After the First World War women in Germany were given the vote and a feminist elite, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, helped to shape the political post-war scene. Luxemburg, the leader of the Spartacus League, was murdered by the Freikorps in January, 1919, but other women replaced her at the forefront of politics and by 1932 they had 36 members of the Reichstag. Germany also had 100,000 women teachers, 13,000 women musicians and 3,000 women doctors. (1)
The Wall Street Crash caused serious problems for the German economy. The collapse in share prices meant an urgent need to repatriate American capital invested abroad. The number of registered unemployed in Germany rose from 1.6 million in October 1929 to 6.12 million in February 1932. Since these figures did not include the "invisible" unregistered unemployed, it has been estimated that the true figure was 7.6 million. "Thirty-three per cent of the workforce were without jobs. Taking into account dependents, perhaps twenty-three million people were affected by unemployment." (2)
During the early 1930s women often found it easier to find jobs than men. The main reason was that female labor was cheaper. As Richard Grunberger has pointed out: "Skilled women earned 66 per cent of men's wages, unskilled ones 70 per cent, which explains why during the Depression nearly one man in three (29 per cent) was dismissed but only one woman in every ten ( 11 per cent)... In 1933 women formed 37 per cent of the total employed labor force in Germany (3)
During the election campaign in 1932, Adolf Hitler promised that if he gained power he would take 800,000 women out of employment within four years. Hitler told a delegation who had come to discuss women's rights with him he told them the solution was for every woman to have a husband. The American journalist, William L.
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Shirer, who was working in Germany at the time, has argued that politicians such as Hitler "thrive only... when the masses were unemployed, hungry and desperate." (4) In the election in November 1932 the Nazi Party won 230 seats, making it the largest party in the Reichstag. The German National Party, won nearly a million additional votes. (5)