SECRETS OF THE NAZI SCHOOL FOR BRIDES

Sinister secrets of the school for Nazi brides: From love pledges to the Fuhrer, to lessons in breeding the master race... The astonishing expose of Himmler's bridal bootcamp.

The schools were the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Hitler’s own paramilitary defence force. Himmler was obsessed with ensuring that women marrying into the SS were suitable consorts, so in 1935 he established the schools to train girls to become perfect wives.

But it wasn’t easy to qualify. Himmler wanted to keep his elite force ‘racially pure’, so if a woman became engaged to an SS officer, she first had to have her pedigree assessed by the SS Race and Settlement Office to be certain she had no Jewish or mixed blood.

 

Women had to be able to determine their Aryan ancestry with birth and marriage certificates dating back to 1800, which sometimes involved them visiting all the churches where their ancestors married to find the proof. If a woman discovered her great-grandmother, for example, had some Jewish blood, the wedding would not be authorised and the SS officer would have to choose between his job and his fiancee.

Brides also had to undergo the humiliation of having their nose and upper lip measured to ensure their features conformed to the correct Aryan type, and complete forms detailing any family history of conditions such as tuberculosis.

 

There were sessions too on how to polish your future husband’s boots and dagger, fatten geese, arrange flowers, make conversation at dinner parties, change linen, polish a floor and, above all, how to exhibit proper obedience  to a husband. Every bride learned the ‘Ten Commandments for the German Woman’, which included ‘Keep your body pure’ and ‘Hope for as many children as possible’.

 

Yet these bride schools had far more sinister ambitions than turning out women who could sew the hems of curtains or stuff a herring. Hitler  saw mothers as the ‘culture bearers’ to the next generation and he believed a woman’s most essential task was to indoctrinate her children with the Nazi ideology.

 

For example, brides were conditioned to tell fairy tales with the correct racial slant. Accordingly, the Prince in Cinderella rejected the ugly sisters not because of their looks but because they were racially undesirable Slavs. Brides also learned a bedtime prayer to teach children. It was based on the Lord’s Prayer but began ‘Mein Führer, Ich kenn dich wohl und habe dich lieb wie Vater und Mutter’ – ‘My Leader, I know you well and I love you like my father and mother.’

 

CENTRAL to the training were the lessons in Volksgemeinschaft – community spirit – focusing on race  and genetics. Women were taught how ‘defective’ genes, such as those possessed by people with mental illness or Jewish blood, weakened the national stock. There was a strong message too against smoking – one of Hitler’s bugbears – because tobacco corrupted the ‘germ cell’ of the nation.

 

While the stated aim of the schools was ‘to mould housewives out of office girls’, the manual unearthed in Federal archives reveals how seriously the Nazi regime took marital conditioning. It details the formal vows women took before gaining the certificate to authorise their marriage.

 

In particular, women had to pledge undying loyalty to Hitler and promise to remain ‘Sustainers of the Germanic Race’. They would ‘become proficient in cooking and housekeeping, sewing, washing and ironing, childcare, nursing and home design’ and raise their children ‘in accordance with the ideals of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.’

 

The vows even covered the form of the wedding service itself. Himmler rejected Christianity and preferred his men to hold neo-pagan ceremonies called SS Eheweihen, which took place not in a church, but in front of a party functionary and an altar decorated with SS symbols and oak leaves.In 1939, in the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps, an unnamed SS wife wrote: ‘Hitler awakens in us that which is eternal and unalterable in the German concept of woman.’

 

Yet the irony of the bride schools was that the routines learned there were a stark contrast to the lives  led by high-level Nazi wives such as couture-loving Magda Goebbels, who was married to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and Emmy Goering, an actress who regretted that her husband was a politician rather than an actor. The behaviour of many top wives differed dramatically from the ideal

Read more and see pictures
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2570959/Sinister-secrets-school-Nazi-brides-From-love-pledges-Fuhrer-lessons-breeding-master-race-The-astonishing-expose-Himmlers-bridal-bootcamp.html

*****************************************************************************8