Feminism and National Socialism

Savitri Devi

Another extremely important feature of our Nazi education (and of our whole system) is its absolute opposition to the pernicious "feminism" of our epoch -- that product of decadence, of which the effect is nothing less than a still further lowering of the level of the race.

We hate the very idea of "equality" of man and woman, forced upon the Western world more shamelessly than ever since the time of the First World War. For one, it is nonsense. No male and female of the same living species endowed by Nature with complementary abilities for the fulfillment of complementary destinies, can be "equal." They are different, and cannot be anything else but different, however much one might try to give them the same training and make them do the same work. It is also a nefarious idea; for the only way one can, I do not say make man and woman "equal" -- that is impossible -- but force them, willy-nilly, into the same artificial mould, accustom them to the same type of life, is by robbing woman of her femininity and man of his virile qualities, i.e., by spoiling both, and spoiling the race. (In modern English literature, no author has exposed the feminist fallacy more brilliantly than D.H. Lawrence, in nearly all his works.)

Azag-BauI do not deny that there are and always have been isolated instances of women more fitted for manly tasks than for motherhood, or equally capable of both. But such exceptions need no "feminism" in order to win for themselves the special place that Nature, in her love of diversity, has appointed to them. Around about 3,200 before Christ, Azag-Bau, a wine merchant in her youth, managed to raise herself to such prominence as to become the founder of the Fourth Dynasty of Kish (Cambridge Ancient History, 1924 ed., vol. I). In those days, women did not vote -- nor did men, by the way -- any more in Sumeria than elsewhere. Nor did they, in general, compete with men in all or nearly all walks of life, as in modern England and the USA. [Image: Azag-Bau, queen of the Sumerian city of Kish, here divinized as Kubaba.]

Curiously enough, the most fanatical female feminists are, as a rule, those in whom virile qualities are the most lacking. Masterful women, as Nietzsche remarks, are not feminists. Most remote Azag-Bau, or Queen Tiy of Egypt, or Agrippina, or, nearer our times, the little known but most fascinating virile feminine figure of Mongolian history, Ai Yuruk, who spent her life on the saddle and, along with her father Kaidu (son of Kuyuk, son of Ogodai, son of Genghis Khan) "held the grazing lands of mid-Asia for nearly forty years" (Harold Lamb, The March of the Barbarians, 1941 ed., p. 244), all would have burst out laughing at the idea of "women's emancipation" and all the twaddle that goes with it -- in fact, at all the typically democratic institutions that our degenerate world so admires.

But exceptions need no special education; or if they do, they educate themselves. Our National Socialist education for the present and future welfare of a healthy community, was -- and will still be, when the time comes to enforce it once more -- based upon the acceptation of the fact that men and women have entirely different parts to play in national life, and that they need, therefore, an entirely different training; that "the one aim of female education must be with a view to the future mother" (Mein Kampf, vol. II, Chap. II, 1939 ed., p. 460.)

NS Art PosterWe did not "force" every woman to become a mother. But we gave every healthy woman of pure blood the necessary training and every opportunity to become a useful one, if she cared to. Girls were taught to consider motherhood as a national duty as well as an honor -- not as a burden. They were trained to admire manly virtues in men, and to look upon the perfect warrior as the ideal mate, as is natural. Not every girl, also, could marry every man, even within the Party. The greater the man's qualifications, the greater were the woman's to be. For instance, a girl who wished to become the wife of an SS man -- a great honor -- had not only to prove that she was of unmixed Aryan descent (as every marriageable German was expected to) but also to produce a diploma attesting that she was well­versed in cooking, sewing, housekeeping, the science of child welfare, etc., in one word, that she had been tested and found fit to be an accomplished housewife.  [Image: NS Art Poster.]

This does not mean that, in a National Socialist State, women are not to be taught anything else but domestic sciences and child-welfare. In new Germany, they were given general knowledge also. And Point Twenty of the Party Program, which stresses, among other things, that "the understanding of the spirit of the State (civic knowledge) must be aimed at, through school training, beginning with the first awakening of intelligence," is to be taken into account in the education of girls as well as of boys.

Also, seldom was there, on the part of any State, a more sincere and serious attempt to provide every child with the maximum possibilities of development and advancement. "We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class and occupation, at the expense of the State," said the Führer, again in the same Point of his program. And he kept his word to the letter and gave the German people in that line as in others, even more than he had promised, as his enemies themselves are forced to admit.


Edited by R.G. Fowler from Savitri Devi's Gold in the Furnace (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1952), ch. 11, "The Constructive Side," pp. 281-4. The title was provided by the editor.

 

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