Throughout the lands occupied by the German Army during the Second World War, there was
large scale suffering.
Many people were starving and civilian populations were being deported en mass to concentration
camps and extermination camps.
The cost of the war was devastating to people living in lands where the conflict came to
their doorstep, and many people were forced out of their homes, and suffered as their
family members were killed.
Executions occurred inside occupied towns and cities to send a strong message to the
people living there.
If someone was suspected of being a member of the resistance they were arrested by the
gestapo and brutally tortured before they were then executed in front of large crowds.
But women suffered heavily at the hands of the Wehrmacht and German forces.
They saw them as ‘fair game’ and many women were executed by the einsatzgruppen
in the Soviet Union, and many more suffered at the hands of the German army.
Some women to survive in France even slept with German officers to guarantee food and
better treatment for themselves, however many women were kidnapped and abducted from their
homes by the German military.
Join us today as we look at the horrific torture of the women of the German military cathouses,
and remember to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
The German army set up military brothels and cathouses in many different areas across the
Second World War.
When they arrived into new towns and areas, they created brothels for many of the soldiers
to attend.
However these houses were staffed by many different women and girls who had been rounded
up and kidnapped from different lands.
Often hotels and other large houses which had been captured were used for this purpose,
and around 500 military brothels were set up in German occupied Europe.
Many German officers utilised ones that already were established, for example in Paris there
were a number of brothels which were staffed by French girls.
The German officers saw Paris as a place which was very exotic and they would visit these
houses, and later after the war the French population punished a number of these women.
They were in Paris for example forced to undergo the Ugly Carnival a form of public humiliation
where they had their heads shaved, and in Paris a number of women who slept with the
German soldiers were actually killed.
But in Eastern Europe and across occupied lands, many teenage girls and women were kidnapped
on the streets of occupied cities and during round ups and then they were forced to work
inside of brothels.
The Germans even used female prisoners inside of concentration camps to staff these houses.
It was said by the Polish government in Exile on the 3rd May 1941, that inside of Polish
cities mass kidnapping raids with the aim of capturing young women to be sold into slavery
in the brothels was occurring at the hands of the Wehrmacht.
Polish girls as young as 15 were being shipped to Germany to then be used by the German men,
and in Brandenburg it was noted that two Polish teenagers who returned home to Krakow had
been made pregnant after brutally assaulted by German soldiers.
These kidnappings occurred still in Warsaw and it was said that, "Uniformed Germans
... gaze fixedly at women and girls between the ages of 15 and 25.
One of the soldiers pulls out a pocket flashlight and shines it on one of the women, straight
into her eyes.
The two women turn their pale faces to us, expressing weariness and resignation.
The first one is about 30 years old.
'What is this old whore looking for around here?'
– one of the three soldiers laughs.
'Bread, sir' – asks the woman.
... 'A kick in the ass you get, not bread' – answers the soldier.
Owner of the flashlight directs the light again on the faces and bodies of girls.
... The youngest is maybe 15 years old ... 'This one is ideal for bed' – he says.”
Often many of these young women who were forced into this line of work would be killed at
the hands of the German soldiers they had to sleep with, and many also died from the
diseases that they contracted from them men.
Also many of the German officers violently killed the women, but following Operation
Barbarossa the practice of the German Military Brothels continued.
It was said that women in the Soviet Union were being kidnapped, and one report stated
that, ‘"in the city of Smolensk the German Command opened a brothel for officers in one
of the hotels into which hundreds of women and girls were driven; they were mercilessly
dragged down the street by their arms and hair."
It was true horror, as these women had to contend also with many of their homes being
burned down and destroyed, as well as their husbands and family members being shot dead
by the Einsatzgruppen in large scale atrocities.
The Germans gutted certain areas of the Soviet Union and the women were then forced into
slavery in these houses.
There were a number of cases where women who had been forced to work in this manner tried
to escape.
They tried to escape, but often if they were captured they would be executed in the same
manner that people were if they escaped concentration camps.
There was one case where a group of Polish and Soviet women imprisoned in a German military
brothel in Norway escaped in 1941.
Inside this house, they had been assaulted by up to 32 men a day, and visiting soldiers
paid 3 reichsmarks for 15 minutes between the hours of 2pm and 8:30pm.
Many of the women who became pregnant were released, but they refused to go back to their
families as they were ashamed that they were carrying the babies of the enemy.
These specific women who managed to escape found refuge in a local church which granted
them asylum and shelter.
But a number could not live with themselves because of their ordeals, and many women took
their own lives as they were living true hell.
In occupied France, the Wehrmacht utilised around 100 new brothels inside of the land,
and they also used many of the former government controlled ones in cities as mentioned such
as Paris.
The soldiers were granted official permission through a visitation card issued by the Oberkommando
des Heirs, which allowed them to sleep with the women in the cathouses.
They tried to discourage soldiers from engaging in relations with other French women, and
it was said that the brothels were used heavily to try and prevent assault against French
women, and many of the women were subjected to regular medical screening to prevent disease
spreading throughout the Wehrmacht.
After the war, many of the women who had been working in these houses tried to make their
way home but what they came back to was homelessness as their property had been destroyed.
Many others also had to contend with the fact their family members had been killed and also
displaced.
But the German military brothels were seen as an untold war crime of the Second World
War, with the women forced to staff these being kidnapped from their homes and transported
to work in these hundreds of miles away.
These women in a sense were some of the forgotten victims of the Second World War, and their
stories deserve to be told.
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