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For Girls Only

The schools for girls at Hubertendorf-Türnitz, Heythuysen, Colmar-Berg, and Achern are the least well-known and well-understood component of the Napola system. This chapter begins by giving an account of how the girls’ schools came into being, their aims, and the heated ministerial debates which dogged their foundation. It then describes everyday life at the girls’ schools, and the similarities and differences between their curriculum and that of the boys’ schools. Finally, it sites the aims and practice of the so-called Mädchen-Napolas within recent historiography on women and gender in Nazi Germany. The political infighting which the girls’ schools provoked, the lack of clarity surrounding their programme, and the piecemeal and contested nature of their development, reflect the fundamental flexibility (or incoherence) of the Nazi state’s attitude towards the ‘women question’ more generally. On the one hand, the girls who attended the Mädchen-Napolas were educated to believe that growing up female in Nazi Germany need be no bar to experiencing comradeship, leadership, and a successful career, and they were given an education broadly analogous to that of their male counterparts. On the other hand, the girls were still trained to see taking care of a husband and family as an ultimate good; their later public or political roles would have been largely limited to the state-sanctioned female spheres of the Nazi womens’ and girls’ organizations, and the caring professions. Ultimately, the Mädchen-Napolas demonstrate, in microcosm, both the scope and the totalitarian restrictions inherent in Nazi attitudes towards young women.