The Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter or the “Mother Cross” is an award established by Adolf Hitler in 1938. The crosses were awarded on August 4, Adolf Hilter's mother's birthday, and on Mother's Day.

The German government openly professed an ideology in which the number of Germans, as far as of the Germanic race, had to grow explosively. Large families and fertility were idealized in the propaganda and the government strove to let the German mother live and work at home with her family. Women's emancipation was not promoted, she was there to bear and raise children.

The decorated women were greeted in the street by the Hitlerjugend with a Hitler salute. In Nazi Germany, porters were treated with respect by the civil service and were entitled to a seat on public transport. That is why small versions of the cross and miniatures that could be worn as a brooch, for example, were also sold. These decorations were not approved by the then German government. The model decoration could only be worn on special days and occasions.