Germany – Third Reich: Reichsbund der Kinderreich (R.D.K.) lapel badge, Ges.Gesch AK maker marked to reverse.
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During the Nazi era, the RdK received generous support and state recognition. It was affiliated with the Racial Policy Office of the NSDAP and a member of the Reich Committee for Public Health at the Reich Ministry of the Interior. In 1936, the Reich League Leader, Wilhelm Stüwe, described it as a "front for genetically healthy German large families" and a "fighting league that seeks to spread National Socialist thought among the people." The RdK propagated the "biological renewal of our people," which was the title of a programmatic document by the Reich Leader.
He did not advocate for marginalized, lower-class families with many children, which were considered " asocial " at the time , but rather advocated the "unconditional, sharply defined separation from the hereditarily diseased, morally or otherwise burdened, i.e. inferior, extended family" in favor of the "selection of German-blooded , hereditarily healthy, i.e. fully-fledged, large families." Here, he argued, the "prerequisite for any solution to the large-family problem" lay through the withdrawal of resources in one case and the granting of resources in the other. They were "a union of struggle and selection.". The opposite of the desired "large-family" was the "asocial extended family," which was to be eradicated. As not "German-blooded," Jewish or Roma families, as well as "asocials," were not only fundamentally excluded from any support, they were considered "inferior" and dangerous to the "national body."
In the late 1930s, the RdK renamed itself the Reichsbund Deutsche Familie (RDF).
As the father of ten legitimate children, NSDAP Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel was chairman of the "Honorary Leaders' Ring" of the Reich League of Large Families.
