Analysis Of Claudia Koonz's Mothers In The Fatherland

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The next text analyzed for this study is the first monograph read for the study, therefore, there is a lot of information that had not been previously discussed by the latter authors: Claudia Koonz 's 1987 text Mothers in the Fatherland. The author begins her text with a Preface where she discusses her interview with Gertrude Scholtz-Klink, the leader of the Women 's Labor Service. While this is not the first time in the study that Scholtz-Klink 's name appears, but Koonz 's discussion of the interview personifies Scholtz-Klink, rather than just make her a two-dimensional character in historical research. For the first time in this study, the reader can understand the reasoning some people (right or wrong) sided with the Nazi Party. The interview …show more content…

She specifically discusses Gertrude Scholtz-Klink throughout the text, but she superficially discusses other women of power in her text as well. Women in leadership positions remained subservient to male leaders in order to gain "short-term rewards and socialization with male superiors," according to Koonz, thus allowing them some sense of power, but still remaining proper women in the eyes of Hitler. Koonz also discusses female SS Guards and how most concentration camp victims found them to be worse than the men. Koonz touches on these women of power, but the majority of her text is concerned with the grassroots and common …show more content…

Koonz is able to challenge that stereotype and provide more background and fleshed out information about Jewish women during the Third Reich. According to Koonz, many Jewish women took a "wait-and-see" attitude when the Nazi party came to power because Germans from all backgrounds (including Jewish) were accustomed to secondary/lesser treatment of Jews already. She is also able to give the reader a better understanding of the confusion and perversion of the Third Reich. While Jews were being persecuted in the early 1930s, there was not a legal meaning for "Jew" until 1935,and Jewish women and children were sent to mass execution sites first because of the "chivalry" of Nazi

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