How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

According to Strasser, “for a man, military service is the most profound and valuable form of participation—for the woman it is motherhood!”3 Paula Siber, the acting head of the Association of German Women, in a 1933 document meant to reflect official National Socialist state policy on women, declares that “to be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious force of one’s soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life…the highest calling of the National Socialist woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for her people.”