As the allies liberated many different parts of France following the D-Day invasions, they
came across rather disturbing scenes in many French towns and also French villages and
cities.
Allied troops and the French resistance began to liberate areas and they were met with many
different euphoric scenes as the Germans were sent back towards Germany.
However many Allied soldiers came across a large number of women who were being punished
by the French for their ‘horizontal collaboration with the enemy.’
This was where women were being brutally punished for sleeping with the enemy and were publicly
humilated in shameful scenes.
It’s estimated that 20,000 women had their heads shaved in public spectacles which became
known as ‘the ugly carnivals,’ and these women were treated barbarically and suffered
greatly.
These were women who’s crime was sleeping with the German enemy.
Join us today as we look at the Horrific Torture Of The Women Who slept with the Nazis.
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As the Germans captured and seized large areas of land and different countries, they settled
and occupied the areas.
Quickly they got themselves comfortable and then started looking for women to either court,
take advantage of or treat terribly.
There were many women across occupied lands who took to the Germans, and who decided to
sleep with the German soldiers.
There was at the time sometimes in the German army seemingly a trend where many French girlfriends
of German soldiers would walk around in their boyfriends uniform, and pictures of this do
exist.
Everyone in the Wehrmacht and the military knew that Paris was where they wanted to be.
Many Germans believed that it was a place filled with scandalous women who would tend
to the every desire of the army, and they believed it was in a sense a ‘giant cathouse.’
Conquering soldiers especially those who were of a significant rank in the military had
a lot to offer a girl, they could offer them a future they promised that after the war
they would marry and then move back to Germany and start a family.
There were some women who did take advantage of the fact many of the German soldiers were
lonely, and then went to bed with them, but there were also soldiers who were happy to
take advantage of the women in France, many who’s boyfriends and husbands had joined
the French army to fight.
Some women fell in love and married their German boyfriends, and they followed their
husbands wherever they went even often across dangerous lands, and some even joined them
inside of prison camps.
In France around 200,000 babies were born to German Fathers and French mothers, and
this pattern occurred wherever the German Army went.
In Norway 12,000 were born, and even in the Channel Islands 900 babies born to German
father’s were registered.
But as the war turned against the Germans, and they were pushed back and forced to conceded
territory, often the liberators and aspects of the resistance went to extreme lengths
to punish those women who they believed were collaborating with the Germans, and who had
slept with the enemy.
Horizontal Collaboration as it was known referred to a romantic or sexual relationship that
many women in France or occupied lands had with German occupation forces following the
fall of said lands.
After there liberation of France, many women were punished in a horrific ordeal for being
collaborators, and many of the scenes were truly horrific and barbarous.
In Norway some women who were accused of collaborating in this way were exiled from lands, and were
even arrested and thrown in prison.
Also children from these relationships were considered part of the betrayal, and were
also exiled and declared illegitimate.
In many lands to sleep with the enemy was considered one of the worst shames and crimes
that one could conduct during the Second World War.
But in France, a horrific ordeal for many women was carried out aimed to torture and
humiliated them in public for sleeping with the enemy.
Many had their heads shaved in public spectacles with crowds flocking to see members of the
resistance cutting the flowing locks from a woman.
This was a punishment that dated back to the dark ages for adultery, but it was a sign
of humiliation and retribution for the French forces.
During the Second World War, the Nazi state issued orders that German women who were accused
of sleeping with non-aryans or foreign prisoners on farms should be publicly be punished with
their heads shaved.
But inside French towns, the scenes were incredibly shocking with crowds baying for the sadistic
punishment of the women.
The ‘Ugly Carnival’ as it was referred to saw a large number of women brought into
town squares, forced to have their heads shaved and then they were often beaten, hit and abused
by other members of the crowds.
Crowds would spit and throw things at them, and often they had other punishment inflicted
on them.
Many were stripped half naked and forced to walk through the streets where crowds would
kick and hit them, and beat them sometimes very severely.
Some women were beaten badly and bloodied by these attacks, and some were even covered
in tar to shame them and make them feel even worse and outline what they had been done.
Many of the women in an act of revenge also had a swastika drawn on their foreheads or
bodies in lipstick or paint, and this showed the whole crowd what they had done.
It was said that these women ‘in the hands of their tormenters, had the look of a hunted
animal,’ and that the ‘French were rounding up collaborators, cutting their hair off and
burning it in huge piles, which one could smell miles away.
Also women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten.’
One photographer who took a picture of these events wrote, ‘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.’
Many of the women were also paraded on lorries throughout towns and cities to show more people
what they had done.
Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary saw this and stated, ‘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.’
There were also a few men who were shaved for working in German factories, but it was
always women who were deemed the first scapegoats.
A number of these women were not actually guilty of sleeping with the enemy, but some
were wrongly subject to the ordeal as they were in conflict with other women and men
who would tell the resistance of them.
A number of the women who were also shamed were also abused by the German soldiers and
these scenes of public humiliation were played out all over France.
Much of France had suffered under the German occupation heavily, and some allied soldiers
were sympathetic to this but were still shocked by the torture of the women that was evident.
Many women were executed and shot dead by French forces if they were found with German
weapons in their possession, even before they had a chance to explain such was the fear
of collaboration.
There was a possibility that these weapons were being gathered for the resistance, but
soldiers still shot women and also men dead for this.
There was also a fear in France of French women supporting the German military, as one
report from an American leftenant of the 1st Infantry Division claimed he had encountered
four women in German uniforms as snipers in trees and five inside of a town.’
But many women were targeted as duritng the occupation, they had lived better than the
rest of the French population, as they had not starved and had been given better food
and received many benefits from going with a German soldier such as trips to different
places, and also lenient treatment by other German officers.
It’s known that at least 20,000 women were known to have had their heads shaved, and
the figure may be much higher.
In Paris things were even more extreme, as there were cases of prostitutes and women
being kicked to death for accepting German soldiers as clients, and even members of the
aristocracy were shaved for being in cahoots with German officers.
In some areas of France, much of the conduct of French women and German soldiers was professional,
some women for example female schoolteachers who were living alone were forced to have
soldiers living with them.
After the war, they were punished for allegedly laying with the German soldiers but this was
not the case.
Many women believed their only way of obtaining food for themselves and their children during
the occupation as to collaborate with the enemy.
But the scenes of the ugly carnival were one of the most shocking of the Second World War,
as the violence inflicted upon the women who were forced to run the gauntlet in towns,
or were shaved sometimes resulted in their deaths and killings.
Across France there was a great moral outrage on those women who had slept with the enemy,
and for this their conduct was regarded as the biggest shame imaginable, and tantamount
to treason.
The scenes played out in many French settlements brought great shock to even the most hardened
Allied soldier, and today the images of French women without hair and with swastika’s branded
on them are haunting.
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