Modernity vs. Tradition: Women’s Role in Fascist Italy & Germany

“On the one hand, fascists condemned all the social practices customarily connected with the emancipation of women—from the vote and female participation in the labor force to family planning. They also sought to extirpate the very attitudes and behaviors of individual self-interest 1 that underlay women’s demands for equality and autonomy.” : The Balance between “Modernity” and “Tradition” for Women’s in Fascist Italy & Germany Allison Brown HIST 2060: Comparative Fascism Dr. Blackler 6 November, 2022 1 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992), pg. 2 “On the one hand, fascists condemned all the social practices customarily connected with the emancipation of women—from the vote and female participation in the labor force to family planning. They also sought to extirpate the very attitudes and behaviors of individual self-interest 2 that underlay women’s demands for equality and autonomy.” At the center of the fascist states in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany were double standards for women which blurred the lines between the return to tradition and embracing modernity in a cyclical manner which accomplished neither. This essay prompt poses the question of why some fascist movements adopted one policy or “tradition”, while other movements pledged to abolish the same agenda. However, this essay disagrees with this question, and instead argues that women’s roles in fascist Italy and Germany attempted to do both in order to maximize their social and political control over women to serve the needs of the fascist state. Thus, utilizing both traditional and modern policy tactics as those with inherent, contradictory outcomes to reframe “womanhood” in the fascist state. By analyzing the contradictory nature of fascism, this essay will show how both Italy and Germany movements of fascism both promised a “new womanhood” and simultaneously upheld the patriarchy established prior to fascism. In order to address fascist movements’ contradictory nature towards women in this essay, a definition in which this essay applies the term fascist to a government or movement is necessary. As Paxton writesThe in Anatomy of Fascism, there is no “fascist minimum” which 3 offers historians a succinct definition. That being established, there are clear identifiers of fascism such as violence through dominance over lesser states or races, a need for a political change which is outside the current system, and typically a strong criticism of capitalism without 2 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992), pg. 2 3 Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), pg. 14 1 acknowledging the inherent contradictory system in which fascists indicate for in ways being anti-capitalist. In short, fascism is a popular movement against the left and against liberal individualism. Fascism preserves the existing power structures of capitalism while seeking to exclude those deemed to be the undeserving poor, contradictory to the state, a collective other, and those not worthy of a state’s status or citizenship. With this understanding of an “alternative modernity” of fascism, women’s role in a fascist society worked to uphold these basic tenants through their role in the “private sphere” and the household to best support the return to a 4 traditional society in a modern world. Simply put, as Passmore writes, “fascists wavered 5 between contempt and idealization of women as mothers.” Through this ideology, fascism, broadly speaking in Italy and Germany, sought to confine women to traditional roles and reject emancipatory experiences and autonomy. Looking first to fascism in Italy, we’re provided with examples of a contradictory relationship between tradition and modernity in terms of how women are allowed to operate. In her How work,Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945, De Grazia argues capitalism sought to “nationalize” women and to give them roles of meaning in the fascist state. Often, these roles were tied to traditional and household roles, with a modern twist emphasizing the value of the family and having children in a eugenic state. As De Grazia writes, “Fascism in an effort to build up national economic strength and to mobilize all of Italian society’s resources, including the capacity of women to reproduce and nurture, inevitably promoted some of the very changes it sought to 6curb.” These changes that Italian fascist policies sought to curb were those of women seeking autonomy either through 4 Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), pg. 13 5 Kevin Passmore, Fascism (2002), pg. 127 6 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992), pg. 4 2 methods of family planning or through the refusal to partake in traditional marriage structures of the Italianventennio. Central to Fascist Italy’s concerns regarding “the woman question” were those of a declining birth rate and a seeming demand of citizenship and suffrage following their involvement in Italy’s success during World War7 Thus I. with these concerns, the “nationalization” of women was crucial in order to ensure women remained in line with the state’s interests. Italian fascist policies sought to redefine the relation between private and public spheres, the meanings of those spheres were also differently inflected by the women who increasingly inhabited both as their status in society would allow. The separation and redefinition of these two spheres again reveals the contradictory nature of tradition and modernity. However, to the Italianventennio, the seeming contradictions between tradition and modernity served a larger purpose in propaganda and at the state as “propagandists boasted that fascism’s treatment of women was both ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’; indeed, the fusing of the past with the present, the old with the new, was bruited to be among the new era’s most magnificent achievements.”8 As fascist Italy recognized women as important to the new state, defining their obligations and rights within, so too did they signal progress for “new women”. However, by defining modernity as occurring in the public sphere, it also communicated that traditional roles were to be maintained in the household—with this understanding, one could assume that the presence of women publicly organized under fascism is progressive, regardless of the reactionary measures of implementation for only the state’s benefit. Central to the balance of tradition and modernity for the state’s benefit were Nazi Germany’s policies surrounding eugenics and the role of children in the advancement of a 7 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992), pg. 7 8 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992), pg. 14 3 superior, white, Aryan race. Only women who were considered to be worthy Aryans and those deemed to be capable of fulfilling the role of bearing “fit” children were supported to have children in the Nazi state. Central to this argument of women’s advancement of society, besides eugenics, was a growing sentiment that German women had the capability to open a women’s space in public life as opposed to solely operating in the private sphere. As Hitler took power and Nazism further ingrained itself into public and private life, a public sphere for women to participate in was indeed created, but without the autonomy in which women sought. In her work, The Competition for Women’s Lebensraum, 1928-1934, Koonz deploys the term Lebensraum, typically translated to “living room” in English and referring to the colonial reach of the German Empire, to redefine the role of women in German society and how their own Lebensraum in the public and private sphere indicates the balance between tradition and modernity. In short, as argued by Koonz, Lebensraum “ provides a useful metaphor for analyzing the variety of competing views on how women ought to enter the modern world. Whatever their views about men and politics, middle-class women generally believed they could establish their own harmonious ‘living room’, cleansed of diversity and dissent within national 9life.” In their own respective spheres, German women were able to obtain autonomy and independence more broadly from the state at this time. A crucial difference between Italian and German women in terms of tradition and modernity was suffrage. German women were granted suffrage in 1918 as opposed to their Italian counterparts who would obtain partial suffrage in 1925 and full suffrage after the war in 1945. Marie Stritt, a German suffragette, prioritized her goals of suffrage for women, access to higher education, an end to state-regulated prostitution, free access to contraception and abortion, 9 Claudia Koonz, “The Competition for Women’s Lebensraum, 1928-1934” (1984), pg. 202 4 and reforms to divorce laws. The goals of some German suffragettes, especially bourgeois women, would change during the Weimar Republic and into Nazi Germany. The major bourgeois women’s organization, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) lobbied for strict laws against abortion and pornography in the Weimar era. The rightward movement of the BDF before and after suffrage indicates a change in the scope of the women’s public and private life, as German bourgeois women in particular understood their role in society could be maximized by upholding modernity through traditional values. Women in the Nazi Movement prior to 1933 embraced Hitler’sWeltanschauung in their mission to serve the state. That mission, as defined by propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ was to “be beautiful and bring children into the world. This is not at all as rude and un-modern as it sounds. The female bird pretties herself for her mate and hatches the eggs for him. In exchange, the mate takes care of gathering the food, and stands 10 guard and wards of the enemy.” This simplistic and demeaning metaphor by Goebbels speaks directly to a concern German women have, how un-modern this ideal was. Similar to Fascist Italy, in Germany the nationalization of women is also evident in how her use to society is contrasted in a traditional context with a modern setting to serve the state. Alternatively, a women’s role in the Nazi ideal was exciting as eugenics and party platforms described women and their role as child bearers to be central to the advancement of Germany, and even Lebensraum more broadly. Nazi women proponents began to call for the three K’s of Kinder, Küche, and Kirche. These demands spoke to growing needs in Germany following World War I and the subsequent economic collapse of the Treaty of Versailles. Although Nazi women called for the three K’s and enjoyed their central role in Nazi ideals, they “remained not only outside the official party organization, but ignored by male leaders … women 10 Claudia Koonz, “The Competition for Women’s Lebensraum, 1928-1934” (1984), pg. 210 5 11 fell into a very unimportant category.” Regardless of their status in the broader NSDAP political order and eventually leadership, women proponents of Nazism continued to embrace the notion of one’s ownLebensraum and even the flexibility in which a “modern” German woman could either embrace tradition in her home with the rejection of modernity, while falling victim to the contradictory propaganda of the NSDAP which conflated tradition and modernity for German women. When examining the case of women as a representation of the contradictions between fascist tradition and modernity, it’s evident that World War I and the Weimar Republic shaped the image of women dramatically in terms of their perceived roles in society but minimally changed the real conditions in which most women lived. The NSDAP and Nazi state, by appealing to a women’s special role in society, reaffirmed their state’s commitment to a social world in which male and female public spheres would not overlap. Koonz concludes that through this social sphere in which women embraced traditional values with a modern spin, “women became not leaders of their separate sphere, but raw material for the propaganda offensive that 12 glossed evil with the healthy glow of motherly virtue.” Through this elevated role and disguise in society, women in the Nazi state played into politicians and state planners’ hands to promote their own goals for the state under the guise of “new womanhood”. An interesting point aside to the main argument of this essay is fascism’s attraction to anti-feminist women who agreed with fascist movements and sought to return to the traditional structures of a women’s role in society and how this relates to class. Especially to wealthy women, as Passmore writes, “bourgeois women, after all, the family offered privileges—control 11 Claudia Koonz, “The Competition for Women’s Lebensraum, 1928-1934” (1984), pgs. 213, 214 12 Claudia Koonz, “The Competition for Women’s Lebensraum, 1928-1934” (1984), pgs. 228 6 over children and servants within an extended household … despite their conservatism, these women didn’t always feel that conventional conservative organizations paid sufficient attention to the family.” 13 These sentiments could be seen as rejecting modernity in turn for the return to tradition, however, as argued in this essay these two states of being are simply synonymous for women in fascist Italy and Germany. Nevertheless, women in some fascist states will join and vote for far-right parties as their appeals for women in different classes change and the role of women in a modern society embracing traditional roles contradicts itself. In conclusion, the fascist states in Italy and Germany neither subscribed to a fascist agenda that was inherently traditional or inherently modern. Instead, these regimes reframed traditional attributes of “womanhood” to correlate with a shift to modernity in the post-World War I era and during the Weimar Republic. By reframing the role of women in a fascist society, to being one of utmost importance in reference to eugenics and the continuation of the state, these fascist governments were able to increase buy-in and participation of women based on the seeming appeal of modernity and inclusion in the state. Thus, contradictory in nature, fascist Germany and Italy both promised a “new womanhood” and simultaneously upheld the patriarchy established prior to fascism in a continuous “[wavering] between contempt and idealization of 14 women as mothers.” 13 Kevin Passmore, Fascism (2002), pg. 129 14 Kevin Passmore, Fascism (2002), pg. 127 7 8