During the Second World War, there was a shocking spectacle which horrified the Allied soldiers
who liberated different French towns.
Women were being paraded throughout the streets and were subjected to brutal acts of violence
and suffering.
Many of them had their heads shaved, and were beaten, and in Paris some women were even
killed by the angry crowds.
Many of the women had their heads marked with the swastika and other nazi symbols, but what
was so awful that these seemingly civilian women were being treated like this?
They were allegedly guilty of what was known as horizontal collaboration, or more simply
they were women who were said to have slept with the enemy, the German soldiers.
The fate of these women became known as the ugly carnival, and many were driven out of
their homes and the Allies were sometimes sickened by the treatment of the victims.
But to the French resistance, this sort of activity was deemed sufficient reprisal for
what they believed was the ultimate betrayal.
In World War 2, there were many people who collaborated with their enemies in occupied
countries and lands which were under German and Nazi control.
Some acts of collaboration such as the betrayal of Anne Frank have gone down in infamy for
their cruelty, and there were many people who were almost employed by the Germans to
hunt down people to persecute.
But one of the most straight forward elements of collaboration was when women would sleep
with the German soldiers.
For some women, they fell in love with the Germans who came into their land, and some
viewed the soldiers as foreign, dark and charming.
This even happened in Britain, as there were many women who after the end of the war married
former German and Italian prisoners of war.
Some of these men had been working in local villages, and despite fraternisation being
discouraged, they still fell in love with local women.
But in France, the idea of sleeping with the very people that caused so much devastation
and suffering during the war was deemed to have been the ultimate treason and was very
severely punished.
In France many German soldiers assaulted and committed horrific crimes, but there were
others who genuinely fell in love.
In France there were roughly 200,000 babies that were born to French mothers and German
fathers, and this occurred in many other countries too.
On the Channel Islands the only part of Britain invaded, the Germans fathered around 900 children
that were registered, and in Norway the same happened with 12,000 children born.
The Soviets at the end of the war would commit large scale assault and horror, and many German
women found themselves victims to this disgusting behaviour.
But at the start of the war, the Germans rampaged throughout France at break neck speed, and
they forced the French into surrendering, and with this they began their occupation
of the nation.
The soldiers based in France made themselves at home, and a number then had French girlfriends
after they woo’ed local women.
To the Germans, some of the French women were deemed exotic and different to what Hitler’s
idea for women was in Germany, and they believed that Paris was basically a large cat house
in which was filled with women who would sleep with them.
Many German soldiers then visited the brothels inside of Paris, and they treated the French
women who became their girlfriends in some cases well.
There are some interesting images of French women who had been dressed by their German
boyfriends in the German Army uniform, and in these images the women look genuinely happy.
It’s certain that some French women thought that they could start a family with the Germans,
and at the end of the war some of the women even accompanied their boyfriends into prisoner
of war camps.
Many did leave France for Germany at the end of the conflict, however to the French the
idea of horizontal collaboration and sleeping with the enemy was considered incredibly disgusting
and one of the most shameful things a woman in society could do.
The French Resistance then believed that this sort of behaviour needed punishing, and this
is what they did inside of towns and cities.
The allied liberators after D-Day witnessed many happy scenes inside France, but then
there was a sense of punishment for the women that emerged.
The Ugly Carnival was the public humiliation which was deemed to have been appropriate
for the women that slept with the German enemy, and it was shocking and psychologically and
physically totmented the victims.
One eyewitness to the ugly carnival stated, ‘ ‘‘I saw four girls who had been led
through the streets and I rushed towards them to take a photograph.
At once I found myself at the front of the procession, and the local people thought I
was the female soldier who had captured them or something like that, and I was kissed and
congratulated at the same time as slaps and spits rained down on the unfortunate girls.’
Another witness stated that, ‘‘I watched an open lorry drive past, to the accompaniment
of boos and catcalls from the French populace, with a dozen miserable women in the back.
Every hair on their heads shaved off.
They were in tears, hanging their heads in shame.
Whilst disgusted by this cruelty, I reflected that we British had known no invasion or occupation
for some 900 years, so we were not the best judges.’
Women who were accused of sleeping with the Germans were brought into public spaces such
as town halls and squares, and thousands were gathered.
They were then taken onto a platform or a scaffold, and they had their heads shaved
in front of the crowd.
This was deemed to have been a medieval punishment for women aimed to humiliated, and the men
of the French resistance hacked at their hair with shears, and often this was very painful.
The victims were seen weeping and crying, but a number remained strong in front of the
crowd.
Many were baying for their blood and life, and women were then forced to run through
the thousands of spectators, whilst the French people spat, kicked and assaulted them.
Some women were knocked to the floor and were set upon, and some were beaten so badly that
they died.
The women were often left bloodied, and a number had swastikas and other nazi symbols
drawn on their foreheads in lipstick or paint.
Some women were also forced to stand on trucks and were driven around towns and other villagers,
where the locals would throw things at them.One witness said of the women, ‘in the hands
of their tormenters they had the look of a hunted animal.’
Another witness said that ‘the French were rounding up collaborators, cutting their hair
off and burning it in huge piles, which one could smell miles away.
Women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten.’
It’s believed that at least 20,000 French women were subjected to the Ugly Carnival
and that they had their heads shaved.
Many of the images of women who were subjected to this are harrowing and haunting, with women
shown with swastikas on their head.
The story of one 23 year old woman Simone Tosseau was a particularly shocking one.
She worked as a translator for the Germans and she had been in a relationship with a
German soldier since 1941, and the couple had a daughter.
But this baby was then brought into the Ugly Carnival too.
She was accused of also telling of her neighbours to the Gestapo who were then sent to a concentration
camp.
But this young woman was beaten in the ugly carnival after her head was shaved, and her
forehead was marked in red.
She was paraded throughout the town of Chartres, and women policemen and children joined in,
and her mother also suffered the same punishment.
But the Ugly Carnival was a terrifying ordeal for 20,000 women who were accused of sleeping
with the enemy.
This was a shocking thing for people to have witnessed, and was incredibly traumatic for
the women who were punished in this way.
It was a dark part of the Second World War, and scarred the men who were there to liberate
France, but the women were seen as the worst kind of traitor.
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