One of the most disgusting thing that a woman during the Second World War could have done
in the eyes of many was to sleep with the enemy, or the Germans.
Across France as the allies liberated villages and towns, they saw a huge shocking scene
which became known as the Ugly Carnival.
The French people were relieved that the Germans had been forced out of their areas and homes,
but then the French Resistance sought to punish women who were linked to what was known as
horizontal collaboration.
The French persecuted thousands of women who were forced to undergo a humiliating and horrific
ordeal inside of towns and cities, where they were forced to run the gauntlet of an angry
mob, but they were also forced to have their heads shaved and they were then daubed in
nazi symbols on their heads and bodies.
Some women were even killed by their ordeal and it was a scene that haunted many allied
soldiers who saw it, and they were disgusted at the actions of the French.
Join us today as we look at the most humiliating punishment for women during world war 2, as
always to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
During the Second World War the German Army captured and controlled countries and huge
swathes of land as Hitler’s soldiers rampaged across borders and quickly forced many countries
to surrender.
They would then follow this be stationed inside of the lands and they attempted to govern
many of these countries as Nazi states and would try to impose their brutal and barbaric
policies and rules and laws.
The German soldiers would try to settle in the areas, for example following captured
Paris many visited the city’s brothels and coffee shops and were photographed doing this.
Many German soldiers tried to look for women to court or treat awfully and assault, but
there were many women who inside of France would voluntarily fall in love with German
soldiers, and there were many women who would of their own accord sleep with the German
soldiers.
Some women were led to sleep and collaborate with the enemy out of desperation as the occupation
continued and they saw German officers as a vital lifeline as conditions got tougher
and food became scarce, and they believed the Germans would give them food in exchange
for certain favours.
The Germans wanted to be in Paris, and they saw the city as a large cathouse where they
could do what they wanted, and the soldiers who took the country especially those of a
superior rank did have things to offer French women.
Following the war they could offer them a future and marriage and many would go back
with their German boyfriends to Germany and would start a family.
Many women in France may have been lonely also as their husbands and boyfriends may
have joined the French army to fight the Germans which is why they sought solace int he arms
of their enemies, and some women genuinely fell in love.
There are images of women voluntarily entering prisoner of war camps to be with their German
boyfriends, but across Europe there were thousands of children born to German Fathers.
In France it’s believed 200,000 babies were born to German fathers and French mothers,
and in Norway there were 12,000 babies born in this way.
Even on the remote Channel Islands almost a thousand children were fathered by occupation
soldiers, however this was seen by many across the lands and especially those in resistance
groups as a complete disgrace.
In many countries the women who slept with the enemy were considered collaborators and
were said to have been complicit in the evils of the occupation armies.
IT was said to have been horizontal collaboration, the romantic and sexual relationship that
the French women had with German occupation forces following the capitulation of the nations
army.
Following the liberation of France, there were many women who were punished in a horrific
way for being collaborators, and the scenes of the Ugly Carnival as it was known was shocking.
The French went very far, but in.
Other lands such as Norway many women who slept with the enemy were transported to other
lands for exile, and some were thrown in prison.
The children of these relationships were also considered shameful, but in France the torture
of the ugly carnival was harrowing for many people to witness.
Many women were rounded up by the French Resistance and by local authorities and they were then
gathered in town squares.
The women often feared for their lives in front of crowds of thousands and thousands,
and they were then forced to have their head shaved.
The authorities would use scissors to hack their hair from their heads and then throw
it on the floor.
Across Europe this had been done for centuries and was seen as a way of punishing women.
The Nzis during the Second World War would call for the Nazi state to punish German women
in this way who were accused of sleeping with foreign prisoners, or non aryans.
They were then in the same way punished by having their heads shaved.
But the crowds in France were incredibly angry, and the scenes were like a medieval style
form of public punishment and humiliaton.
The crowds would be baying for the punishment of the women, and following having their heads
shaved, the women were forced to run the gauntlet through the crowds and they were then subjected
to beatings where people would try to kick them and hit them.
Men and children and other women would spit and throw things at the women, and they also
were screamed at, and some were forced to do this and had their clothes ripped from
them.
Some women were left bloodied by the attacks, and many were even covered in tar to make
them stand out even more.
They were often drawn on with tar and paint, especially with nazi symbols such as swastika’s
put not heir foreheads, showing everyone what their crime was.
It was mob rule and it was shocking.
Many of these women had lets remember slept with the Germans to try and survive and make
their occupation more straightforward, but there were also a large number of women who
had done no such thing, but they were suspected of sleeping with the enemy, and often false
reporting led to innocent women being shaved and tortured.
One eyewitness said of that these women in the hands of their tormenters had the look
of a hunted animal, and that in one city, ‘The French were rounding up collaborators,
cutting of their hair and burning it in huge piles, which could be smelt a mile away.
Women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten.
When the Allies saw the sights they were shocked, and one war photographer who captured images
of the horror would say, ‘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.’
A private Secretary of Winston Churchill in Normandy named Jock Coalville would see the
events of the ugly carnival and he reported 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.’
Some women who worked in German factories were also targeted for helping their war effort,
but as mentioned there were many innocent women who were accused and were then subjected
to the horror.
The reason for the harsh treatment was that France had suffered under German occupation,
for example the members of the French Resistance often faced horrific ordeals of torture and
execution if they were discovered by the Germans.
But many women were later targeted further and were shot dead by French soldiers if they
were found having been in receipt of a German weapon in their houses, and they were shot
before they explained why they had these weapons.
Women were shot even when they may have been gathering weapons for the resistance, but
there was such a sense of fear across the nation about women supporting the German military.
One report from an American would claim that he came across four women in German uniforms
who were working as snipers in trees and that five more women were found in a town.
It’s believed that 20,000 women were known to have been victims of this humiliating and
painful form of torture.
In Paris the anger went further, and some women who worked inside of the brothels were
dragged out of their places of work and were kicked to death for accepting German clients.
There was one woman who was forced to house German soldiers in her home, and these were
then punished also in the same way, even if they had no choice.
The scenes and sites of the ugly carnival were some of the most disturbing of the Second
World War, and there was a huge amount of violence inflicted upon the French women accused
of sleeping with the enemy.
It was seen by the French resistance as the biggest crime a French woman could commit
and to the battle hardened Allied soldiers, seeing this sort of behaviour brought a bad
taste to their mouths and often they were powerless to prevent and stop it, such was
the anger in the streets.
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