The DARK History Of Women During WW2

World War II was the most deadly war in recorded history, claiming the lives of around 80 million people. Groundbreaking in every measurable metric, it was the first war to use nuclear weaponry and the first to purposefully bomb population centers. It was also the first war to use over 100 million personnel from over 30 nations. Many of these millions were women all with unique stories, from those who lead the resistance, to those who guarded concentration camps. Welcome to History on fleek, today we examine the untold stories of Women in WWII.

How did the misery of the war eliminate gender roles? When war goes global in its scale, the systems and hierarchies in place often take quite a battering. World War II was no exception. Countries embroiled in the conflict were left with no choice but to mobilize their total populations. As an extension of this, women’s roles expanded significantly from a world that had traditionally opined them as homemakers and housekeepers. While different nations had different roles for women, which we will touch on, millions

of women suffered injury or died during the conflict making an enormous personal sacrifice. Military and more What exactly did women do in WWII? Well, just about everything to be honest with you – when there was a spare set of hands needed when enlistment had left entire labor markets dry, homemakers became heroines. First and foremost it should be stated that many nations did deploy women in combat roles. The Soviet Union deployed over 800,000 in their main army, a whopping 300,000 serving in anti-aircraft units and firing the artillery themselves.

Perhaps the most famous of the Soviet women of WWII was female sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko – who claimed over 300 German lives with her marksmanship. Not a woman to be trifled with…. Factory lines and medical bays Women en masse were deployed to factories to help with the war effort. As the conscription left labor openings, women worked in factories to produce munitions and build parts for aircraft and ships used in the war. Auxiliary services were renowned for providing numerous roles for women in the conflict,

including fire officers, air-raid wardens, as well as the drivers of fire engines, trains, and ambulances. So pervasive was the influx of women in the workplace, that even some trade unions began to admit female members for the first time. It could be said the women serving in WWII who were most consistently in danger were nurses, often within reach of the frontlines and the bombardment they faced. Leading the Resistance Arguably the most interesting chapter on women’s WWII role was about those working in the resistance.

The underground movement in France while occupied by the Nazi’s had around 20% of its force made up of women. These women were fighters and took part in armed battles, even if making only a small portion of the guerrilla band Maquis in France. Across German-occupied Europe, resistance movements came to life in Italy, Poland, Greece, Holland, and many others. Their role in occupied Europe was immense, committing to espionage, sabotage, and propaganda. Lucie Aubrac’s legacy is arguably the most famous female resistance figure of the whole

war. Not only did she do all of the above, she met with Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie to negotiate her captured husband’s release. As if making demands on the Gestapo wasn’t badass enough, she then led a commando to attack her husband’s transport, freeing him and 15 other prisoners. You heard it hear first – the world needs more Lucie Aubracs. Concentration camp guards On the other side of the conflict, the Axis forces also deployed their female populations for the war effort. Most infamous was the Third Riech’s SS-Helferinnen a unit that specifically assigned female guards

to its concentration camps. While this conscription began due to a shortage of male guards, there were some 5000 Aufseherin overseeing camps from 1942 onwards. Male SS guards are reported to have seen themselves as equals with their female counterparts. Without a doubt, the most notorious of Aufseherin was Ilse Koch, sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in 1951. Koch was labeled (among many unpleasant things) “The Witch of Buchenwald” and was rumored to have kept skin souvenirs from inmates killed at the camp.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she embezzled millions with her husband at the same time. What was daily life like? Daily life wasn’t an easy thing to navigate for women in World War II. They dealt with prejudice and double standards from the very system demanding their input. The truth is when observing the propaganda efforts of allied governments, the war effort didn’t want women to drop housekeeping and join the factory – it wanted them to stay housekeeping and join the factory. That is a phenomenal workload, if not an entirely unrealistic one.

The war effort in Britain as an example would have fallen on its face without the efforts of women, yet the pressures they faced were exorbitant. One of the main reasons women were called to the workplace during wartime was that they were paid significantly less than men. Following long days in factories, women were expected to return home and provide all the caregiving and domestic responsibility on top of this – all on a shoestring budget. It should go without saying, that many women could not hold their workplace jobs during

wartime for this very reason. What were the dangers for women? The ‘labor famine’ Europe faced in wartime led to a less segregated workplace as it upped the vulnerability of women. At first, despite their need, women were not a welcomed presence in the workplace, to begin with, despite their lesser pay. Many men in the workplace saw women as lesser and unable to do ‘their jobs’ despite their performance proving quite the opposite. A pretty grim symptom of this hostility was sexual harassment. Statistics tell us of another threat and danger very present and real to women across the

European theatre of war. Rape had a sickening prevalence among allied soldiers. One release of secret wartime documents in 2006 tells of over 400 sexual offenses in Europe and over 100 rapes in England by American GIs. Another study estimated that 14,000 civilian women were raped by American GI’s in England, France, and Germany. Soviet Union’s Red Army soldiers were well documented for their mass rapes including the Metgethen Massacre and Nemmersdoft massacre. In an utterly mind-bending turn of perspectives, any concern for sexual impropriety was expressed

for the male soldiers and not for their female counterparts. WWII had its concerns about troop numbers being reduced by STIs and venereal diseases. Reports state the only time US officials showed concern over the conduct of its GI’s was if the soldier in question was black. Welcome to war: a place worse than hell, serving up rape and racism in one fell swoop – eugh, enough to make Satan blush… WWII’s VD problem… An immense risk to women during WWII was the threat of prostitution. Now, you’re going to have to follow me here because…. we’re taking a tour through

modern sexual slavery, and uh… it’s all… well…. awful. It’s believed during WWI, the US lost 18,000 conscripts a day to venereal diseases, come WWII that was not a trend looking to be repeated. Militaries across the world provided information and notorious ‘shady women’ posters warning soldiers of STI risks, vilifying women in the process, but the German military went even further. Rather than hope to contain or ward off the sexual activity of their soldiers, the German military established over 500 military brothels across occupied Europe.

Reinhard Heydrich was the architect of a state-mandated prostitution network that forced over 50,000 women into sexual slavery. The first reason was to protect against STIs and all soldiers were forced to use condoms, all prostitutes were checked by medical professionals. The second reason, depressingly, was homophobia – fear that a full male German military with a lack of available women… could turn men towards homosexuality. The third was to protect against the possibility of female spies in occupied countries.

In an irreversible horror, the women subjected to this were sterilized medically and often tattooed with Feldhure …meaning ‘field whore’. Their life expectancy was 6 months, should they fall ill or contract disease, they would be shot. In a case of harrowing tragedy, these women, should they survive were only social outcasts returning to their homelands and communities. Being forced into sex on the threat of death brought these people no sympathy, only persecution – their pain, beyond all imagination.

The demonization of the desperate A visceral example of the demonization women faced in WWII was for being associated with Germans. Following the fall of France in 1940, any women believed or found to be in relationships with German soldiers had their heads shaved in public. The act was known as ‘horizontal collaboration’ and the women were called ‘femme tondue’, shaven women. Following their sheering, these women would be paraded through the streets, sometimes tarred, painted with swastikas. At points, these women could be stripped of their clothes and beaten in the streets.

These rituals were repeated in Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Norway, and the Netherlands – making up what would be known as the ‘Ugly Carnivals’. Around 20,000 women had their heads shaved and became social pariahs in these grand displays of misogyny. Little taken into account were the hard realities of such women; many were low-income single parents coerced into relations, and many didn’t have any sexual relationships with German soldiers at all. If there’s something you’d like to hear about the women of WWII, lets us know in the

comments. Like, subscribe, this is History on Fleek and we’ll see you next time!