Drawing on a wide range of sources, including newspaper and magazine articles, photojournalism, diaries, and memoirs, Deborah Barton's book presents a diligently and extensively researched study of the role and work of women in print journalism from the beginning of the Third Reich to the end of the Allied occupation in 1955. The book masterfully navigates the morally problematic terrain of female-authored journalism during the Nazi dictatorship. Barton shows that women were both crucial contributors to and marginalized outsiders in the centralized, party-controlled Nazi press. On the one hand, their work gave them access to a wealth of opportunities, including travel, financial independence, and, importantly, a sense of being part of the action. On the other hand, they were faced with gender prejudice, were expected to cover “soft news” – women's topics, housekeeping, everyday life, local news, fashion, advice columns – and were discriminated against in a frequently hostile work environment. Even so, women journalists were instrumental in strengthening morale and, in doing so, made a crucial contribution to the stability of the Nazi regime.
Chapter 1 outlines the emergence of a female press corps. The dismissal of Jewish and politically “unsuitable” journalists in 1933 – roughly 10% of all working journalists – created opportunities for women: unlike in medicine and the law, no legal barriers limited the number of women working in journalism. Barton shows that the Nazis were eager to recruit women, assuming that they were uniquely qualified to speak to female readers and were skilled at engaging their audience emotionally. Women held another advantage: the Nazis preferred inexperienced over seasoned journalists, believing these to be easier to manipulate and more likely to embrace Nazi ideology. Thus, women had access to the Reich Press School and to internships and employment, although they were frequently dependent on male mentors and tended to work on a freelance basis. Overall, the percentage of women working in journalism increased to 11% during the Third Reich from 5% in the Weimar Republic.
Chapter 2 investigates the function of women as authors of soft news during the Nazi regime. Conceived as fluffy, light-hearted, and undemanding, soft news was uniquely suited to convey a sense of normalcy, offer relief from the horror of war, and carve out small niches of pleasure, precisely because it was not openly invested in politics. Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger's photos, for example, celebrated traditional rural life in Germany and, in doing so, offered appealing entertainment in line with Nazi blood-and-soil ideology. The Nazi women's paper Die Frauen Warte, led by Lydia Gottschweski, advised women on how to align cooking, shopping, housekeeping, and childrearing with the goals of Nazi politics, including the exclusion of Jews from the Volksgemeinschaft and the Germanization of East Europe. Clearly, even the seemingly apolitical sector of soft news offered ample opportunities to instill Nazi values in the German Volk.
Chapter 3 focuses on a select group of female foreign correspondents, who were recruited from the privileged and educated classes. Aided by the mentorship of Paul Scheffer, the editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, Margret Boveri reported from Greece, Malta, Italy, and the Middle East, among others. Subtly but effectively, Boveri supported Hitler's foreign policy and geopolitical ambitions. Lily Abegg established herself as an expert on Japanese politics and culture and sought to strengthen the Japanese-German alliance. The Nazi Party member and aristocrat Edit von Coler leveraged her work as a journalist and her strategically deployed feminine charm into a position as the regime's unofficial diplomat in Romania. Gisela Döhrn, who accompanied her husband – also a foreign correspondent – to Moscow, made a career demonizing the Soviet Union. All these women succeeded in entering the traditionally male sector of international relations, and all exerted considerable influence while supporting the Nazi regime.
Chapter 4 turns to the war years and the role of women journalists on the home front. As their male colleagues left for the front, female journalists enjoyed new opportunities, even though paper shortages posed challenges for newspapers. Although female journalists tended to be better informed about the war and Nazi atrocities than the average German citizen, they continued to prettify the regime, authoring puff pieces about conviviality and serendipitous encounters in air-raid shelters or the fun of work in a flak gunnery brigade. Some women journalists continued to attack Nazi Germany's declared enemies, while others hid their opposition behind a façade of conformity. Barton discusses the case of Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, who was both an active member of the resistance group Uncle Emil, which helped Jewish Germans, and the editor of the magazine Kamerad Frau, which published antisemitic tirades.
Chapter 5 also deals with the war years but analyzes the work of women journalists in occupied Europe. Here, female journalists, such as Ilse Urbach, Gerda Pelz, and Melita Maschmann, repackaged the Nazi invasion and occupation of France and Poland in ways that made it acceptable to the German public. The photojournalist Liselotte Purper, for example, presented pictures of the Nazi expansion of Lebensraum that erased all traces of violence and suffering. In this, as Barton argues, female journalists became “complicit in legitimating the conditions that allowed mass violence to flourish” (176).
Chapters 6 and 7 trace the careers of women journalists after 1945. In the aftermath of the war, the Allied occupation forces relied on the press to reeducate the German public. In choosing journalists, the Allies rejected party members but did not investigate individual publications. Barton shows that, although male journalists quickly regained their dominant position, especially after the end of the denazification program in 1947, women journalists could refer to their relative distance from hard news in the Third Reich and beyond to minimize their role in the Nazi propaganda machine. Thus, many women journalists were able to continue their careers, most again working in soft news. Chapter 7 parses several high-profile memoirs, including Ruth Andreas-Friedrich's Berlin Underground (1947), Ursula von Kardorff's Diary of a Nightmare: Berlin, 1942-1945 (1966), and Margret Boveri's Tage des Überlebens: Berlin 1945 (1968). More often than not, these memoirs highlight German suffering while downplaying the complicity of the author, and “ordinary Germans” in general, in favor of the myth of the guilty few.
Deborah Barton's book is a valuable contribution to the exploration of women's complicity in the Third Reich. Drawing on a rich corpus of sources, Barton sheds light on the dual position of women journalists as victims of discrimination and powerful supporters of a genocidal regime. I highly recommend Writing and Rewriting the Reich not just to scholars but to anyone interested in how repressive regimes are kept alive through the numerous ethical compromises of a multitude of “ordinary” men and women who are just doing their jobs.
