Women of the Third Reich: The Other Face of Nazi Germany | Free Documentary History

May 8th, 1945. The Third Reich has just capitulated. In the ruins of Berlin only women remained. Widows and orphans who had lost everything during the war. Still they were the ones who would clear up the rubble to rebuild the country. True heroines honored by statues in German cities. It is this fantastic sort of rehabilitative story of women who somehow redeem Germany with their bare hands. It is all too good to be true. Just a few years earlier, these same German women were hailing Adolf Hitler, their Fuhrer. In 1939, out of the 40 million women in the Reich, 13 million were members of organizations related to the Nazi party. Left, right, left, right, and then always in da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and then music. Heil Hitler! And we all, heil Hitler! So began the lesson. No other regime managed to mobilize women on such a broad scale. The National Socialist mothers ensured Aryan descendants and provided soldiers for the front. Over 600,000 Nazi nurses were trained by the regime. 500,000 auxiliaries joined the Wehrmacht services. 500,000 women served in the occupied lands in the East. These figures show to what extent Hitler's regime relied on the contributions of the so-called weaker sex for its murderous project. Women took orders, executed them. Women were just wheels in the gear. They brought this regime to life. They brought this ideology to life. They even committed irredeemable acts. As guards in concentration camps, they became guilty of torture and murder. It's horror. It's women who become executioners. They are executioners. If there was a psychopath in it, then it doesn't apply to everyone. They were normal women. Spectators of Nazi crimes, accomplices and murderesses, who were these German women of the Third Reich? How did they become crucial cogs of the regime? What is the extent of their crimes? Here is the real story of German women in the Third Reich. November 1918. The German Empire had just collapsed. The old world was in ruins. Population, a period of upheaval and uncertainty began. The Weimar Republic years were marked by rationing, galloping inflation, and incessant changes of governments. The relentless struggles between nationalists and communists in the streets were reminiscent of civil war. Lots of such irritations, which together with Versailles have certainly led to the idea that we live in politically extremely unstable times, the defeat is terrible, we suffer under the defeat, and then it is an ensemble of things that led to the idea that it can only get worse and that it is all very terrible and we have to change something. Frightened by the chaos, German women no longer trusted democracy and its politicians. Frustrated by economic misery and their husbands' unemployment, many of them demanded change. Having been granted the right to vote in 1919, women started to get interested in politics and attended meetings, particularly those of a nationalist political party stirring up crowds in Munich's beer cellars. These women recorded their memories in writing, in letters, diaries and autobiographies. I heard for the first time a speaker named Adolf Hitler. I went into the house, entranced by his ideas, his powerful language, the fanatic glow of his eyes. I finally saw an answer to the misery of the German people. All I could think about was God thank you for giving me the courage. Women are participants and present from the beginning of the creation of the Nazi Party. And those who participate from the 1920s are women who lived through the First World War, who also lived through misery or defeat. So this generation who really carries the Nazi project from the beginning and who invents it. In 1926, the first National Socialist Women's Union was created. Housewives, students or workers, women from all social classes were actively involved in the ranks of the young party. In the 1932 election campaign, they worked twice as hard to get Adolf Hitler to power. They printed tracts, made swastika flags, gave out food and drinks to men in meetings. And sometimes, they put their lives at risk. Yes, we were proud of our banners at the Croix-Gamée. At night, when I would stick posters with my mother or put tracts in the mailboxes, We were pursued by the Red Army. I don't know where we got the courage to face these dangers. I think we had simply become fanatics. The Nazi Party's victory in the elections was also won for the first female fighters. Thousands of them hailed Adolf Hitler. He first appeared on the 30th of January 1933, as Chancellor of the Reich. There was something going on, fans, music, aha, and afterwards... The Nazi Party would know how to exploit this hope for a better future. This feminine fanaticism, it would give women a role that both empowered them and served the purpose of the Third Reich. Behind his gentleman's airs, Adolf Hitler held strong opinions about women and their role in society. In one of his innumerable monologues, he declared in front of one of his closest co-workers, a woman's duty is to be beautiful and have children. The female bird grooms her feathers to please her male and broods on her eggs. In return, the male protects the nest against invaders. That says it all. For Hitler, world order and politics must be dominated by men. There is no place for women. I think that Hitler propagated the subordination of women under men very early on. In the NSDAP in 1921, he assured that women were not allowed to have leadership positions in the NSDAP. That women were, in the best case, considered to be comrades, comrades-in-arms. But always in subordinate positions. Subordinated to men, German women did, however, hold an essential role in Nazi society. As mothers, they had to bring purely Germanic descendants into the German nation. Nazism values the role of the mother from the very beginning, which is the pillar, and even according to Hitler, it is also the backbone of the state. It was also a valorization of the role of women, and above all, it attributed... The power to be the guarantor of the Aryan race and therefore also the guarantor of the Nazi society that was being built. The women were very important to him. They had the children born into the world. They had the German children born. These are our women, his women. Yes, if you think about it tonight, what a madness. Very many German women sympathized with this anti-feminist discourse. Indeed, the majority of them was unaware of the suffragettes' struggle and looked down on the liberalization of morals in large cities. It wasn't all about Babylon Berlin. It wasn't all, you know, the roaring excitement of the bright lights of the big city. There were many women living in small towns and in the countryside for whom Weimar was not about, you know, wearing silk stockings and working in a shop. It was carrying on, as they always had done, working on the farm or perhaps helping their husbands in the butcher's shop. I mean, they had... quite traditional lives and quite traditional roles. And for them, of course, the offer was highly attractive, to say that it is important that women raise children and that they play their role in the family accordingly. We again have the right to flourish in our role as women, as mothers. We are no longer reduced to being females, stamped with animal eroticism. We can finally raise a real line of men to whom we will teach righteousness, pride and purity. Far from imposing this new role on German women, the Nazis would take measures for them to go back to their kitchen stoves of their own free will. As early as 1933, the regime offered a marriage loan in the form of vouchers for young couples who wanted to start a family. This could go up to 1,000 Reichsmarks, which was one year's salary for a worker. The regime wanted children, but not just any kind. First condition, a thorough medical examination. This medical examination will then establish whether or not this couple is in good health according to Nazi criteria. This means not to be affected by an infertile hereditary disease, not to have sexually transmissible diseases, etc. Only healthy children from healthy mothers should be brought to the world. Also die Aufgabe der deutschen Mutter war, Nachwuchs zu bringen. To bring, to reproduce healthy young people. With each birth, one quarter of the marriage loan was forgiven. A family's debt was cleared at four children. Indeed, this was the minimum number of children the regime required to uphold the so-called German race. Second condition to get the loan, working women had to give up their job. The jobs available were given to men. As a result, a spectacular decrease in mass unemployment, Germany celebrated the return of economic growth. And then we were happy that peace had returned. Now it was running. That it was running with the Hakenkreuz. Well, that was part of it. And these black, white, red flags too. Indispensable to his political projects, Hitler cherished his German mothers. He liked to say that cradles were sleeping armies. The Fuhrer then created a special distinction. The Cross of Honour of the German Mother. A friend of mine's mother, she had five children and she had a mother's cross. She wore the mother's cross with pride and she was congratulated. And so it was with many other mothers, of course. Then they just put children into the world, because Hitler needed soldiers. A bronze medal was awarded for four children, silver for six children and gold for eight children. In total, 5 million women were awarded this distinction. The regime was successful. Between 1933 and 1939, the number of births increased by 25%. Being on the right side, that was the whole issue. The chosen ones of the regime fully embraced their role of guarantors of the German race and suppliers of soldiers. But women would also play an active part in the birth policy. They would help ruthlessly select German citizens. To establish its preposterous idea of a pure nation, the regime needed to control births. Midwives were the first to help. The state needed them to approach mothers-to-be within the privacy of their homes. In a time when the birth of the house was normal, and not the birth of the clinic, midwives were trusted people. And the regime has bound the midwives into a state health system and thus given them a role. On the other hand, the midwives had to report. That means they had a duty to report. That means the midwife comes, a malformed child comes into the world, and the midwife reports it. There was also a bonus for every reported child. And when children came to the world who were ill, who had, for example, a rhinitis, they should be immediately reported to the health office. The lists compiled by midwives were passed on to Nazi doctors. These had tragic consequences for mothers and children as proved by this diagnosis. Rosalie Lischka was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, According to medical know-how, it was highly probable that her descendants may also suffer from serious mental illnesses. In accordance with paragraph 1, patient Lischka had to be sterilized. The greatest and most coercive intervention that the regime carried out in the field of population policy was mass sterilization, an anti-natalist policy, sterilizing perhaps a couple of hundred thousand men and a couple of hundred thousand women. But soon, this cruel preventive measure was no longer enough. From 1939 onwards, the regime also decided to eliminate the part of the population that didn't comply with the Nazi ideal. The NSDAP tried to implement the principle of racial hygiene. And to this there was this abhorrent idea that one could eradicate hereditary diseases by simply killing the people who are not healthy, that they are not allowed to have children, that they are forced to be sterilized, and that all those who are there now and are malformed or carry hereditary diseases in them, could Hitler then authorized mass killing, you officially entitled Action T4. This was a euthanasia program aimed at all disabled people, very both the physically and mentally handicapped. much. A hand-picked medical team was summoned to the Chancellery at the beginning of 1940 to be informed of their sinister project. Among them, around 20 nurses. They learned that they were now in charge of killing human beings who the Nazi doctrine qualified as lives unworthy of being lived. The participation in this program was based on volunteerism. No one forced us to join. None of the fans present had any objections. Then Blankenburg, the chief physician, made us make a confidentiality oath. The regime created new training schools and a different type of nurse The regime trained over 600,000 nurses according to these principles. The T4 euthanasia program was undertaken in secret locations on German soil. The victims were taken from their hospitals to Hadamar, Grafeneck and Hartheim, execution centers where they were assassinated in the first gas chambers in the history of Nazism. Nurses were essential for the smooth running of this mass cleansing. Sisters were involved, among other things, in bringing the patients from the facilities to these killing facilities, that is, to accompany the transport. They then helped the patients, for example, when they undressed. They calmed the patients and usually led them to the gas chambers. From 1941 onwards, German disabled persons were executed in all the psychiatric hospitals in the Reich. Methods changed. Some patients were left to starve to death, others were assassinated by overdoses of medication. In direct contact with patients, nurses took action, like in this hospital in Großschweidnitz, near Dresden. According to the orders of Dr. Herzer, I had to calm down the patients who were completely exhausted or too aggressive. Those who gave us too much work by constantly sanding their sheets. After the war, these nurses would conceal their responsibilities behind the orders given by doctors. But the truth is far more complex. With the collaboration of midwives and nurses, an estimated 300,000 physically or mentally disabled people were killed. The regime would decide whether they were worthy of living and populating Germany. For them, the ruthless Nazi indoctrination machine would be deployed. The message hammered home by ideologues was unequivocal. German children belong to the state. In order to educate good little soldiers who would obey orders, national socialist education started from a very young age. When we're in the school in the morning, the first hour... Heil Hitler! And we all, Heil Hitler! So began the lesson. From the age of 10, girls were enrolled in Hitler Youth organizations. The most important one was the BDM, Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of German Girls. This was the girl's wing of Hitler Youth. Like almost 4.5 million young girls, Elsa and Lisa were part of these organizations. With 70 years hindsight, they bear witness to this indoctrination. That was in 1940. And I was excited. I got a uniform. All the girls had the same. And we were all one unit. So there was nothing else. You had no other interests at all. And above all, I had to take out the earrings. A German girl doesn't wear earrings, so you shouldn't put on make-up. You should have blue eyes, blonde hair and go straight and be white in the snow. We sang, we were told, we were laughed at. We also went on a weekend trip, sat around the campfire in the evening and found it romantic and you just felt good about it. I liked going to these meetings, because I was a single child. And I was already very happy to be part of it, to belong to it. I imagined it to be important. Yes, important or maybe a little proud. Pride and a feeling of belonging to a community. For many girls, the BDM was like a second family. In some cases, the organization distanced the young members from their parents and even caused conflicts at home. Meine Mutter hat mir mal gesagt, You know, Hitler and the other leaders just want to do something for themselves. rausschlagen. And I know, I argued with my mother about it. I said, no, mother, they are idealistic. They just want something good. Propaganda was always close at hand. Songs, sports or charity work were actually opportunities to instill the principles of Nazi ideology and standardize ways of thinking. Unsere Führerin hat von Adolf Hitler erzählt, dass er das große, großdeutsche Reich retten wird, vor allem vor den Juden. Und dass die Juden unehrliche Menschen wären. And money lenders, you couldn't trust them at all, and we don't need people like that. They will all end up in a labor camp. Oh, I know, so one sentence, it was public, we knew it. The Jews are our misfortune. Brought up on a diet of eugenic, racist and anti-Semitic ideology, hordes of young girls were eager to serve their righteous goals. Hitler had great projects for them. They were to become the conquerors of the Lebensraum, the living space which the Fuhrer was about to conquer in the East. 1939. After his victory over Poland, Hitler extended the Reich's boundaries. Now he had to Germanize and populate these new territories. The regime decided to settle Volksdeutsche there. These were German minorities from Romania, Baltic countries or Ukraine. Most of them no longer spoke German. But in Nazi ideology, their ascendance, albeit distance, sufficed. Led and guided by advisors sent from Germany, they had to be transformed into good Nazis. Women were eager to enlist in this gigantic colonization project, presented as historical for the future of Germany. Women's organizations and welfare organizations had planted themselves very firmly within this conquered territory, with the message that we belong here too, we have a task here too. Adult women and younger women who then were presented with opportunities to go and work in a territory that was presented to them as a great place for them to work, where they could do useful, important things, where they could have a good deal of autonomy and a scope for... Using their skills and talents in the service of this great task, and this was something that clearly had some appeal for certain types of women and young women. The East needs you. The roll call from the authorities was met with huge success. Around 500,000 women signed up. At the age of 20, Elsa was one of these adventurers. Conditioned by propaganda, she went to teach her language to the young Germans in the making. During the journey through Poland, the sun rose. It was... Richtig schön. Und ich hatte mit einem Mal in mir das Gefühl, ich fahre in eine Heimat, die ich überhaupt nicht kannte. Also, ich habe das nie vergessen. Elsa shared this pioneering enthusiasm with a young Berliner, Melita Maschmann, a former BDM member and fanatic Nazi. Melita graduated from high school and asked for her transfer to the Polish territories annexed to the Reich, called the Wartegau. She worked as leader of a group of girls, colonizers like herself. I was happy to work in the Warthegau. I would not have exchanged this place with any other in Germany. Myself and my comrades thought it was an honour to be able to conquer this territory for our people and their culture. Our existence seemed to be a great adventure for us. This coming out of home, this self-organisation, that of course had emancipatory effects for me in my evaluation, even if it was now in the context of an ideology that cannot really be called emancipatory. But the young ladies would live this adventure at the expense of the local population. 100,000 Poles were brutally evicted from their homes. Melita and the other volunteers' mission was to prepare for the arrival of new settlers who would live in the confiscated houses. We tackled this issue with great enthusiasm. Most of these houses were dirty, which confirmed our sense of superiority. It was the famous Polish mess, and we found that it was time for German peasants, clean and orderly, to resume these areas. With devotion and passion, these colonizers turned Polish and Jewish villages into German ones. They also took part in the confiscation of clothes and furniture, which were then given out to newcomers. The helpless local population had to be at the service of these new rulers. I had a 14-year-old Polish woman. Der Vater war Zimmerer, Zimmermeister, und die waren... Originally from the village and were sold, they had no farm, were sold and lived somewhere outside, all around in huts. It was bad, and it was something we should not officially touch on. I've read propaganda brochures acknowledging that young women will naturally feel sorry for people who are suffering. But there's a sort of almost like a sort of training mechanism going on in this propaganda where... Yes, you may feel these feelings, but you must get over them through thinking about the larger picture. The larger picture of the war, Germany's future, and so on. I have nothing more to say about how I worked there. ...in mir gehabt als das Gefühl, ich muss diesen Kindern was geben. Die brauchen das jetzt. As a reward for their flawless commitment, the regime kept its promises. These young women were given responsibilities and power which they had never experienced before. When Polish workers were showing themselves to be lazy or impertinent, the German farmers came to pick me up. One day, I even gave a slap to a young man. Women have a lot of room to maneuver, because you have to imagine that these are very segregated societies that we could qualify as apartheid, where every person belonging to the German racial community has a huge power over the local society, including men. For the regime, one thing was certain, the women's workforce had become indispensable. In 1941, territories under Nazi occupation stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the doors of Moscow, requiring a gigantic administrative apparatus. 500,000 auxiliaries worked for the Wehrmacht, 22,000 auxiliaries for the SS, and 50,000 secretaries were employed in the Reich's work agencies, in public works companies, but also in repression services such as the Gestapo. You have an idea of a stand-up artist who is sitting somewhere in the distance at her typewriter. But of course she had to write down what he was saying. The interrogation protocols come from somewhere. Of course there were also interrogations that took place at the desk, which look like in a police station today. But as soon as she was tortured, there were certain areas in which you didn't hear the screams. And yet women had to write down. They were the ones who typed lists of confiscated Jewish goods and execution orders. The most zealous even created shocking documents like this record of executions of Baltic and Belarusian Jews. In her presentation, the secretary showed proof of grim creativity. They knew everything that was going on, what was being done by the Wehrmacht, the revenge actions, the anti-partisan actions, of course they knew everything. Sometimes in their peaceful offices, they decided on the life or death of prisoners. Here's how a secretary of the Gestapo in Warsaw described her job. On the day of executions, we were given a head file. If we had a hundred of these files and we had to execute 50 people, C'était les secrétaires qui choisissaient les dossiers au hasard. Sometimes a secretary would say to the other one, Hey Erika, why don't we add this one too? Ordinary actions also were part of an apparatus that also led to the deaths of millions of people, even in a labour office, where in fact the conditions to which you're sending people to go and work are so brutal that they may lead to the illness and the death of the person that you're sending. You know, you are part of a murderer's machine. Even if you are well away from guns. Behind their typewriters, the innocent office help turned into murder accomplices serving the Nazi regime. The Third Reich managed to enroll all women in its murderous projects, even those who didn't have an official function in the state apparatus, SS wives. They also had their part to play to help their husbands become killing machines. The regime's killing machines were the SS troops, the elite of the Third Reich. Some of these men were part of the Einsatzgruppen, the SS death squads who shot hundreds of thousands of people to death. Others worked in the concentration camps where Europe's Jews died, exhausted by work or in the gas chambers. Their wives were carefully selected. To have the right to get married, some couples had to provide up to 150 documents to prove their Aryan descent over four generations. 240,000 women passed this test. SS women, we're talking about wives, sisters, but also girls, have a very privileged status in this order that is understood as the Nazi elite. They have a very particular role within the SS order. The wives were highly encouraged to follow their husbands to their workplace where death pervaded. They were assigned a specific role. These women have already felt like the ones who make it possible for men to have privacy, to have a family and play with their children in addition to the fear, and thus to recover and thus to make themselves fit for the tasks that they have the next day, for the difficult service that they do in the service of the regime. One of these women was Lina Heydrich. The wife of SS Reinhardt Heydrich, in charge of the extermination plan of Europe's Jews, she was put up in the royal castle in Prague while her husband supervised the executions in the field. Reinhardt and I are happy. He is happy that I manage all the domestic problems without him. At work, he must be available for the others all day. He must constantly make sometimes difficult decisions. He then appreciates his small, quiet home. Some SS wives were present on the sites of massacres. They took part in the banquet celebrating the end of a day's grim work. In the evening, they cleaned their husband or fiancé's blood-spattered boots. Indoctrinated and indifferent to horror, one of their favorite pastimes was to visit the ghettos, where the Nazis isolated European Jews in inhuman conditions. Thank you. Ingrid Greiser, the daughter of the Wartegau commander, wrote to her fiancé about the Lodz ghetto. You know, it's really great. There's a whole part of the city that's closed, surrounded by barbed wires. What we see behind is ruckus. These people are just hanging around in the streets. Everyone has to wear two yellow stars on their clothes, one in front and one behind. It's Papa who invented that. He proudly calls it the starry sky of Lodz. You know, we can't really feel pity for these people. I have the impression that they don't feel things the same way as we do. They have no sense of humiliation they're suffering. If these women stayed at their fathers', fiancés' or husbands' sides, it was because they enjoyed many advantages, notably in concentration and extermination camps. In Auschwitz, Commander Rudolf Hoess moved in with his wife Hedwig and their five children. They lived in a villa with a garden 300 meters away from the crematory ovens and close to the cells where prisoners were tortured. Screaming was audible from the Hoess living room. You have to imagine that Mrs. Hoess had a certain social role in the SS community. She often gave receptions, her husband often traveled to Berlin. She had a very comfortable life with several domestiques, who were obviously all camp prisoners. To organize sumptuous dinner parties and complete her wardrobe, Mrs. Höss simply helped herself to the camp's reserves where all the goods stolen from the deported people were stored. With no official function, all the SS wives claimed they were infinitely powerful over the material and human resources of the camps. Also, ein direktes Profitieren von... There was also slave labor, where women got themselves forced laborers from the concentration camp, who then perceived household functions, who made the garden, who made the construction measures and, of course, massively enriched themselves with what was to be obtained from the suffering of others. That is quite clear. And of course the women participated and they knew where it came from. Dressed, made up, and in fine physical form, these pictures of SS officers' wives taken just a few dozen meters away from the crematory ovens are shocking. Such is the contrast with the inhuman everyday lives of the victims. In fact, we don't have an example where SS wives would have refused or protested against their husbands' work. On the contrary, for these women, there was... There is little interest in questioning the work of their husbands, especially since they were also adhering to the Nazi ideology. The Höss family lived in such luxury at Auschwitz that Hedwig declared, this is where I want to live and die. Making the most of the system, the SS wives experienced the best years of their lives in these factories of death. In exchange for privileges, the regime demanded a lot from these women. It even enlisted them for the worst. They become concentration and extermination camp guards and contribute directly to the torture and execution of millions of people. Concentration camp guard. This macabre occupation was in high demand from 1943 onwards, when the regime decided to turn the concentration camps into slave recruiting grounds for German industry. If large firms wanted to use the workforce of deported women, they had to provide guards. Very often they recruited among the workers of the very same factories. In a letter to a candidate, the administration of Ravensbrück camp praised the advantages of the job offered. no professional qualification is required for this position since all you have to do is watch over prisoners at work an easy task to fulfill far from assembly lines and offering highly appealing advantages like official accommodations located very close to the concentration camp These women were employees in the public service, so they were also paid accordingly. They were also insured with pension and health insurance. And... The guards all started their career at Ravensbrück, a woman's camp 80 kilometers away from Berlin. 4,000 women were trained there. The new recruits didn't know what to expect and soon learned the true nature of their work from the experienced guards. Ravensbrück was the school of brutality. From the moment we got out of our cars, we could hear them shouting and calling us by all names. They had, like the SS soldiers, what we called a gummi. It's a stick, quite big actually, to hit us. They had boots, they were easy to use for kicks. We will all see afterwards, throughout life, when these officers beat women to death, and sometimes to death. They are women who become executioners. The majority chose to stay to watch over prisoners assigned to different textile workshops. The prisoners were also exploited until exhaustion in work crews on construction projects. To speed the pace up, the guards sometimes used extreme brutality. Probably, women are no different from men. I mean, the socialization into violence took a few days for men, and I think it was no different for women. I think the idea that you do it for a good cause, for a good cause, that's one thing you've done well. It's good to be able to suppress what's happening there. What then also came psychologically, they suddenly had power over other people, over other women who came from other social statuses, who came from Poland, from France, from Italy. And then they were able to determine their fate. It's them who are the masters of our lives. Their power over the deported people and their new social status allowed these guards to disregard the suffering they inflicted upon thousands of women every day. The photos that the women have taken of themselves in the KZ say two things. On the one hand, a pride for their work, for everything that goes with it. They also show an idyll. They also show a lot of free time and they show a very normal everyday life. It's nothing. The women signal that it's a workplace for everyone. On the back of one of these photos, one can read... A souvenir of my happy years of service to my parents. Here's my faithful dog, Greff, your Hertha. Brutal and ruthless, the guards contributed to the suffering and death of millions of women in Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Like the men, they were guilty of crimes against humanity. After the war, however, very few of them were accountable for their actions before a court. 1945. with the liberation of the camps the horror of the Nazi regime was exposed to the world it also discovered that women took part in these crimes as the most visible accomplices of the regime some camp guards were brought to trial by Allied courts they all pleaded not guilty and tried to minimize their role Je considère avoir été un petit rouage sans volonté propre au sein d'une machine. Je n'étais pas libre, je vivais comme toutes les détenues en prison. Je suis innocente. They will also say, we only did our job, we watched the detainees, the detainees behaved badly, and so if we ever used violence, it was justified violence. But for the most part, they will spend their time denying any violence. We will confront them with their actions. They will say that they have been overrun, they have been psychologically exhausted. During these first post-war trials, some were sentenced to death and hanged, just like the men. Allied justice also condemned the nurses enrolled in the euthanasia program, such as Elsa Sasha in Gross-Wiehresau. Sentenced to 15 years in prison, she tried to justify her deeds. I admit that I have experienced scruples by administering these medicines to these poor people. However, I have repulsed these scruples out of pity for the sick. Moreover, I thought that the orders of the Ministry of Justice were legitimate. Responsibility lies with this institution. Yet, these trials of women, highly mediatized at the time, were rare exceptions. The vast majority of guards and nurses slipped through the nets of justice and the judgment of history. It was easier for the former watchwifes to come under it. First of all, there comes the image of the peace-loving woman again, that you just didn't suspect at all that there were so many women. You didn't know the number for a long time, so how many women actually worked as watchwifes. And for women it was relatively easy to get married, to give up your name and then to come under it in this way. Some accomplices of the regime, like the SS secretaries and wives, were even completely ignored by justice. If they were summoned to court, it was only as witnesses against their superiors and husbands. The idea was that women could not be held responsible in terms of gender. And because of that, the responsibility that women carried was exposed. And of course, the women also participated. So it was a possibility to get away with it. Accomplices or murderesses? The former fanatics of the Third Reich soon managed to blend into the population after 1945. The mother's crosses and other compromising photos vanished into attics or dustbins. In the absence of men who died on the field or who made prisoners of war, the future of Germany was in women's hands in the first post-war years. German women managed to write their own legend and erased any hint of responsibility in the crimes of the Third Reich.