We owe the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party in the 1930s to the majority vote of millions of ordinary Germans – both men and women.

But aside from a few prominent figures like concentration camp guard Irma Grese and “concentration camp murderer” Ilse Koch, little is known about the ordinary women who joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the NSDAP. What little data we have on ordinary Nazi women has been largely left unused, forgotten, or ignored. We have only a half-formed understanding of the rise of the Nazi movement, which focuses almost exclusively on male party members.

And yet, over 30 essays on the topic of “Why I Became a Nazi,” written by German women in 1934, lay dormant for decades in the archives of the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto. These essays were only unearthed three years ago, when three professors at Florida State University arranged for them to be transcribed and translated. They have since been made available digitally, but have not received much attention.

Not just cabaret

As scholars of Holocaust studies, crimes against humanity, and political behavior, we believe these women’s accounts provide insight into the role women played in the rise of the Nazi Party. They also reveal how women’s attitudes toward feminism differed after World War I—a time when women were gaining independence, education, economic opportunity, and sexual freedom.

The German women’s movement was one of the most powerful and significant in the world for half a century before the Nazis came to power in 1933. First-class girls’ grammar schools had existed since the 1870s, and German universities were opened to women at the beginning of the 20th century. Many German women became teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and novelists. In 1919, German women were granted the right to vote. From 1933 onwards, women, of whom there were millions more than men – in Berlin there were 1,116 men for every 1,000 – voted for Hitler and Nazi candidates in roughly the same percentage as men.

“Everyone was the enemy of everyone else”

Essays unearthed at the Hoover Institution provide insight into why some of them did so.

Dissatisfaction with the attitudes of the Weimar Republic, the period between the end of World War I and Hitler’s rise to power, is evident in the women’s writing. Most essayists express their dislike of some aspect of the political system. One describes women’s suffrage as a “disadvantage for Germany,” while another describes the political climate as “confused” and “everyone was everyone else’s enemy.” Margarethe Schrimpff, a 54-year-old woman from near Berlin, describes her experience:

These essays were originally collected by Theodore Abel, an assistant professor at Columbia University who, in conjunction with the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, organized an essay contest with generous prizes. Of the nearly 650 essays, about 30 were written by women, and Abel set them aside, stating in a footnote that he wanted to study them separately. But he never did. The men’s essays formed the basis of his 1938 book Why Hitler Came to Power, which remains an important source in the global discourse on the Nazis’ rise to power.

Summarising Abel’s findings in his book on Hitler’s rise to power, historian Ian Kershaw wrote that they showed that “the appeal of Hitler and his movement was not based on any particular doctrine.” He concluded that almost a third of the men were attracted to the Nazis’ ideology of the indivisible “national community” – the Volksgemeinschaft – and a similar proportion were influenced by nationalist, superpatriotic and German romantic notions. In only about an eighth of the cases was anti-Semitism the main ideological concern, although two-thirds of the essays revealed some form of antipathy towards Jews. Almost a fifth were motivated solely by the Hitler cult and attracted to the man himself, but the essays reveal differences between men and women in the reasons for the fascination with the Nazi leader.

The cult of Hitler

For men, the personality cult seems to revolve around Hitler as a strong leader charging toward a Germany that defines itself through those it excludes. Not surprisingly, women, who were themselves on the brink of exclusion, were less fascinated by this component of Nazism. Women’s essays tend to draw more on religious imagery and sentiment, confusing piety with the Hitler cult. Women seem more moved by Nazism’s proposed solutions to problems such as poverty than by the supposed greatness of Nazi ideology in the abstract.

Helene Radtke, the 38-year-old wife of a German soldier, describes in her essay her “divine duty to forget all my household chores and to do my service to my fatherland”.

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Agnes Molster-Surm, housewife and private teacher, calls Hitler her “God-given leader and savior, Adolf Hitler, for Germany’s honor, Germany’s happiness and Germany’s freedom!”

Another woman replaced the star on her Christmas tree with a photo of Hitler surrounded by a wreath of candles. These men and women spread the message of National Socialism like the gospel and referred to new party members as “converts.” One of these women describes the first attempts to “convert” her family to National Socialism as “falling on stony ground, and not even the smallest green seedling of understanding sprouted.” She was later “converted” through conversations with her postman.

The essays are not just historical curiosities, but also a warning about how ordinary people can be drawn to extremist ideologies in times of social distress. Similar language has been used to describe the current political climate in the United States and other countries. Perhaps these women believed, as some do today, that all of their society’s ills could be solved by restoring their supposed former glory, whatever the cost.

This article was adapted from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trusted analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Sarah R. Warren, Florida State University; Daniel Maier-Katkin, Florida State Universityand Nathan Stoltzfus, Florida State University

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Sarah R. Warren received funding for part of this work from the Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement at Florida State University.

Daniel Maier-Katkin receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of State

Nathan Stoltzfus does not work for, consult for, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic employment.