Gertrud Emma Scholtz-Klink, born Treusch, later known under the alias Maria Stuckebrock (9 February 1902 – 24 March 1999), was a German official and member of the Nazi Party best known as the leader of the National Socialist Women's League (Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft or NSF), a position she was appointed to by Adolf Hitler in 1934. She headed numerous other Party and government organizations for women and was the highest ranking female official in Nazi Germany. She was known in Britain as the “the perfect Nazi Woman”. Following the end of the Second World War, she underwent denazification proceedings and was adjudged a "major offender". A non-repentant Nazi, she lived another half-century and published a book in which she professed her continued belief in Nazi ideology.

Gertrud Emma Treusch was born into a middle class family in Adelsheim where her father was the local district surveyor. When she was 2, the family moved to Eberbach where she later attended the local Volksschule. Her father died when she was 8, and from then on she and her two brothers were raised by her mother. They moved to nearby Mosbach where she attended the Gymnasium until age 16 and worked briefly as a nurse during the last stages of the First World War in 1918.

In April 1921, at age 19, Treusch married Eugen Klink, a former army officer and war veteran who worked as a secondary school teacher. He became a member of the Nazi Party and its paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA). He also served a local Party speaker and as the acting Kreisleiter for the Offenburg district. The couple would have five children, one of whom died in infancy. In March 1930, Klink died of a heart attack at a Party rally. The widowed Frau Klink moved to Ellmindingen and, two years later, married a country physician by the name of Günther Scholtz, changing her surname to Scholtz-Klink. This marriage produced no children and ended in divorce in 1937. In December 1940, she married for a third time, to SS-Obergruppenführer August Heissmeyer, a high-ranking member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and a widower with six children. This marriage produced one son, Hartmut, born in June 1944. The size of their combined family was the subject of much attention and praise by the Nazi press.

Scholtz-Klink joined the Nazi Party in March 1930 and her membership was backdated to 1 September 1929 (membership number 157,007). As an early Party member, she later would be awarded the Golden Party Badge. In October 1930, with the support of her patron, Gauleiter Robert Heinrich Wagner, she was appointed leader of the Party's women's organization in Baden. By 1931, she also attained the leadership of the women's organization in Hesse. A gifted orator, she traveled throughout southwestern Germany recruiting women to the Party. In 1933, Wagner brought her into the Baden interior ministry as a consultant on women's issues and made her a leader of its labor service.

About a year after the Nazi seizure of power, Scholtz-Klink moved to Berlin on 1 January 1934 when Konstantin Hierl, head of the Reich Labor Service, appointed her as the leader of the German Women's Labor Service (Deutscher Frauenarbeitsdienst), a post she would retain until April 1936. Additional appointments followed in rapid succession. She was made the Reichsführerin of the Party's National Socialist Women's League (NSF) and the larger mass organization Deutsches Frauenwerk (German Women's Association) on 24 February 1934. She also was made leader of the Women's League of the German Red Cross in June and of the Women's Bureau of the German Labor Front in July. Additionally, she had the honor title of Reichsfrauenführerin (Reich Women's Leader) bestowed upon her by Adolf Hitler in November. She was made a member of the Academy for German Law in 1937.

Scholtz-Klink became the public image of the model Aryan woman: blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slim, with braids pinned in a crown around her head and no makeup. She was usually attired in her NSF uniform, with a necktie and a starched blouse buttoned to the throat. At unofficial functions, she generally wore the traditional German dirndl. For the duration of the Nazi regime, she became the chief exemplar of the German woman and was known by many nicknames, including "First Lady of the Reich", "Reich Mother-in-Chief" and the derogatory "Reich Thundering Goat".

One of the first targets of the Reichsfrauenführerin was the large feminist movement, which had been active in the Weimar Republic. It was rapidly repressed, with its constituent organizations either banned outright or incorporated into the NSF. Leading feminists either left Germany or remained but retreated into a self-imposed silence.

Scholtz-Klink's main task was to promote male superiority, the joys of home, and the importance of child-bearing. Her philosophy of women's role in society hearkened back to the earlier German slogan of "Kinder, Küche, Kirche". In one speech, she declared that "the mission of woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man's existence". Her views even extended to condoning sexual violence against women. She once confided to a female colleague when discussing male domineering and bullying: "What woman could possibly object or not want to be forcibly taken by her man. If she is honest then every woman enjoys that". She viewed women's role in Nazi Germany as sacrosanct but subservient. It was the woman's duty to care for her body to ensure its maximum fertility, to produce as many children as possible for the state and to make a good home for her husband and children. In order to encourage an increase in the birth rate, incentives were established for larger families, and Mother's Day was celebrated as an official holiday from 1934. Beginning in 1939, women who bore four or more children were awarded the Cross of Honour of the German Mother, a state decoration, which was presented in three classes according to the number of children: bronze (4–5), silver (6–7) or gold (8 or more). Scholtz-Klink herself was awarded the golden cross in May 1944.