26 January 1942, evening

I detest women who dabble in politics. And if their dabbling extends to military matters, it becomes utterly unendurable. In no local section of the Party has a woman ever had the right to hold even the smallest post. It has therefore often been said that we were a party of misogynists, who regarded a woman only as a machine for making children, or else as a plaything. That’s far from being the case. I attached a lot of importance to women in the field of the training of youth, and that of good works. In 1924 we had a sudden upsurge of women who were attracted by politics: Frau von Treuenfels and Matilde von Kemnitz. They wanted to join the Reichstag, in order to raise the moral level of that body, so they said. I told them that 90 per cent of the matters dealt with by parliament were masculine affairs, on which they could not have opinions of any value. They rebelled against this point of view, but I shut their mouths by saying: “You will not claim that you know men as I know women.” A man who shouts is not a handsome sight. But if it’s a woman, it’s terribly shocking. The more she uses her lungs, the more strident her voice becomes. There she is, ready to pull her hair out, with all her claws showing. In short, gallantry forbids one to give women an opportunity of putting themselves in situations that do not suit them. Everything that entails combat is exclusively men’s business. There are so many other fields in which one must rely upon women. Organising a house, for example. Few men have Frau Troost’s talent in matters concerning interior decoration. There were four women whom I give star rôles: Frau Troost, Frau Wagner, Frau Scholtz-Klink and Leni Riefenstahl.

8 April 1942, midday

6. I sent a few of our own people to take a course in public speaking in the schools organised by the other parties. Thanks to this, we obtained a good insight into the arguments which would be used by those sent to heckle at our meetings, and were thus in a position to silence them the moment they opened their mouths. I dealt with the women from the Marxist camp who took part in the discussions by making them look ridiculous, by drawing attention either to the holes in their stockings or to the fact that their children were filthy. To convince women by reasoned argument is always impossible: to have them roughly handled by the ushers of the meeting would have aroused public indignation, and so our best plan was to have recourse to ridicule, and this produced excellent results.

7. At all my meetings I always spoke extempore. I had, however, a number of Party members in the audience, with orders to interrupt along lines carefully prepared to give the impression of a spontaneous expression of public opinion, and these interruptions greatly strengthened the force of my own arguments.

8. If the police intervened, women of our Party were given the task of drawing their attention either to opponents or to completely unknown people who happened to find themselves near the entrance to the hall. In cases like this, the police invariably go about their job quite blindly, like a pack of hounds, and we found that this method was most efficacious, both for ridding ourselves of undesirable elements of the audience and for getting rid of the police themselves.

7 July 1942, at dinner

The theory that by thus putting them in prison you deprive this anti-social rabble of the benefits of the influence of family life is pure clap-trap. If you allow them the blessings of family life, all you are doing is to build the foundation cells for a further brood of criminals. Children who grow up in the company of subversive-minded parents themselves become rogues, for their mothers are invariably of the same pernicious ilk as their rogue fathers.

Our period of struggle gave me valuable experience of this. At the SS rallies it was the females of the Communist species who were the most despicable. These hags would pelt our men with everything they could lay their hands on, and when our men started to defend themselves, they would hold up their own children, regardless of the danger, as shields to protect themselves. What better proof than that can you have of their complete disregard for the safety and welfare of their children, in which they show themselves to be the complete antithesis of the normal parent and faithful adherents to their own criminal anti-social instincts?