Writing for Dictatorship, Refashioning for Democracy: German Women Journalists in the Nazi and Post-war Press

This dissertation investigates how women journalists acted as professional functionaries in support of the National Socialist dictatorship, and later, a democratic West Germany. As a project that examines the intersections between the press, politics and gender, this study makes three contributions to the study of German history. The first is for the understanding the expansiveness and malleability of what constituted politics in the Third Reich and the nature of consensus between the regime and the population. Nazi gender ideology proclaimed that women belonged only in the private sphere. Correspondingly, Nazi press authorities dictated that women write only about topics pertaining to this area. The regime labeled such news apolitical. However, soft news from a cheerful perspective was an indispensible part of Nazi media policy: it provided the façade of normalcy and morale building under Hitler. In return for their support, the state offered women journalists a status not open to most women. The study of women journalists further unravels the draw of National Socialism for those Germans the regime deemed politically, socially and racially acceptable: increased possibilities and social prestige. The second contribution relates to the study of women in the professions, which has often been overlooked. This project demonstrates that the National Socialist regime needed female journalists and thereby emphasizes women's roles in major events. Not an insignificant number of women built diverse and influential careers in journalism both within and outside of Nazi gender parameters, often with the expressed desire of Nazi press officials. The third contribution is for understanding the cultural interchanges that affected the relationship between the Western Allies, international audiences, and West Germany in the post-war years and the ways in which gender and the experiences of women in Third Reich helped Germany move forward. In the decades after the war, women presented their professional experiences during the Third Reich in a manner that served to distance not only themselves but also the press and Germany as a whole from Nazism. By repressing, reimagining and remembering the Nazi past, the women's personal writing became a vehicle that helped West Germany build and maintain a stable democracy.Ph.D