this intrusion was made possible with the active co-operation of spouses, par-ticularly wives.2 This important gender behaviour has, however, neither been thematised properly nor researched quantitatively.
A version of Chapter 2 was originally published in the Journal of Contemporary History, under the title, ‘The Private Became Public: Wives as Denouncers in the Third Reich’, pp. 419–35, Copyright © 2002 Sage Publications, London, vol. 37 (3).
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Notes
A version of Chapter 2 was originally published in the Journal of Contemporary History, under the title, ‘The Private Became Public: Wives as Denouncers in the Third Reich’, pp. 419–35, Copyright © 2002 Sage Publications, London, vol. 37 (3).
This phenomenon is pointed out by some historians in their studies of denunciation. For example, Gellately, Gestapo, pp. 147–9; R. Gellately, I)enunciations in Twentieth-Century Germany’, Journal of Modern History 68 (1996), pp. 931–67; R. Grüneberg, Das zwölfjährige Reich (München, 1977), pp. 119–21; Rockenmaier, Denunzianten, pp. 67–76; K. Dordelmann, Die Macht der Wörter (Cologne, 1997), pp. 107–20; Dördelmann, “’Aus einer gewissen Empörung habe ich nun Anzeige erstattet”, pp. 195–6; R. Wolters, Verrat fü’ r die Volksgemeinschaft: Denunziantinnen im Dritten Reich, Forum Frauengeschichte Band 19 (Pfaffenweiler, 1996), p. 59; K. M. Mallmann, ’Zwischen Denunziation und Roter Hilfe: Geschlecterbeziehung and Kommunistischer Widerstand 1933–1945’, in C. Wickert (Hrsg.), Frauen gegen die Diktatur: Widerstand und Verfolgung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Gedenkstätte deutscher Widerstand (Berlin, 1995), pp. 82–97 (90–2); G. Paul and K. M. Mallmann, ‘Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent? Gestapo, Society and Resistance’, in David F. Crew (ed.), Nazism and German Society 1933–1945 (London, 1994), pp. 166–96 (180).
While promulgating the Law against Malicious Gossip, the state emphasised ’public expression’ of anti-state or anti-party views for the offence to be taken seriously. Even the circumstance and the place where such views were expressed were taken into consideration to determine if they could later threaten to become public. The case files often gave this as a reason for dis-missal or further investigation of a case. See also Bernward Dorner, ’Heimtiicke’: das Gesetz als Waffe (Paderborn, 1998) pp. 19–22.
To see if some resemblance can be found between our stories and the nation-wide gender pattern of divorce, it is useful to cite divorce statistics. From 1938/39 to 1943, 94,882 divorces were granted in which the husband was the guilty party as compared to 62,740 women, on the grounds of serious negligent matrimonial offences. For adultery 20,960 men and 19,715 women were divorced. For irretrievable breakdown as a ground for divorce 14,278 men and only 850 women were declared the guilty party. Source: Gabriele Czarnowski, ‘The Value of Marriage for the Volksgemeinschaft: Policies towards Women and Marriage under National Socialism’, in Richard Bessel (ed.), Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 94–112, here p. 107. These figures correspond to ours, where wives appear as aggrieved and inno-cent parties much more frequently.
The guilt principle was introduced into the divorce law in 1900, and con-tinued in the Third Reich. The court investigated as to who bore the major part of the guilt in the break-up of a marriage. It was crucial, especially for housewives, to be declared the innocent party in their divorce judgements, for any claims to alimony depended upon that. For more details, see Cosima Konigs, Die Frau im Recht des Nationalsozialismus: eine Analyse ihrer familian-, erb- und arbeitsrechlichen Stellung (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), p. 55ff.; Czarnowski, ‘Value’, pp. 104–10.
HStAD RW/58 - 53915. Illegal contact with foreigners and prisoners of war became a new mass crime after 1940. In the summer of 1942 around 80 per cent of all arrests made by the Gestapo comprised this offence. See Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Auslandereinsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Berlin, 1985), pp. 122–9, especially the section ‘Verbotener Umgang als Massendilekt’.
Cf. Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in the Third Reich (New York, 1998); Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten:
Heinz Boberach (Hrsg.), Richterbriefe: Dokumente zur Beeinflussung der deutschen Rechtssprechung 1942–44 (Boppard, 1975), pp. 363ff.
I looked through some files of the countryside to find out if the peasant families were affected by this phenomenon, but there were hardly any such cases to be found there. There was only one case from Wesel, a small village, but this turned out to be a working-class family as well.
Out of a total of about 6,808 Gestapo files of victims in Düsseldorf, the KPD (Communist Party) is numerically the most preponderant category of crime representing 1,440 cases followed by the Jews at 1,289. The other 50 cate-gories are well below 1,000 files, of which 42 categories do not even cross the mark of 100. This pattern repeats itself in the case files of Krefeld, Cologne and surrounding areas. See Johnson, Nazi Terror, pp. 161–94, here pp. 174–5; Bernhard Schmidt and Fritz Burger, Tatort Moers: Widerstand und Nationalsozialismus im Südlichen Altkreis Moers (Moers, 1995), p. 14. On the persecution of Communist Party members in the Ruhr, see Detlev Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand: Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Ruhr 1933 bis 1945 (Wuppertal, 1980).
On Nazi ideals of the ‘Aryan’ family and marriage, see Kuhn and Rothe, Frauen, Vol. 2, pp. 114–27; Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933–1945 (New York, 1998), 15ff.; Benz (Hrsg.), Frauen, pp. 41–5, 54–7, 105–9.
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Joshi, V. (2003). The ‘Private’ Became ‘Public’: Wives as Denouncers in the Realm of the Family. In: Gender and Power in the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511071_3
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