From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Conflicts in the Implementation of German Family Policy, 1918-1945

This book explores Weimar and Nazi policy to highlight the fundamental, far-reaching change wrought by the Nazis and the disparity between national family policy design and its implementation at the local level. Relying on a broad range of sources - including court records, sterilization files, church accounts, and women's oral histories - it demonstrates how local officials balanced the benefits of marriage, divorce, and adoption against budgetary concerns, church influence, and their own personal beliefs. Throughout both eras, individual Germans collaborated with, rebelled against, and evaded state mandates, in the process fundamentally altering the impact of national policy.