Background: The Frauen Warte was the Nazi Party’s illustrated magazine for women. Originally a biweekly, by this stage of the war it appeared every three weeks. This article appeared shortly after Goebbels’ Total War Speech on 18 February 1943, an attempt to encourage the German population to greater efforts to win the war. This article reinforces that message. It also appeared just before Hitler’s birthday on April 20.
The illustration is from the facing page in the magazine. The Hitler quotation says: “In this greatest battle of all time, we may not expect that Providence will gift us with victory. Each and every nation will be weighed, and that which is found to weigh too little must perish.” This is from Hitler’s proclamation of 30 January 1943, the tenth anniversary of the Nazi takeover of power.
The source: Kurt Maßmann, “Kraft aus Liebe und Glauben,” NS Frauen Warte, (11), #14 (April, 1943), p. 185.
The enormous scale of the Führer’s personality and the supreme historical greatness of the man to whom Providence has given complete responsibility for the fate and future of his people, and more than that for an entire part of the planet, becomes most clearly and beautifully apparent in that he, the greatest of all those who shape and direct the world, always bows in honor before the mothers of our people and has reestablished the dignity of German womanhood. And it is no accident that during the greatest domestic battles for Germany, and to a particular degree at the beginning of this struggle to preserve all that our Reich has won, the Führer’s words always found their deepest and most immediate echo with German women. Is not the strength of heart that comes from the depths of faith, and all the strength of spirit, that have always brought about the world’s greatest miracles — is it any wonder that these things are found deep in the hearts of women, waiting for an awakening cry?
All
of life is filled with polar tensions. Light and darkness, good and evil,
god and the devil, hate and love, these are the poles. All that is good
is light and godly, and everything great comes from love, however much
it may seem threatened by evil. And is it not true that the Führer’s
mission and his labors in the last analysis come from the limitless love
he has for his people, and is it not also true that the dreadful danger
that this war brings us stems from boundless hate, from the world hatred
of the eternal Jew, and from the dull hatred from the eastern steppes,
a hatred directed against everything that is clear and noble, as is evident
in our people? The nature of the women of our blood is so loving that,
in the depths of their spirit and in the faith of their hearts, they often
understand the nature of this war and its results more deeply than they
can express in words. The German woman serves her people with love in
the midst of its deepest need, and her love gives her strength to sacrifice,
to do without, to do her daily work! She prays for strength, and for still
more strength, so that for the sake of love she can be brave and courageous
in hard times, in the midst of danger, freeing herself from all faint-heartedness
and fear that may lurk within her heart. She wants to remain proud and
unbroken, despite her personal sorrows, maintaining the highest dignity
of womanhood in the midst of her pain, until we reach the end.
We all know, and each German woman and mother knows it above all, how thankful the Führer would have been if fate had allowed him to build playgrounds instead of the shells and bombs of this war, to build homes instead of heavy guns or tanks, things that would help a new generation to grow up in light and sunshine under a friendly sky! Truly the Führer is such a great statesman that he has no need of the bloody laurel wreaths of war, and he is such a great and good man that the happy laughter of children, for whom his work is preparing a better future, is sufficient thanks. More than that, there is no way to thank him for the sacrifice of his personal life, for his enormous labors that far overshadow those of ordinary people, for the huge responsibility and burden he bears. The life and work of such a great man can never be thanked or rewarded, for there is no way to repay him or to thank him. The labors and sacrifices he makes are a gift for us all, and all that we can give in return are our love, our thankfulness, and our faith in Germany and in his path to the future, even in the hardest days of threat and danger. May fate accept only this thanks from us: Our holy passion to follow our Führer in our small way, to be worthy of him, and in a time like ours to do even more than duty requires of us under the laws of war.
That is why we do not become faint-hearted and weak when we think of the peace and joy that the Führer would have given his people with his full heart, if only it had been possible. Rather, we become stronger, ever stronger, wanting to do every last thing that the unforgiving laws of the war may demand of us, though neither the Führer nor Germans wanted war, or carelessly began it. Indeed, for the first time in our history we are learning to hate — to hate the Jewish-led world conspiracy that took us from our peaceful path to face a terrible danger to our very lives, and which threatens our children with the bloody Moloch whose frightening lust for revenge threatens to fall upon them in a new and terrible attack by Genghis Khan! We have found the power to hate from the love, the unconditional love we have for our people and its life, and from the love we have for our children. This hate will make us as hard and pitiless as the war requires us to be!
That is the nature of the total war that we are forced to wage, and thus we all fight and sacrifice and work, and German women close the ranks in factories and workshops. Everything is at risk, and the end will be either collapse or complete fulfillment. Our goal is to make Germany the true model of a happy motherland and a sunny land for children!
The Führer once wrote this beautiful image of the live-preserving and live-giving role of the woman in the life and future of a people:
“What a man proves through heroic courage, the woman proves in eternal patient suffering. Each child that she brings into the world is a battle she fights for the existence or nonexistence of her people.”
And in these words, the Führer made clear the standing of the woman in the life of nations:
“Men may build worlds — but a people stands or falls with its women.”
German women can give no greater or more beautiful gift to the Führer for his birthday than to recognize the high responsibility these words demand, and with clear understanding, with the faith and love that are their very nature, to accept the sacrifices and demands that this decisive struggle requires, and do what their personal abilities and possibilities allow! There could be no more beautiful picture on that day than to have the broad river of bravery, heroism, and unshakable courage that ties the Führer to the men who are fighting for their people joined and enlarged by the broad river of love and faith of every woman of the people! For — understand this — from the loving hearts of all to the heart of the one, the Führer finds ever new strength for his work and for his way! The power of our age flows from the Führer, but it must flow back to hima million-fold from the hearts of his people. Then he will know that he is leading a strong, a faithful, a truly worthy people, to the day of final fulfillment!
We all follow him on this path — with our renewed oath as our gift to the Führer on his birthday — man for man, woman for woman, in love and faith. We follow him on this path through the raging fire of war, for he is the one and only way to a better German future, a future that leads to the eternal life of the people and to a joyous land of happy mothers and laughing children.
[Page copyright © 2003 by Randall Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction. My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page.]
Go to the 1933-1945 Page.
Go to the German Propaganda Home Page.