A Brief History
On December 16, 1938, world famous dictator and villain Adolf Hitler directed his Nazi German Empire (Reich) to issue a new medal, one only for mothers of German ethnicity living within Germany or later within other areas incorporated into the Reich.
Digging Deeper
In order to qualify for the award, the mother had to have given birth to at least 4 children and to have exhibited probity and exemplary behavior. (Probity is having a strong sense of morality, honesty and decency.) The medal was known as the Cross of Honour of the German Mother (Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter in German) or simply the Mother’s Cross (Mutterkreuz). It was issued at three different levels: Bronze for 4-5 children; Silver for 6-7 children; and Gold for 8 or more children. (Did they think this was the mother Olympics, or something!?). The medals were awarded every year on the 12th of August, the birthday of Hitler’s mother. The women were also accorded certain privileges such as always being given a seat on public transportation. They were also given preferential treatment by law authorities and government agencies and other members of society, e.g. they never had to stand in line and got the choice cuts of meat and the best loaves of bread from butchers and bakers.
Obviously, this award was intended to encourage women to bear as many children as possible in order to populate the Reich with as many Germans as possible. Other countries had similar awards programs for motherhood, notably France and the Soviet Union. Understandably, the German version lasted only until the end of World War II.
Current trends, however, would indicate that Germany should think about reinstituting it. In 1940, the world population was 2.3 billion. Today it is 7.2 billion. That is a tripling in the number of humans and is reflected in many countries, but not in Germany.
For example (numbers approximate):
USA 1940: population 132 million – USA Today: 300 million
Mexico 1940: population 20 million – Mexico Today: 123+ million
China 1940: population 500 million – China Today: 1.3 billion
India 1940: population 315 million – India Today: 1.2+ billion
and lastly,
Germany 1940: population 70 million Germans in the “mainland” plus 10 million additional Germans from the annexed areas of Austria and the Sudetenland = approx. 80 million – Today: population 78 million and expected to shrink
With the lowest birthrate in Europe, only an average of 1.36 kids are born to each German mother.
Nowadays, German women are focusing on education and their careers and are delaying having children until they are in their late 30s and early 40s. Government programs to encourage and support mothers who choose stay at home to raise their children are not yielding the expected results. If nothing else has worked, perhaps German women will let themselves be swayed with a Mother’s Cross!
Question for students (and subscribers): Is it okay to acknowledge anything positive about historical figures usually denounced as villains? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Burleigh, Michael. The Racial State. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics. St. Martin’s Griffin, 1988.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="6970 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=6970">112 Comments
My own great-great grandmother was German and died about 1940. She had 8 kids. I wonder if they gave her a gold Mother’s Cross, and if yes, if someone in the extended family still has it.
I think this is a very interesting article. As the article mentions, I understand why he did it; however, handing out medals does not overlook what he was doing to other mothers in and outside of Germany. The statistics are interesting about the current population as well. I have not heard of countries shrinking in today’s world, only growing. Germany’s statistics and reasoning are interesting. I wonder if that will happen elsewhere in the world with women having children later in their lives?
I totally agree. This does not excuse Hitler’s other actions, especially since he was only giving out medals for his benefit–to try to increase the population of Germany. I also wonder if the world’s population will ever begin to shrink due to more women having no or less children.
Very interesting read! The logic behind the medals makes complete sense from Hitler and Germany’s point of view; nonetheless, giving out medals does not make up for the horrific things he did to other mothers and people. I agree with you on the standpoint of how intriguing the statistics are and that they show a very slim increase in German population with a potential decrease in the future. To answer your question, I believe that the same thing that is happening to Germany’s population will soon happen to all countries where women are postponing having children and starting a family until after reaching career goals.
I think it’s crazy that there was even an award for bearing as many children you can.
I did not know Hitler gave medals to German mothers. Given his history, I understand why he decided to do give them out.
Imagine how the barren women felt.
Also, it’s interesting to see that Germany’s population is so low and dropping. Women in the US sometimes put off their careers for their children and vice versa, but it seems like the German women are putting their education and careers first and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
It is interesting that the population is expected to decline in Germany. It changed from having a high birthrate to barely having one.
It is crazy the extent to which Hitler wanted more German people. Giving a mother an award for the amount of children she had just sounds odd to me.
I wonder what the mothers thought of the medals at the end of World War II. Did they still look upon them with pride, or a with a sense of guilt and feeling of disgust?
The medals are interesting. My mother would have a gold medal, because we have nine children in my family.
He basically made birthing children a competition and everyone wants gold in a competition. I wonder how many women actually tried to have more kids to receive the medals.
I could not image have 8 of more children for a Gold medal.
This is an interesting article. I never heard of Hitler giving out medals. My grandma, mother of 10, would have been a winner!
I can’t believe he gave out medals to women if they could have more than eight kids.
I do npt care what he did is still one of the most evil beings to walk the earth.
This was pretty much a back handed compliment
i never knew that hitler gave out medals to those women who can have more than 8 children
It is appropriate to honor mother who gave birth to four or more children. The responsibility of bearing a child is no easy task, so anyone who is strong enough to do it four times certainly deserves recognition.
Hitler gave out medals to mothers, but it was under his terms and beliefs of what was honorable! The conditions are demeaning in some ways. A mother received a gold medal if she had 8 children but that does not mean she was any less of a mother as a slier medal mother.
This doesn’t make me think Hitler is any better of a person, but I do think these mothers should have been recognized. Mothers are something people often take for granted. Motherhood is hard and those who have 8+ kids should be recognized in their community.
I think this was an intelligent idea from Hitler in order to grow the population he wanted. I do think mothers who have 4-8+ do deserve to be recognized for all their hard work, but not under the terms of Hitler. I have never heard of this medal system created by Hitler.
I don’t think that Hitler intended to honor mothers in any meaningful way. Instead, he was simply using this as a way to increase the German population for the war he knew was coming.
I believe this was simply a PR move made by Hitler to rally support. It was clever for him to do.
Hitler did this solely to because they were increasing the German population, he wanted Germany to be the biggest and was only thanking the mothers for giving more Germans in population.
What a weird concept. Obviously he only did this to help himself because the more people in his country the better for him. It was smart of him though because it helped him grow the population he needed.
I agree with the writer. This was clearly a PR campaign to increase the population and to produce “young soldiers” that could then also be brainwashed. Thankfully Hitler was defeated before the population became too inflated.
Slightly an odd idea on Hitler’s end, but not as messed up as most of his ideas were. To be honest it was a smart move as an incentive for population growth. Crazy to think that now they may be needing to re-institute this concept.
Awarding medals to mothers was a strategic move by Hitler. He obviously thought that his reign would continue for years to come, and therefore would need more and more men in his army. By awarding mothers with multiple children, Hitler wanted to generate more people to become part of his army.
This was definitely an easy way for motivation for women to have babies. It is kind of crazy that the women went along with getting a medal for having children and the more they have the higher the medal.
Interesting way to increase the population, and more interesting that he thought he would still be around and have the power that many years down the line. But I guess that is normal for him to think with all the sick things he had done.
I feel that this was Hitlers way of rewarding the women (mothers) for following in his command.
I do not think Hitler has failure in his mindset.
Not a bad idea. This is an anecdote, but it seems that marrying young and starting a family is beginning to trend again. i wonder what will happen to Germany’s overall welfare if their population continues to decline.
This is weird that women do not have many children.
I am not a fan of the ideal that women should marry young and get to starting a family right away. if a woman wants to do this then that is her choice. But it should never be forced upon young women.
I think it’s kinda a sick game that having children is an award for mothers. To have 8 children is a gold medal along with following societies rules and principles. It seems absurd to me.
Hitler was a mentally unstable person. He used tactics to persuade people that he was a good person which he wasn’t.
Hitler could be very persuasive. He convinced a whole country that Jewish people were bad and needed to be sent away where they were killed. The Mother’s Crosses was just another tactic he used to persuade people.
Essentially, Hitler was recognizing mothers for ensuring his future. The Cross of Honor was a tactic to increase the birthrate.
I believe Hitler was institutionalizing this because he wanted to build a bigger population to follow him. I am happy to hear that a lot of mothers are focusing on themselves and their education now.
I have never heard of this award system of the more children that a woman has, the more privileges she will have in Germany. I can see why Hitler was doing this for the country but that is one of the craziest ideas I have ever heard of. It is evening more astonishing to see how it worked.
I have never heard of Hitler doing this. I can see how he was able to manipulate so many people during this time period because some of his ideas were strange. I am also shocked to see how the German population has decreased and the drastic increase of other populations.
I find it odd that the mothers children had to be well behaved and have a strong sense of morality, honesty, and decency because Hitler lacked all of these traits. This metal encouraged women to have more children so that German would be a more dominant race and would aid in Hitler’s plan to dominate all other countries and races.
I have never heard of this sort of thing happening. I think it is interesting that Hitler would give mothers awards and more privileges for having more children. This is just another great example of how he could brainwash people.
This is an interesting way to populate the Germans. I guess we can at the least say Hitler loved his mother but unsure how much he really loved woman seems more like a business move for him by offering these medals.
This article is very interesting and brings about some intriguingly mysterious concepts. I hate that the whole point of this award was to motivate women to bear as many children as she possibly could just to get a medal. This is inhumane and trickery because he just wanted the mothers to have more children to populate the Germans. What a messed up man.
I do not want to have more than 3 kids so unfortunately, my future wife would not be receiving the preferential treatment that came along with these medals if we lived in Germany at the time.
Giving awards for having children seems ridiculous, but I must say there are some mothers who are deserving of a medal. Compared to the other horrible decisions by Hitler, this one is odd, but not half bad.
One thing that really struck out to me is that the metals were given to the mothers on Hitler’s mother’s birthday, the twelfth of August. To me this shows that he had a purpose and motive behind his methods, being that it is on his mother’s birthday.
This may appear as a sign of kindness from Hitler, but as I was reading the criteria it made it more clear to me that Hitler was more so encouraging women to keep having German babies because he wanted an increased populations of German’s.
I agree with some of the posts below. Hitler may have wanted to seem well intentioned but his goal was to increase the German population with people he saw fit.
I wonder what the people thought about these metals. did they know its intention? or take pride in it.
One of the reasons why Hitler supported to increase the population at that time is that he wanted to get more soldiers for his wild ambition.
I just knew that Hitler wanted to have more people to support his army from Jingshan’s reply. That might be one of the reason that he increased the population.
It didn’t surprise me that he awarded women the medal if they had several children. He just wanted more people to promote the Reich.
By reading this article it seems that Hitler wanted to award the women that had many children. He wanted to award these women because he wanted to increase the amount of people to fight for him.
Hitler is disgusting and just wanted to breed more soldiers to fight his horrific war.
Today’s Germany supports the idea of demographic transition. The article suggests that the population is expected to decrease and many other people agree that this is true.
The Germany of today supports demographic transitioning. The article above suggests that the population might take a decrease and other people think that this is could happen.
It’s nice to see mothers being recognized but it was for all the wrong reasons.
He may have given mother’s medals, but they also had swatikas on them so no Jewish mothers where getting those medals.
So for the birth of children and acting properly they got a special medal to become better than others? wow that is different.
It is a unique idea for Hitler to populate Germany by rewarding mothers. I wonder how many of these mothers actually wanted the medal.
that is pretty messed up that Hitler would give medals just to make his forces stronger.
I don’t understand why they gave the mother medals.
All good mothers deserve medals.
It really does not matter what good Hitler did by giving a medal. It is cool to see women get honored, but it does not justify what he did
I am surprised that Germany’s population is now lower than what it was during the war.
I don’t think that this action could ever justify all of the horrible things that took place under Hitler’s command.
Its hard to believe Hitler did anything good to benefit the German population. You always hear about how there are crazy child laws in China, like they are only allowed to have two children and on has to be a male. But the leader of the Nazi party rewarded German women for the more children they had.
This action doesn’t even come close to justifying anything Hitler did throughout his dictatorship.
This, just like anything else that Hitler came up with was simply a means to an end. He wanted to ensure that the German war machine continued to have fuel.
I guess that was a way to build population and to build your army.
Why would someone give medals for having more kids. The more kids the better the medal. That was weird to see but I guess that is how he got his population up.
WOW, I am shocked to read that you got medals for having more kids
Great incentive to populate the Reich.
I just think this is funny that it was a medal winning competition for women to have kids!
We reward with Welfare in today’s society.
It was actually a great idea because making the medal a great honor, lead to more children been born. But like Dan said we do it in today’s society.
If we eliminated the perks of welfare I bet the population would slow down in the US as well.
I find this very interesting that you get medals just for having more kids.
Mothers are great and to have anymore than 1 kid definitely deserves a medal. Don’t think Hitler’s reasoning behind it was good but at least it showed he respected his mother by having the medals given out on his mother’s birthday.
I cannot believe that women were so easily swayed into having more children in order to get a Mother’s Cross! All for better meat, bread, and being able to cut in line at the grocery store? This doesn’t seem worth it!
I do think that some good came from it with mothers being recognized and given special privileges, but I don’t think that’s the only thing good that came from it. Even though Hitler used it to boost numbers for his Hitler Youth as well as the German population in general, it still helped repopulate for future generations after the war. With so many killed in all the countries that participated in WWII this program, even though meant for Hitlers own twisted use, helped fill the gap that was left after the war.
This is extremely interesting, Hitler actually gave out medals to women for having children. With 3 different types of medals each indicating how many children that one had. He really wanted Germany to have as many soldiers as possible.
I don’t think that this makes Hitler any better. He had motives behind women having all these children. It was to benefit his own needs of wanting more people for his mission of the Third Reich. He was still an evil person behind his medal giving to the mother’s who were making soldiers for him.
I don’t think Hitler was better for giving out the mother awards. His motive was to create a bigger army for deatruction. That is not admirable
Hitler was giving mothers awards just for having children. He wasn’t concerned with how these mothers were raising these children. These awards were another way for him to manipulate the German people to further his political plans.
So basically his plan to honor women who helped keep the German bloodlines pure and fruitful kinda back fired on him? Ha, that’s karma for ya Hitler! The most ridiculous idea, if you ask me.
It is comical that during this time you were rewarded for the number of children you had, where in modern society anything above the status quo of 2 is seen as terrible. Hitler was a smart man, he knew how to increase the very race he thought was superior.
If a read the article right, no mother should be forced to have children. That choice should be left up to the mothers to decide. That’s why the world is over populated in such countries as China, Mexico, and India.
It is funny that he gave out these medals requiring women to have so many children. It should be a woman’s right to choose how many children they wish to have. But I have to say he was pretty smart in using these medals to influence women to create children for his perfect race.
Women having children for a medal to receive extra privileges is no different than women today having children to try to “trap” a man into staying with her. Both situations are sad and no reason to be bringing a child into this world.
Well said Angela! Hitler only wanted more men for his army. Hitler had no compassion for these women, he had a plan in his mind and would manipulate anyone to execute his plan.
It was eye opening to read those figures about population. I knew China and India were leading, but wow!
It doesnt sound like the medals expire. A woman could have already had 5 children, received the medal and then reaped the benefits for years to come. Hitler was a monster, yes. No doubt about it. He was also a genius and he loved his mother dearly. To make a medal in her honor seems fitting for Hitler despite the terrible things he had done. What he did to the Jewish homes is no different than what America did to the Native Americans.
Hitler was no idiot. He knew the quickest way to propel his agenda to get a perfect, superior race was to reward those women to have multiple children. Even if they couldn’t afford to care for them.
Hitler was definitely a monster and with every idea he introduced, it had a sick and twisted meaning or drive behind it. With the amount of ability he possesses, I do not know why it couldn’t have been used toward something more positive.
He did this all for himself. He didn’t care about anything, but money and make himself look good.
I had not heard of this bit of propaganda to encourage propagation of the master race.
How ironic that Hitler gave an award to mothers who had a strong sense of morality, honesty, and decency. Hitler demonstrated none of those attributes. The awards do seem to demonstrate that Hitler’s mother was a substantial influence on his life. I wonder what she would have said about all the evil and suffering her son caused the world.
I find it interesting that almost all of the women in the video embedded in the article look pleased, although I don’t think it can be proven that it is because they are wearing their medals. I do find it hard to believe that many women today would feel inspired to have children for the sake of serving their nation, let alone for a silly medal. The sense of pride to support one’s nation in a war effort is not felt in the same way today as it was during World War II.
I would never encourage an award for having many children. I am a woman and have three children as is. They keep me busy enough. I could not imagine having more.
I had no idea Germany’s population was not increasing like other countries. Very interesting.
The person who even posed the question of “How Bad could Hitler have REALLY been?” must have either agreed with his actions and how he treated people, or just lived under a rock!!! I don’t care that he gave Mothers medals. The intent behind it was for the Reich so why praise it? They received medals for having multiple kids and a “MEDAL” doesn’t take care of or feed children!!
This is a very interesting article. Hitler was still only trying to fulfil his own selfish needs, however.
I think women in the U.S are waiting until they are well into their 30’s as well. Other factors contribute to these numbers.
Yet another attempt by Hitler to make himself look good while trying to achieve what he wants.
I did not know that mother had to give a birth to at least four children to showing a probity and exemplary behavior. There could be a pretty way of increasing a population at each country. In China, government is set up a limit for each family’s children issue, every family only can give birth to one or two children today.
Women are not children’s machines, they should pay more attention to education and work ability.
This man was truly insane. How do we allow people like this to live freely and run countries? I just do not understand. A woman having one child under his reign deserved an award for not killing him.