Did Nazism successfully achieve Hitler's goal of a Volksgemeinschaft from 1933-1939?

by [deleted]

Specifically relating to Social and Cultural changes from Weimar to Nazi.

Also, any good sources for the changing role of women. e.g did the birth rate increase like Hitler had planned etc

[deleted]

First off you may be interested in these two threads in which I talked about changing social life in Germany (specifically with regards to criminals and the law) and the role of women in the armed forces and the SS.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20jppa/what_did_nazi_germany_do_with_legitimate/

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2002qd/we_often_see_in_films_and_tv_nazi_officers/cfylqx7

As I already mentioned in this thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/213wkf/how_was_sex_education_in_the_nazi_germany/) the Germans didn't really change the role of the mother but did emphasize it heavily and they tried to make it as prestigious as being a combat solider. Hitler and the Nazis succeeded quite handily at increasing the birth rate. For comparison in 1900, the birth rate was about 3.3, in the 1930's it increased to 14.7 and by 1939 had reached 20.4. The Nazis heavily encouraged childbirth through loans to new parents, programs where unmarried women could have children for a member of the SS and the clamping down on abortion and birth control.

The Nazis did provide a huge amount of support to single mothers (especially those impregnated by members of the SS) and created a program called Lebensborn (Spring of Life), provided assistance and could act as an adoption agency of sorts for interested party members.

Both divorce and marriage came back in full force in Nazi Germany, marriages increased but so did the number of divorces, in 1939, there were 61,000 divorces alone. The Nazis made divorce easier because they wanted to make it easier to break up marriages between non-Aryans and Aryans, and marriages between Nazis and non-Nazis.

Sources:

http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/modern_history/national_studies/germany/2430/page65.htm This pages gives you a good overview of the changing social structures and it summarizes a few popular works on Nazi Germany's changing social structure.

Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich (George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History)

This is also a very good read on the topic.