The B.D.M. — Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) — brackets all German girls between fourteen and twenty-one; those from ten to fourteen belong to the Jungmädels (Young Girls). Both organizations have set out to prepare the girls for their two future professions, National Socialist motherhood and war-machines, either as nurses in the field or as “defenders of the homeland.” Everything about race and motherhood is taught them, as well as everything about Eintopfgerichte (one-pot dishes), Ersatz fat, the uses of slops, how to risk one’s life for the cause, and first aid.
“Maidens, practice sport!”
That is Herr von Schirach addressing The German Girl. On May 9, 1937, he issued an appeal typical of the confusion about voluntary membership. “German youth,” it goes on, “belongs to the Führer! The law according to which the H.J. and the B.D.M. once were constituted has now become the law governing all of German youth. The will to stake one’s life, accomplishment and restraint today inspires all German boys and girls. And so we count upon you, German maidens between seventeen and twenty-one years of age, upon those of you who do not belong to the B.D.M. We are eager to bring up a young and healthy people. And so the duty of the B.D.M. for physical efficiency is valid for you, too. Practice sport; train your bodies, grow healthy and fortify your powers of resistance and so grow up to be healthy women, conscious of yourselves, ready to stake your lives and with strong powers of resistance. Report at once in the building of the daily paper of the above-named Reichsbund for physical exercise and fulfill your sports duties!
“Youth Leader of the German Reich “Signed: Schirach “Representative of the Youth Leader for Physical Education of German Youth “Signed: von Tschammer, “ Obergebietsführer ”
This was published in the Völkischer Beobachter; and the Reich News Service added the following:
“Hereby the final step is taken to include all German youth in the service of the common weal. Any male youths not included in the Hitler Youth are compelled to take part either in the Workers’ Service or the Military Service ( Wehrmacht ). But there was no arrangement for female youth of this age, so far as they were not included in the B.D.M. There was no organization to prepare them for their future duties toward the people and the state or to educate them to the will to stake their lives. “The first thing necessary for this practical ability to stake one’s life is the physical efficiency of the girls, and besides this, a thorough knowledge of service in case of accidents, sick-nursing, protection against air raids and poison gases and, last but not least, housekeeping. This is taught in courses given under the auspices of the Red Cross, the Reich Union for Air Protection ( Reichluftschutzbund ) and the Youth Department of the D.A.F. (German Workers’ Front). The physical efficiency of girls born between 1916 and 1920 is taken over by the German Reich Union for Physical Training at the instigation of the Reichsjugendführer. “Here, too, the membership of the girls is entirely voluntary. The girls become individual members of the German Reich Union for Physical Training through any organization they may choose. Each week there are two-hour evenings spent in physical exercise, starting with the fundamentals of physical training (such as caring for the body, light athletics, gymnastics, swimming, folk dances and diving). Beyond this, especially gifted girls are united in separate groups and trained according to their aptitudes. “Of course the B.D.M., as the only German organization for girls, takes active part in the education of the young. From now on, there will be close cooperation between the D.R.F.L. and the B.D.M. As the Leader of Reich Sport emphasized, the B.D.M. should be the model organization for the physical training of German girls and women. The first aim of the members of the newly organized classes should be to win the efficiency medals (I and II) of the B.D.M., as well as the German Sport medal. Besides this, the Gau and District Service offices of the D.R.F.L. will appoint a B.D.M. Führerin to accomplish this new task. She will be nominated by the Obergau of the district in question. “And so the line of activity which has always been decisive for the B.D.M. sport department will, from now on, be decisive for the entire generation of German girls. The object of all sport-work in the B.D.M., to bring up healthy women, conscious of their bodies, ready to stake their lives, and with strong powers of resistance, is now completely attained, through the inclusion of all girls from seventeen to twenty-one.”
At last, in this masterpiece of verbal confusion (the reference is always to Mädel, a pre-Nazi vulgarism for Mädchen, which is never used now), a fairly exact statement of the B.D.M. and its aims is made. But the girls know the B.D.M.’s first object, which is not mentioned here with the necessary precision. They learn it in all their courses in biology, racial science, and heredity, and they continually read about it in all of their books and magazines. They are, above all, future mothers; and they know that it is impossible to begin this function too early in life, and unnecessary to be married to perform this important service to the Führer and the State. In the periodical Rasse (Race) of March, 1937, appeared the statement: “Every healthy child of every German Mother means one more battle won in the fight for existence of the German people. And so, in an ethical sense, it is impossible to deny to the unmarried German woman the right to become a mother.”
And Alfred Rosenberg, in his Mythus des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, hammers the real point home: “And so the German Reich of the future will have to regard the childless woman — regardless of whether or not she is married — as an incomplete member of the National Commonwealth.”
This demand to bear children is repeated, in all its variations, with more and more of its implications becoming clear. The Führer has demanded this, and nothing else, of the German women; his gospel word must be carried out, in any manner at all. It is a matter of complete indifference to the authorities, for instance, whether the woman loves the man or not, or whether there is a different man each year, if only they are “racially pure” and “satisfactory in point of health.” Love and faithfulness lose their rights, along with freedom, justice, and reason. This need not be mentioned by von Schirach and von Tschammer. There are supplementary publications….
Professor Ernst Bergmann of Leipzig says, in an essay called Knowledge and the Spirit of Motherhood:
“Life-long monogamy is perverse and would prove harmful to our race. Were this institution ever really enforced — and fortunately this is almost never the case in reality — the race must decay. Every reasonably constructed State will have to regard a woman who has not given birth as dishonored. There are plenty of willing and qualified youths ready to unite with the girls and women on hand. Fortunately, one boy of good race suffices for twenty girls. And the girls, for their part, would gladly fulfill the demand for children, were it not for the nonsensical so-called civilized idea of the monogamous permanent marriage, an idea in complete contradiction to all natural facts.”
German girls have been fed on this tribal literature for five years, reading and memorizing it, with all other possibilities removed, with hope of profession and education cut off, working as unskilled laborers and Kriegsreserve — war reserves. Their hope? lessness is reflected in the university statistics, which read 19,400 women matriculated at German universities in 1931, 9700 in the Hitler-winter of 1935-36 (the drop is 50 per cent). More specifically, there were fourteen women studying law at Tubingen in 1933, four in 1934, and one in the winter of 1936.
As for non-German girls, left with no rights to professional life; they acquiesce under the one demand made continually and angrily of them. And the practical possibilities of becoming a mother are excellent, as early as at fourteen years of age. The “State Youth” offers encouragements and opportunities, with its feasts, its farm years, and hay-loft nights. Parents watch their daughters from a distance, helplessly; they might object, but to whom? We know the character of Baldur von Schirach, and there is only one man mightier than he. The number of illegitimate pregnancies and births among the members of the “State Youth” is tremendous.