Totalitarian State and gender

The German model for the Sección Femenina de Falange 1936-1945

Abstract

The text at hand analyzes the contacts between the Women’s Section of the Spanish Falange and Nazi Germany’s Young and Adult Female Organizations during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. A short theoretical and historiographical introduction will be followed by a depiction of the chronology, aim, content and protagonists of the organizations’ mutual visits. After this outline, the Catholic Church’s fear of these contacts and subsequently of Nazi influence in National Spain will be briefly explained on the base of newly available Vatican sources. The presentation then focuses on similarities and differences between the female organizations of both Fascist parties, and finally analyzes the relation of these contacts with the Women’s Section’s political participation in the totalitarian project of the Falange.