Dictating the Holocaust: Female administrators of the Third Reich Rachel Century PhD Candidate 2012 Department of History Royal Holloway, University of London Page 1 Declaration of Authorship I hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Rachel Century Signed: Date: Page 2 Abstract This thesis investigates the background, activities, and motivations of German women who provided administrative support for Nazi institutions and agencies of the Third Reich. It compares women who specifically chose to serve the Nazi cause in voluntary roles with those who took on such work as a progression of established careers. Using a variety of sources, including post-war testimony in criminal cases, it shows how much they knew about the repressive and genocidal aspects of the regime and evaluates the role that ideology, as against other factors, played in their loyalty to their employers. Secretaries, SS-Helferinnen (SS female auxiliaries) and Nachrichtenhelferinnen des Heeres (female communication auxiliaries of the army) held similar jobs: taking dictation, answering telephones, and sending telegrams. Yet their backgrounds differed markedly. While secretaries were habitually recruited on the basis of their prior experience and competencies, the Helferinnen predominantly volunteered, sometimes motivated by ideology and the opportunity to serve their country, sometimes enticed by the prospect of foreign travel or the lure of the uniform. The thesis sheds light on these women’s backgrounds: their social status, education, career patterns. It seeks to explain the situations and motives that propelled them into their positions and explores what they knew about the true nature of their work. These women often had access to information about the administration of genocide and are a relatively untapped resource. Their recollections shed light on the lives and work of their superiors, the mundane tasks that contributed to the displacement, deportation and death of millions of people across Europe, and the extent to which information about these atrocities was communicated and comprehended. Attention is paid to the specific role played by gender amongst perpetrators of the Holocaust. The question of how gender intersected with National Socialism, repression, atrocity and genocide forms the conceptual thread linking the separate chapters on these three groups of women who had varied backgrounds and degrees of initial commitment to Nazi ideology. Page 3 Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 5 PART 1: HITLER’S HELFERINNEN ..................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 1: WOMEN IN SERVICE FOR THE FATHERLAND ............................................................................... 33 CHAPTER 2: WOMEN AT WORK .............................................................................................................. 73 PART 2: SEX, LIES AND STENOGRAPHY ......................................................................................... 107 CHAPTER 3: TYPING FOR THE THIRD REICH .............................................................................................. 108 CHAPTER 4: SECRETARIES, SECRETS AND GENOCIDE .................................................................................. 144 CHAPTER 5: MAKE LOVE AND WAR ....................................................................................................... 162 PART 3: CHAOS, CONFUSION AND CONSEQUENCES ..................................................................... 191 CHAPTER 6: THE END OF THE WAR ........................................................................................................ 192 CHAPTER 7: CONDEMNED TO THE CONSEQUENCES .................................................................................... 210 CONCLUSION: ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR ............................................................................... 244 GLOSSARY OF GERMAN TERMS AND ORGANISATIONS ................................................................ 267 SS RANKS ..................................................................................................................................... 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES ..................................................................................................... 274 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................................. 311 Page 4 Introduction The women who provided administrative support for the Nazis, both as their secretaries and as auxiliaries, have not been a major focus within the historiography of the Third Reich. Perhaps they have not been written about because little is known of them, who they were or what work they did. Perhaps they have not been written about because the role they played is considered less interesting than that of concentration camp guard, or brave resistor. These women may have played a crucial role in National Socialism, but were they victims, forced into the role, or perpetrators, willingly administrating for the Nazis? And if their involvement was crucial, why have they been ignored? History has all too often been presented from a male perspective. What women were doing while the men were fighting, plundering, conquering, is rarely told. This may have been because, in the main, historians have been men, or perhaps this is the product of the predominantly patriarchal nature of society. Through the centuries, there have been occasional publications giving a woman’s perspective but these were few and far between.1 Women’s history can refer to events that are specific to women and particularly concern them, and it can refer to the account given of these events. The purpose of women’s history has been defined as to “restore women to history, and to restore our history to women”.2 In the 1970s it was contested whether women had their own history, or whether research into their experiences belonged to anthropology.3 Today, historians no longer doubt that women have their own history and therefore that such gendered history can be written. Women’s history concerns not merely half of humankind but all of it.4 1 See, for example Glückel von Hameln, The Life of Glückel von Hameln, Beth-Zion Abrahams, ed., (London: Horovitz Publishing Company, 1962). 2 Joan Kelly-Gadol, “The Social Relation of the Sexes” in Sandra Harding, ed., Feminism and Methodology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987), p.15. 3 Michelle Perrot, ed., Writing Women's History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p.1. 4 Ibid., p.106. Page 5 “Talking about women without talking about men, is like clapping hands with one hand only”:5 it cannot be done. While a piece of work may specifically explore the experiences of women, men are always present – as their fathers, husbands, brothers, perhaps as soldiers, workers, doctors. There will always be interaction between the two genders. Gender history requires a close look at how “men and women construct their ‘experience’ within a dialectic of power”.6 Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey consider this an especially valuable insight in the context of German history. Traditionally, political power in Germany has been seen as particularly authoritarian and repressive; with women given very little power or chance of resisting.7 Using a framework of gender studies offers an alternative perspective to the traditional narrative. Looking at the Holocaust through gender provides a “more complex and more complete account of what happened”8 and a “richer and more finely nuanced understanding of the Holocaust”.9 Conversely, certain concerns may arise with the use of a gendered approach. Differentiating between male and female victims might be considered to detract from the fact that all Jews were equally persecuted by the Nazis. Lawrence Langer asserts that during the Holocaust both men and women were living in extreme circumstances in which they faced no choice.10 Others argue that focusing on gender trivializes the Holocaust: differentiating the victims diminishes the horrors they faced. Countering these arguments, historians point out that this approach restores “individuality and humanity to the victims”.11 However, a gendered approach is not without pitfalls. Zoë Waxman warns of the danger of using a pre-determined agenda, arguing that “using a familiar, gendered, conceptual framework, women’s testimonies are often used to show us what we already want to see”:12 that the woman’s role was that of 5 Eric Cohen, quoted in Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997), p.1. 6 L. Roper, “Will and Honor: Sex, Words and Power in Augsburg Criminal Trials” in Radical History Review 43 (1989), p.45. 7 Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey, eds., Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (London: UCL Press, 1996), p.4. 8 L. Weitzman and D. Ofer, “Role of Gender” in D. Ofer and L. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p.3. 9 Ibid., p.1. 10 Lawrence Langer, “Gendered Suffering? Women in Holocaust Testimonies” in Ofer and Weitzman, eds., Women, p.362. 11 Weitzman and Ofer, “Role of Gender” in Ofer and Weitzman, eds., Women, p.14. 12 Zoë Waxman, Writing the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006),