Women in Linz 1938 - 1945

Daniela Ellmauer

The success of National Socialism can be only partly explained by economic improvements and social promises. The addition of the now familiar main features of authoritarian regimes and of an model to identify with, communicated to women using all forms of propaganda, contributed at least as much to finding acceptance as did marriage loans, child support and employment prospects.

Although with very few exceptions women were kept from leading positions within the regime, the importance of women as „part of society“ was continually emphasised. Not a few women gained a previously unknown self-confidence from this. They were empty words, however, for those who fell short of „racial“, moral or political requirements. Empty words also, for those women who starved on the „Home Front“, who lost loved ones, or died in the nightly air raids.

This contribution describes the living conditions of women in Linz during under the NS-regime – based on newspaper articles from the daily papers in Linz, court judgments, interviews and memoirs of women who spent the years between 1938 and 1945 as schoolgirls, employees or foreign workers in Linz.