Gender and Power in the Third Reich : Female Denouncers and the Gestapo (1933-45)

This book examines the everyday operations of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. The Gestapo were able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance with Nazi doctrines, especially "crimes" pertaining to the private spheres of social, family, and sexual life. One of the key factors in the enforcement of Nazi policies was the willingness of German citizens to provide the authorities with information about suspected "criminality". This book examines women denouncers in Nazi Germany through close examination of the Gestapo files. The author seeks to answer questions about how women in particular used denunciation and why so many ordinary women denounced 'deviants and dissenters' to the Gestapo. In the last decade a considerable amount of work has been done to demystify the Gestapo, which far from being omniscient, depended heavily on unsolicited denunciations of 'deviants and dissenters'. A substantial number of these denunciations were sent in by ordinary women. So far no-one has thought to ask why. This is the first book to attempt to provide such an answer. It explores those spaces within the patriarchal, sexist and racist power structures of the regime that women appropriated, by articulating and resolving their personal conflicts through denunciations. It questions the victim-vs-perpetrator paradigm within which studies on denunciation have hitherto been cast, and instead argues for a more nuanced, differentiated approach. It also places structures of male sexual aggression alongside those of female aggression towards 'community aliens'. The intensive and unique treatment of individual cases from Gestapo files in Gender and Power in the Third Reich makes visible, for the first time, how female denouncers responded to the Nazi state and their deeply politicised surroundings "In the last decade a considerable amount of work has been done to demystify the Gestapo, which, far from being omniscient, depended heavily on unsolicited denunciations of 'deviants and dissenters'. A substantial number of these denunciations were sent in by ordinary women. So far no one has thought to ask why." "This is the first book to attempt to provide an answer. It explores those spaces within the patriarchal, sexist and racist power structures of the regime that women appropriated, by articulating and resolving their varied conflicts through denunciations. It questions the victim-vs-perpetrator paradigm within which studies on denunciation have hitherto been cast, and instead argues for a more nuanced, differentiated approach. It also places structures of male sexual aggression alongside those of female aggression towards 'community aliens'."--Jacket Front Matter....Pages i-xx Introduction....Pages 1-20 Methodology and Sources....Pages 21-42 The ‘Private’ Became ‘Public’: Wives as Denouncers in the Realm of the Family....Pages 43-86 Fishing in Troubled Waters? Gender Perspectives on Denouncers and Their Jewish Victims....Pages 87-138 Faces of Gender Oppression: the ‘Aryan’ Interface with ‘Racially Foreign’ Workers....Pages 139-167 Conclusion....Pages 168-197 Back Matter....Pages 198-229 This chapter outlines the research methodology and discusses the primary sources used in the present work.