The Myth of the Perfect Mother: Propaganda and Conspiracy Theories

Cigarette card titled “Muttergluck” (Joy of Motherhood), which shows Adolf Hitler with a mother and child.—US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of William O. McWorkman

Women were necessary participants toward the Nazi goal of creating a so-called pure race. Under Hitler’s reign, non-Jewish German mothers who had at least eight children to expand the nation’s population earned golden crosses, a tradition that began on Mother’s Day.

In this digital program, experts discuss how nationalist propaganda and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories converged to persuade women to become key players in the myth of Nazi supremacy. Today, women play the roles of both victim and vehicle in spreading dangerous white supremacist and antisemitic myths that divide our society.