For all the good it did them

“Hitler’s Third Reich was slow to consider women for active roles in the war effort much less put them in uniform. The main reason was that Nazi ideology saw a woman’s primary role as a mother, and as a result, the government was loath to use women in any industrial or military setting. In 1935, the Nazi hierarchy set up the Lebensborn (“fountain of life”) program to produce a “master race” of pure Aryans (tall, blond, and light-skinned). Members of the League of German Girls were encouraged to mate with officers and men of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Hitler’s elite bodyguard, and their offspring were nurtured in a series of baby farms at resort hotels and villas in idyllic Bavarian settings.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.