Gertrud Scholtz-Klink

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was born in Adelsheim (Baden) on February 9, 1902. After she finished her studies, she worked as a teacher and journalist. In 1920, at the age of 18, she married Friedrich Klink and had six children before he died. (All in all she was married three times and bore 11 children.)

Scholtz-Klink joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in 1928 and one year later she became the leader of the women's section in Baden.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he appointed Scholtz-Klink as Reich Women's Leader and head of the Nazi Women's League.

On January 1, 1934, Scholtz-Klink became the deputy leader of the NSF. Her rise to power did not stop there; she became the Reichsfrauen-fuhrerin, the female leader over all National Socialist women in November 1934. She had responsibility for persuading women to work for the good of the NS government and she headed all female groups within the NSDAP: the Frauenwerk, the Women's League of the Red Cross, the Women's Bureau in the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, and the Woman's Labor Service. She was the most important woman in all of NS Germany.

After the Second World War Scholtz-Klink went into hiding and was not arrested until 1948. On November 18, 1948, her was sentenced by a French military court to eighteen months of incarceration for working under an assumed name.

In November 1949, Scholtz-Klink was branded as a "Major Offender" due to her strong adherence to the NS ideology by a de-Nazification court. She lost all civil rights and was "acquitted of any guilt for war crimes". Her book Women in the Third Reich was published in 1978.

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