Impact of World War I on German women. The role of German women in World War I was characterized by increased participation in the economy, active involvement in the wartime political unrest, and the struggle to survive as food, clothing, and heat became scarce.
For German women, World War I was an introduction into a new kind of warfare that depended as much on the home front as it did the battlefronts. The role of women in the economic, political, and military planning of the German nation underwent tremendous changes. Women replaced conscripted men, producing the goods of war, keeping production going and releasing valuable reserves to the military. Government propaganda focused on women because they were the principle home-front population during the war. Women were the main consumers of German goods, and their support was necessary to keep the economy strong.
One way that women coped with the deprivations of the war was through participation in the activities of social organizations. Social organizations served as a source of comfort and camaraderie for women and played a vital role in mobilizing the women on the home front. Gertrud Baumer asked the nearly 600,000 members of the Federation of German Women’s Associations (BDF) to put aside their demands for suffrage and for greater access to education and state employment in the name of national solidarity. BDF members worked in soup kitchens and hospital wards, tended to the rising number of orphans, and knitted woolen clothing for the troops at the front (Herwig 1997, 35). The largest German nursing movement, the Vaterlandische Frauenverein (Union of Women of the Fatherland), known as the Kaiserin’s (Empress’s) army, had 3,000 branches and 800,000 members in 1914, and in all there were more than 6,300 bodies of nurses with 1.1 million members (Strachan 2001, 109).
The expanded presence of women in the workforce during the war is often noted as one of the significant results of the war. After the first military actions of the war proved indecisive, German society was mobilized for total war. The need for more soldiers meant that many men were conscripted from important industrial and manufacturing jobs. To replace them, the German government called upon women to enter the workforce. Some women answered that call. Machine shops recruited over 400,000 women, and ammunitions plants recruited 600,000 women. At the Krupp works, where no women were employed before the war, 30,000 women were added to a workforce of 80,000 men by 1918 (Herwig 1997, 294).
Although it is true that the number of women entering the workforce for the first time did grow substantially, this was not a departure from prewar trends (Daniel 1997, 37). What did change was where women worked. A large portion of the women who entered the armaments and industrial workforces were already employed at the start of the war, many within the textile and luxury goods industries. When it became apparent that the war would not be short, the production of textiles and luxury goods were reduced or banned in favor of increased production of goods necessary for the war. As much as 40 percent of the women who had worked in the textile industry in 1914 were relocated to more important industries.
The drives for conscription often met with substandard results, largely due to the handling of wartime benefits and aid. The German state faced a conundrum: the financial support of the wives of German soldiers at the front undermined efforts to mobilize German women to work. Women assisted by the government found it economically beneficial to remain unemployed or to work from the home. The government’s attempts to save money by decreasing aid to women who worked only increased their incentives to stay home and watch the family.
Horrible work conditions also undermined government efforts to increase female employment. Women who entered the workforce for the first time often experienced hostility or apathy. Men resented women being in the workplace. Women were constantly reminded that they were there only temporarily and that they were too weak to do good work, and they were denied technical training. The new types of work that women undertook were often difficult and dangerous. Work environments were not safe, and hunger and extremely long shifts made the new workers more susceptible to accidents. In the final analysis, given the horrible atmosphere women faced, the hostility of employers and coworkers, and the lack of progress made in women’s place in the workforce, there was no true emancipation of female German workers during World War I.
Because women made up the majority of the home-front population, they bore the brunt of the economic deprivations caused by the war and the blockade. The task of procuring food for themselves and their families was made difficult by long lines, constant shortages, war profiteering, hoarding, and government propaganda that often blamed women for the problems. The Allied blockade of the German coast and the trade embargo on the continent were quickly felt on the German home front. Germany had imported a large part of its food before the war, and many shortages appeared during the first winter. For women, this meant that it became increasingly difficult to find enough food for themselves and their families. Particularly among the lower and lower middle classes, everyday food staples such as bread and potatoes became unattainable or unaffordable. In an effort to calm the growing protests over food shortages, the Imperial Grain Authority (established in November 1914) issued ration cards for bread in January 1915, while setting a price ceiling for potatoes (Davis 2000, 47). The attempt to use rationing to quell the crisis was ineffectual. Complaints of unfairly dispersed rations and the lack of adequate supplies to meet the minimum rations of the population doomed the system. The only thing rationing accomplished was to further place the blame for food shortages on the frivolousness of women.
The hunger women felt in 1914 only worsened in the coming years. In 1916, early frosts spoiled the potato harvest, leaving many women undernourished and scrambling to stretch their rations to feed the family. Turnips, a vegetable of poor nutritive value and even less taste, was used to replace the potato. It was that hated food that gave its name to the brutal winter of 1916. The Turnip Winter, which saw temperatures dip below -25 degrees Fahrenheit, was a low point for many on the home front. Many women survived on diets just above starvation level. Increased work and longer shifts made queuing up in food lines even more difficult and aggravating. Lack of fuel and clothing exacerbated the poor diets, making the last years of the war extremely miserable for women in Germany (Davis 2000, 180-187).
Throughout the war, government propaganda was an important part of the relationship between women and the state. Propaganda was used to mobilize German society and to extol women to support the war effort. Women often faced hostile and disparaging expositions as well. The government blamed the food shortages of 1914 on the improvidence of German women. They were seen negatively by many of the men at the front who bemoaned the luxury in which women lived (Herwig 1997, 265). In short, women were often viewed as the culprits for the many problems on the home front.
The struggle to survive made women an important source of discontent during the war. Although some women did take part in the social and political revolts that occurred during the war, they played a far more important role in the numerous food riots that plagued the German government. For the most part, these riots were small incidents of outraged and desperate women storming food depots, shops, and food lines. As the war dragged on, however, rioters began to link calls for food (particularly bread) with calls for peace, putting the government in a difficult position. They had to stop the riots without resorting to violence or creating a backlash on the home front or the warfront. The last thing the government needed was word getting to the frontline soldiers that their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters were being repressed. The resolution of those protests, many times in favor of the women, tended to exacerbate the situation, as it showed women that this was a possible way to get food (Davis 2000, 2). The government was never able to overcome food shortages during the war, and shortages and food riots continued to be paramount issues on the home front.
