The Female Factor: the Impact of German Women on American Policy During the Occupation of Germany, 1945-1949

Home , CARE Package, Die Neue Zeitung, Fraternization, Hans Schweitzer, Here Is Germany, Herta Gotthelf

THE FEMALE FACTOR: THE IMPACT OF GERMAN WOMEN ON AMERICAN POLICY DURING THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY, 1945-1949

by Tiffiny Ford B.S. (Clarion University of Pennsylvania) 1996 THESIS Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements For the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in HUMANITIES in the GRADUATE SCHOOL of HOOD COLLEGE MAY 2020

Accepted: ______Dr. Didier Course, Ph.D. Dr. Corey Campion, Ph.D. Committee Member Program Director

______Dr. Scott Pincikowski, Ph.D. Committee Member ______April M. Boulton, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School ______Dr. Corey Campion, Ph.D. Capstone Advisor

I do authorize Hood College to lend this Thesis (Capstone), or reproductions of it, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individual for the purpose of scholarly research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...i Copyright Waiver………………………………………………………………………………..ii Introduction ...... 1 Background ...... 2 Scope...... 8 Organization ...... 9 Sources ...... 12 Chapter 1 ...... 14 Chapter 2 ...... 29 Chapter 3 ...... 46 Chapter 4 ...... 57 Chapter 5 ...... 68 Conclusion ...... 82 Bibliography ...... 89 Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………....9

DEDICATED TO PAUL

ABSTRACT

The Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) administered the area of Germany and the sector of Berlin controlled by the U.S. from 1945-1949. The military government, under the direction of General Lucius Clay, was tasked with the “denazification” and

“democratization” of the German people. Occupation troops were expected to carry out the

American military policies without establishing relationships with those they were occupying.

As a result, each soldier was given a copy of A Pocket Guide to Germany, which stressed the policy of non-fraternization with the German people. However, the non-fraternization policy, along with other economic and cultural policies, proved difficult for the soldiers to follow.

Instead of the highly masculinized and militarized German society American occupation troops expected to encounter, they were instead met with a physically and emotionally destroyed

German population comprised of mainly of women and children. Thus, American military propaganda did not accurately depict nor prepare the soldiers for the realities of post war

Germany. Therefore, my thesis will focus on the impact of German women on American Policy during the Allied Occupation of Germany from 1945-1949. I will address the changes to cultural, political, and economic policies implemented by OMGUS that were indicative of an overwhelmingly female population in Germany. I will analyze the change in American policies from punitive to rehabilitative, as German women were initially viewed by Americans as the

“enemy” but were eventually viewed as viable consumers who represented the future of democracy and the acceptance of American values in West Germany.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Corey Campion for his guidance and support, throughout this entire writing process. Because of his efforts and high expectations, I am a better writer, researcher and teacher for my own students.

Research reported in this document was originally published in a master’s degree Thesis sponsored by the Department of Humanities and submitted to The Graduate School of Hood

College in Frederick, Maryland.

iii

INTRODUCTION

When the U.S. military took control of Berlin, Germany in July of 1945, American GIs expected a highly militarized and masculine German society, filled with Nazi supporters.

Instead, American soldiers confronted a traumatized and predominantly female German civilian population who emerged from the rubble shell-shocked and starving. Initially, U.S. occupation policies focused on the demilitarization and denazification of the Germans. However, due to the housing and food crisis faced by the female dominated postwar German society, American policy softened to include the rehabilitation of the German people within the American Zone.

How did the gender imbalance impact the goals and policies of the American Occupation? How could the German political and economic system rebuild with a feminized population?

The focus of this paper will address how U.S. policies towards Germany changed from punitive to rehabilitative due, in part, to the economic, political, and cultural contributions of

German women from 1945-1949. As a result, the violent acts committed against German women by American GIs during the early occupation period lessened as more long-term relationships emerged. Subsequently, the continued contact between American GIs and German women eventually led to contact with German children and men, especially as German women and American GIs married. Thus, German women and children were the gateway for the acceptance of American politics and culture as they were the initial faces of defeat that American

GIs encountered. Therefore, German women’s acceptance of U.S. policies of denazification, democratization and education, contributed to the acceptance of the American Occupation of

Germany 1945-1949.

BACKGROUND

World War II began on September 1st, 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland, prompting

Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany. By September of 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan formed an alliance, known as the Axis Powers, in hopes of deterring the United States from entering the war. Initially, The United States stayed neutral due to economic ties to

Germany and the American isolationist foreign policies stemming from WWI and The Great

Depression.1 However, after the direct attack on U.S. soil by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in

December of 1941, the Unites States joined the Allied Powers (G.B. and France) and began sending troops to Europe to battle Hitler and the Nazis. After years of fierce battles against the

Wehrmacht (The Unified Armed Forces of Nazi Germany), the Allies (including the addition of the Soviet Union in 1943), successfully defeated the Germans who surrendered on May 7th,

1945. The following day, the Allied Powers accepted the terms of Germany’s unconditional surrender and declared May 8th Victory in Europe Day.

As May 8th, 1945 marked the end of fighting in Europe, it signaled the official beginning of the Allied Occupation of Germany. The idea of partitioning Germany into militarized zones had been broached by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of Great Britain

Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, at the Tehran Conference in Iran in

December of 1943. In February of 1945, “The Big Three” (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) met again in Yalta. During the Yalta Conference, Stalin agreed to free elections (he would not uphold this agreement) and France was given a zone of occupation in postwar Germany. The final meeting of the Big Three was held in Potsdam (a suburb of Berlin) in the summer of 1945.

Joseph Stalin returned and was joined by new U.S. President Harry Truman and newly elected

British Prime Minister Clement Atlee (who replaced Churchill during the Conference after his party’s defeat in the election). The main goal was to determine the governance of occupied

Germany. Each country set laws for its own zone while decisions regarding Germany as a whole were determined by the Allied Control Council, consisting of the commanders-in-chief of the

U.S., Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.2 However, areas of contention, such as

Poland’s borders and free elections in the Soviet Zone, set the stage for the Cold War. Thus,

Germany became geopolitically significant as the great divide between communism and democracy.

As plans and preparations were underway for the occupation, so too were Roosevelt’s plan to win the American public’s support for WWII. In 1942, President Roosevelt issued an

Executive Order to create The Office of War Information. (OWI). The director of the OWI,

Elmer Davis, was instructed to “formulate and carry out, through the use of press, radio, motion picture, and other facilities, information programs designed to facilitate the development of an informed and intelligent understanding, at home and abroad, of the status and progress of the war effort, and of the war policies, activities, and aims of the government."3 This was a difficult task for Davis to achieve as he had to portray the Nazis as the enemy to an American pubic who differentiated the Nazis from the majority of the German people.

Many Americans did not view Nazi Germany as an enemy or a direct threat to America.

First, many Germans had emigrated to the United States and were viewed as industrious and patriotic German Americans, who most Americans associated as their friends and neighbors, not

Nazis. Besides, Americans had their own history of racial prejudice towards African Americans and Native Americans as well as anti-Semitic views by elites and politicians who believed the

Jews had too much power.4 Therefore, many Americans failed to connect their own prejudices

3 with the atrocities of the Nazi for fear of their own hypocrisy. In addition, the OWI’s racist propaganda which focused on the physical differences of the Japanese was no worse than that used by the Nazis against the Jews. In fact, the almost alien vision of the Japanese portrayed in the OWI propaganda after Pearl Harbor convinced many Americans that the Japanese, not the

Germans, were the enemy.

Figure One: Mjölnir [Hans Schweitzer], poster for the film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal or Wandering Jew), directed by Fritz Hippler, 1940.

Source: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Museum für Deutsche Geschichte.

Figure Two: LIFE Magazine article, "HOW TO TELL JAPS FROM THE CHINESE"

Source: LIFE Magazine, December 22, 1941.

Propaganda used in WWI and WWII also created polarizing views of women.

Belligerent nations of WWI changed women’s roles in order to suit their wartime needs, while at the same time, served as reminders to women to accept their passive role.5 The poster art of

WWI either directed women to give their service or used their image as a symbol for the nation.

Women had shown their devotion to the cause during WWI by pulling up their sleeves and going to work, without regard to the task that was asked of them. Another recurring theme in WWI poster art used by both Allies and Central Powers was female sacrifice. While American women were asked to give up their clothes and money, German women were asked to give their hair for machinery insulation.6 During WWII, after recovering from the Great Depression, both

Germany and the U.S. were industrialized nations that needed a labor force during the war while the men were away. Consequently, WWI and WWII American and German propaganda used sexualized images of women by objectifying their bodies. Even when used as the image of the

“homeland, women were seen as “land,” like a private property to protect against the rape or physical assault of the enemy.7 Yet, women also became the enemy in posters depicting them as spies or femme-fatales (see below). This portrayal of women as victim and/or villain would impact the treatment of German women during the American Occupation of Germany.

Victor Keppler, Office of War Information, 1944. National Archives, Record Group 112: Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), Series: Posters Promoting Venereal Disease Prevention and the Prevention of Other Diseases, circa 1942-1944.

During WWII and the early occupation period, German women were viewed as the enemy and were treated as such. During WWII, women in occupied countries were raped by soldiers from both the Axis and Allied Powers. Although the exact number of women who were sexually assaulted is impossible to know, it is estimated that American GIs raped over 14,000 women in the UK, German and France between 1942-1945.8 Similarly, the number of rapes committed by the Russians Red Army Soldiers and the German Wehrmacht are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. However, the physical and sexual assaults on German women during the last year of the war and into the early period of the occupation signifies that German women were considered as enemies. Some soldiers viewed German women as Nazi supporters who were just as guilty as Nazi males. Many people were baffled as to why any German woman would support Nazi ideology as it limited women’s role to the wives and mothers who were eliminated from political participation.9 Roosevelt and Truman utilized the Nazi’s repressive policies towards German women as a means to differentiate America’s inclusive democratic principles of equality for all to win German women’s support during the American Occupation of Germany in the postwar years. The acceptance of those democratic principles by German women during the American Occupation of Germany 1945-1949, contributed to success of the

American goals in Germany.

The implementation of the American Occupation depended on the military’s implementation of American policies in the AMZON. OMGUS was under the military direction of General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the American Zone until 1946, and eventually

Lucius Clay, who the Military Governor until 1949. Clay was responsible for the reeducation, democratization, demobilization, and denazification of the German people in the AMZOM.

However, due to the multiple channels of communication and the confusing organization of

6 control between the military and the government (see figure 3), Clay often disagreed with policy makers in D.C. and implemented policies on the ground in Germany as he saw fit, as evidenced by Clay’s decision to add the Women’s Affairs Section to OMGUS in 1948. In order to achieve the goals of the American Occupation and to separate Germans from Nazi ideology, the German clock was symbolically reset to the “zero hour” or Stunde Null by the Americans. While all

Germans were entitled to a clean slate, some Americans had already exempted German women from blame for the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Yet, for most German women, American expectations associated with traditional female gender roles dictated their economic, political, and cultural life in postwar Germany. While some German women were lauded for their help to rebuild Germany (Trümmerfrauen-“rubble women”), they also created avenues for economic independence (see Chapter 3). And while they were initially targeted as traitors for their willingness to “make nice” with American GIs, German women’s relationships with GIs led to long lasting relations with Americans. As German women navigated their way through the crisis years, 1945-1949, they U.S. policies towards Germany softened and German women transitioned from that of enemy to ally.

SCOPE

The paper will connect the cultural, political and economic contributions made by

German women to the changes made to U.S. occupation policies in the American Zone from

1945-1949. Those policies mainly stem from JCS 1067, which outlined the denazification, democratization, reeducation and non-fraternization guidelines that OMGUS followed.

Although German women represented most of the population in all four zones of occupation, the scope of this paper will only include German women in the American Zone.

The reference to German women throughout the paper is not meant as a substitute for every German woman’s experience in the American Zone (AMZON) during 1945-1949. As young girls and elderly women were exempt from work, most German women who were impacted by U.S. policies in the AMZON were between the ages of 15-50. It should also be noted that any mention of German women’s experiences is centered on white females, as this was the dominant population in Nazi Germany and throughout the occupation. While female refugees, Jewish women, and female displaced persons’ history is rich and important, for the scope of this paper, they will only be mentioned as a reference in chapter two during the health crisis.10 In addition, German women’s experiences in the AMZON differed by geographic location (urban vs. rural) and I will specify when appropriate.

One of the major factors which impacted American goals in Germany during the occupation was the sexual contact between German women and American GIs. For the scope of this paper I will only focus on those interactions in the AMZON. However, sexual violence against women by American GI’ occurred during WWII as well as during the occupation.11 In addition, sexual violence against German women occurred in all four zones of occupation.12

While I chose to focus on German women’s experience during the American occupation,

I recognize that Japanese women were also under occupation by the U.S. military after WWII.

They experienced sexual violence and engaged in prostitution for survival as did some German women. For a detailed account of life in Japan under U.S. occupation, please refer to John

Dower’s novel, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 1999). His account of the Japanese government’s decision to open

“comfort facilities” for fear of sexual advances against Japanese women by U.S. servicemen shows a correlation to the sexual violence against German women in the AMZON.13

Finally, it is not my intention to suggest that all American GIs had sexual relations with

German women. However, based on press coverage, personal diaries and memoirs, wedding applications, and the increase in venereal disease, it is fair to conclude that fraternization occurred frequently between German women and U.S. military men (of all ranks) during the occupation. Furthermore, the number of “occupation children” born in Germany to both white and black American GI’s further proves the frequency of fraternization.14 Not all of the sexual contacts between American servicemen and German women were consensual, as referenced by the number of cases of rape brought against U.S. servicemen.15 However, American soldiers arrested for rape were typically charged with a different offense. As a result, there is a discrepancy between the number of estimated rapes that occurred due to the available data that represents only cases that came to trial and thus did not count all criminal incidents reported to the police.16

ORGANIZATION

Chapter One will highlight the negative impact of war on women’s lives. By building the argument that U.S. servicemen were trained to view women as sexual objects, traitors, and carriers of venereal diseases, American GIs eventually retaliated. As a result, American GI’s negative treatment of U.S. servicewomen carried over to their maltreatment of German women in the American Zone during the occupation. The inclusion of visuals from military training manuals and other graphics builds and supports the argument of the negative impact overtly sexualized images had on American and German women. In addition, visual propaganda from the U.S. Psychological Warfare Department which portrayed German women as the enemy, connects the sexual violence committed by American GI’s to German women during the early years of the American Occupation of Germany.

Chapter Two connects the sexual relations between American GI’s and German women to the change in the fraternization policy. Under the rules of the non-fraternization ban issued under the Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067, American servicemen were forbidden to have any social contact with Germans during the occupation. However, due to the desire for female intimacy, many GI’s ignored the ban and had both consensual and non-consensual sexual contacts with German women. During the early occupation period, some German women were raped by American GI’s. Furthermore, as sexual contact increased (consensual or not), German women were blamed for the increase in cases of venereal disease. As a result, many German women and female displaced persons were forced to undergo medical examinations in order to be “cleared” for future contact with American servicemen. Consequently, German women who had relations with American GI’s were considered traitors by German men and other German

10 women. As U.S. policy makers depended on the willingness of the Germans to accept democracy, detested Ami-German relationships threatened the political future of postwar

Germany. To ease tensions and to reassure America’s long-term commitment to Germany, the

U.S. issued the War Brides Act by the end of 1945, which enabled German women to marry

American GI’s (see chapter two for restrictions).

Chapter Three will examine the economic contributions made by German women and the

U.S. policies of denazification and reeducation. Under the punitive demilitarization policies,

Nazi War Pensions were cancelled, impacting thousands of German women who depended on that money to support their families. As a result, German women engaged in buying and selling on the Black Market and created other economic opportunities for survival. By utilizing the U.S. policy of denazification, German women helped re-establish the fashion industry by dying old

Nazi uniforms and creating new wares. As German women became consumers, U.S. policy makers granted licenses to German editors for magazines pertaining to women’s issues.

Chapter Four will address the reeducation of German women through American cultural policies. From rubble films to the first beauty pageant, German women were instrumental in the

Americanization of West Germany. I will evaluate the importance of German women as consumers to the recovery of Germany’s economy in the postwar. U.S. denazification policies enabled German women to become journalists and to travel to America through cultural exchange programs. In addition, women copied American culture through magazines. I will also include the addition of the Women’s Civil Affairs Division to OMGUS in 1948 and the connection of women’s voluntary associations to the agency of Germany women in the postwar years.

Chapter Five will evaluate German women’s role in the political process during the occupation and will evaluate their acceptance of American democratic family values. By the end of 1949, West German women had equal rights under West Germany’s Basic Law. However, the constitutional guarantee of women's equality was a separate equality which focused on elevation of the family-with the wife and mother at its center.17 This ideal of the West German woman returning to a protected domestic space helped form the boundary between East

Germany where the ideal woman was a working mom. This separation in politics established the dividing line between East versus West Germany and gender was at the forefront of that defining identity.

SOURCES

My primary sources will include military and civilian records. I will connect the propaganda used by the U.S. Military such as, the Pocket Guide to Germany, prepared by the

Army Information Branch in 1944, and the U.S. War Department short film, Your Job in

Germany, produced in 1945, to the violence committed by U.S. soldiers during the occupation.

In addition, I will utilize the OMGUS public opinion surveys given to the German people from

1945-1949 to assess the connection between Germans and Americans during the occupation.

Other primary sources will include diary entries from women in both rural and urban areas as well as articles from the American newspapers such as Life and The New York Times as well as

American Zone newspaper, Die Neue Zeitung. The secondary sources I have included are works from feminist scholars, military historians, and social historians.

Abbreviations ACC Allied Control Council AFM American Forces Network AMZON American Zone of Occupation BDM Bund deutscher Mӓdel (League of German Girls) CAD Civilian Affairs Division, Joint Chiefs of Staff DP’s Displaced Person FRG Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) ICD Information Control Division, OMGUS (replaced by ISD in 1948) ISD Information Services Division, OMGUS JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff MG Military Government or Military Governor NZ Neue Zeitung (newspaper sponsored by OMGUS) OMGUS Occupation Military Government, United States OSS Office of Strategic Services OWI Office of War Information RIAS Radio in the American Sector (U.S. radio/television station in Berlin) SHAEF Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces

Figure Three: U.S. Military Government Relationship Static Phase, AUGUST-DECEMBER 1945

Source: Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946 (Washington DC: Center of Military History Publishers, 1975), 309.

Figure Four: Zones of Occupation in Germany Post WWII

Source: Vonyó, Tamás. The Economic Consequences of the War: West Germany's Growth Miracle after 1945, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 19.

CHAPTER ONE:

Women as Objects on the Frontline

During WWI and WWII, women’s images were used in propaganda as traitors, seductresses, sexual objects and carriers of venereal diseases. This propagated the idea that women were the enemy and they were often treated as such. Moreover, the war was politicized by men who excluded women from participating in the political processes due to a lack of female representation in America’s governing bodies.18 Even though most patriarchal political systems remove women from the decision-making process of war, women are often the first to experience the loss from war financially. According to research by Dr. Cynthia Cockburn,

Sociology Professor at City University London, “when governments begin to cut funds for weapons expenditures, it is often at the expense of spending on public services, including health and education.”19 Therefore, many women, particularly poor women, feel the loss of cuts to those services, especially when trying to feed their children and keep them healthy. This was a common narrative for many women both during and after WWII in Germany.

During WWII, women around the world filled the roles of men who were away in combat. Wives took over as the head of the household, taking charge of the budget and making economic decisions for the family. Many women, both single and married, went to work to fill the empty jobs in factories or on the farm. While helpful, women’s entry into the workforce was meant as a short-term solution, and once the conflict ended, women are expected to voluntarily leave the public sphere and happily return to their kitchens in the private sphere.20 Therefore, jobs traditionally held by men are viewed as the most important and exist in the public sphere, leaving little to no room for women. Consequently, the patriarchal gender norms reinforced during WWII not only devalued women’s work but also created an imbalance of power that

15 threatened women’s emotional and physical well-being. This was evidenced by the negative treatment of American female servicewomen by their male counterparts.

The induction of American women into multiple branches of the military led to aggressive behavior by some American GIs during WWII. Shortly after the Women’s Auxiliary

Corp’s (WAC) inception in 1942, its members were labelled “lesbians or whores” and were subjected to sexual harassment by their own servicemen.21 Nevertheless, American women continued to enlist in other military branches such as: Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for

Volunteer Emergence Services), Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, The Women’s Airforce

Service Pilots (WASPS) and the Coast Guard SPARS (contraction of the Coast Guard motto,

Semper Paratus—Always Ready).22 As more women entered the male dominated military, their sexual conduct was scrutinized, unlike that of U.S servicemen. In fact, the female military programs were almost dismantled after reports surfaced of female sexual misconduct, especially rumors that claimed “Mrs. Roosevelt and ‘The New Deal Ladies’ had furnished contraceptives and prophylactic equipment to all members of WAC.”23 Indeed, contraceptives were handed out to many U.S. servicewomen who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by their own U.S. servicemen. When WACS arrived in 1944 in New Guinea, “theater headquarters directed that in view of the great number of white male troops in the area, ‘some of whom had not seen a nurse or other white woman in 18 months,’ WACS should be locked within their barbed wire compound at all times except when escorted by armed guards to work or to approved group recreation.”24 While men’s sexual harassment towards women was virtually ignored, female servicewomen’s sexual behavior was scrutinized. This military instituted double standard regarding sexual behavior continued during the American Occupation of Germany. Clearly, the

16 preparation and planning for the occupation did not train the American GIs on how to properly treat the female civilian population.

American policy makers began planning for a military occupation before the end of

World War II. President Roosevelt, members of the War Department, military leaders and other cabinet members debated on how best to set the plan in motion. In May of 1942, the U.S. Army established the School of Military Government (SOMG) at the University of Virginia in

Charlottesville, Virginia. According to the (SOMG) Handbook, the goal was to train students to serve as “the administrative assistants to military governors with a thorough curriculum that covered government and administration, legal affairs, government finance, agriculture, industry and commerce, labor, public works and utilities, transportation systems, communications, public health and sanitation, public safety, education, and public welfare.25 With the end of the war in

Europe on the horizon, more officer training programs were opened at U.S. colleges and universities.

As more officers were needed for postwar occupation, changes were made to the training programs. By June 1943, ten Civil Affairs Training Schools, known as CATS, offered courses taught by specialists in fields such as local government, farming, industry, commerce, public welfare, public safety, and public health.26 While it was no secret that women constituted the majority of the civilian population U.S. officers would be in charge of during the occupation, there was no additional studies devoted to women’s issues. Instead, U.S. foreign policy makers and military officials focused their efforts on training more officers to control the expected resistance from lingering Nazi supporters. Yet, even with the opening of additional military schools across the country, the quota for officers was still not met. As a result, American women were accepted into the Schools of Military Government due to increased pressure from U.S.

17 foreign policy makers to graduate officers, but only “four feminine students (As the Atlanta

Constitution put it) had joined a class of 250 trainees at Charlottesville by July of 1944.” 27 The decision to train women as officers was a reversal of Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s previous view that life on the front lines was too hard for women, which came after some pressure by women who found the War Department’s policy discriminatory.28 Thus, American servicewomen were not seriously considered for training as military officers.

American servicewomen were also subjected to discriminatory legislation enforced by the U.S. military in WWII. At the war’s end, demobilization of female troops became a priority.

In fact, a Navy Commanders in Japan declared, “I want all the women off this base by noon.”29

This reinforced American Cold War policies that emphasized the importance of family. In addition, women were not allowed to reenlist if they married.30 Such restrictions and limitations guaranteed the removal of women from the male dominated military public sphere. In fact,

President Harry Truman signed an executive order in 1951 which granted the military the right to discharge a servicewoman if she was pregnant.31 The public perception of these military regulations was to safeguard women for their roles as wives and mothers. Ironically, the U.S. military wanted women out of combat but not out of the picture.

Throughout WWII, civilian and enlisted men were constantly bombarded with sexualized and often, polarizing images of women. This dichotomy of images was evident in both Allied and Axis propaganda as women were either sexualized as pinups admired by recruits, or traitors who betrayed their men and their country.32 Women were put into a Machiavellian world where they were to be loved or hated, but never both.

Image One: Pinup used for map reading for New recruits Image Two: Betty Grable 1943

Scantily dressed women in posters were meant to distract soldiers from the horrors of war, but for many servicemen it only increased their longing to be home with their spouse or girlfriend.

Pinups became popular as the Allied and Axis military promoted sexualized fantasies of women.

From the 5 million copies of Life magazine’s photo of Rita Hayworth to the appearance of Betty

Grable and Jane Russell in the service publication Stars and Stripes, servicemen were continually bombarded with images of half-naked women.33 Were men supposed to worship these women or pillage them? The images and the messages they conveyed were confusing.

In opposition to sexualizing women’s bodies, other propaganda posters elicited the image of women as victims. In a series of posters entitled ‘Who Is the Enemy?’ released by The Office of War Information under Director, Elmer Davis, the Allies graphically represented the enemy as

“he who would rape and murder ‘our’ women: whether portrayed as an Aryan-looking mom

19 about to be caught in claws or a raped prey draped over an enemy soldier, the woman figures as the ‘bounty’; that is, as the bountiful fertility that must be saved or the booty that constitutes the spoils of war.”34 These images represented women as objects controlled by men and used as collateral damage of war.

circa 1945: The winning poster of Adolf Hitler 'The Enemy', Anti-Japanese propaganda poster 'This is the enemy' 1942 from a competition organized by the Museum of Modern Art. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) It was designed by Duane Bryers.

Soldiers were presented with conflicting images of women throughout the WWII which impacted their attitudes and behaviors towards women. One image that both Allied and Axis

Powers utilized for psychological warfare was portraying women as “the enemy” during WWII.

Whether as the female spy, a vamp whose charms endanger national security, or the foreign femme fatale whose enticements threatened the physical security of the fighting forces, it was clear that women were dangerous to the military mission.35 Women who were accused of any traitorous act were punished, especially if it involved sexual relations with foreign servicemen.

For example, in Germany and France, women were shamed for their ‘horizontal collaboration’ with the occupiers by having their heads shaved in public.”36 This sent a clear message that women’s bodies were not their own and that certain parts of their bodies considered as feminine, such as long hair, would be removed.

A woman being shaved by civilians to publicly mark her as a collaborator, Montélimar area, August, 1944. Smith,

Photographer (NARA record: 5046417) - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

In addition, women’s body parts were portrayed as weapons that endangered the country’s victory in the war. A poster claiming that women with loose lips would sink ships advocates for a woman to be killed for talking. Furthermore, some posters suggested that women were a public health threat and blamed women for the growing number of sexually transmitted diseases. Consequently, male soldiers infected with STD’s were often filled with anger and resentment at the women they blamed for their STD and for loss of time in active duty.

Furlough "Booby Trap!" No is the best tactic: the next, PROphylactic! National Library of Medicine WA 11 C29 no. 652 box 10

While military propaganda alternated between portraying women as vixen or villain, it consistently reinforced men’s traditional gender roles as protectors and providers. As a result, soldiers connected their masculinity and sexuality to their weapons.37 For example, soldiers connected the firing a weapon to their masculine dominance during sex by ejaculation. In fact, the US military reinforced this connection during training by having enlisted men chant: ‘This is my rifle [holding up rifle], this is my gun [pointing to penis]; one’s for killing, the other’s for fun.’”38 Such gendered language was common in the military as it was also applied to carriers of weapons. For example, the bombs dropped on Japan were given male names (“little boy, “fat man”) but their containers (airplanes) were female (Enola Gay).39 Furthermore, the Boeing B29 bomber was named after the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. The use of females as carriers related to women’s pregnancy but the powerful weapons were male.

Airplanes were weapons piloted by men, but they were decorated with a woman’s touch.

The depiction of women on planes became distinctively American during WWII when soldier- artists were informally commissioned to paint pictures on the nose of planes, thus ushering in

“nose art.”40 As airmen began to feel powerful in the skies, they viewed their plane as extensions of their masculinity. For example, after completion of training and mastery over the skies, airmen christened their assigned planes—Big Dick, Cock O' the Sky, Nine Yanks and a

Jerk, Purple Shaft.41 Airmen delighted in asserting power over the skies and dominance of the people below. However, when the planes failed, the errors were attributed to a female failure. If planes went down with crewmembers inside, airmen stated “she let us down.”42 U.S. airmen depended on their planes to protect their crew and had personal attachments to them. When planes went down, airmen mourned their loss like a mother or compared mechanical failure to marital

22 infidelity.43 Thus, many U.S. airmen made women the scapegoat for errors and other mishaps rather than accepting any blame themselves.

While “nose art” titillated from the skies, both the Allies and Axis powers pushed the sexual envelope by using explicit and offensive images of women on the ground. In fact, the

U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) produced and used roughly 80,000 pornographic images as psychological warfare against the Axis troops. According to the Final Report of Production and Distribution from July 15, 1944 to May 15, 1945, ‘Sex leaflets’ were found which showed a black and white cartoon of a high Nazi official fondling a seminude woman with the text, “For us at the front there is only fear and death. For the important officials at home, our women!”44

When compared to the vulgar propaganda dropped by the Germans, the images the Allies produced were initially viewed as acceptable. However, as the war continued, so did the intensity of insulting images and text that the OSS Morale Operations Field Manual approved of such as: “Slang, vulgarity, and pornography when consistent with cover, giving gossip and dirt, e.g., describing the sexual life of prominent enemy officials or their wives…Exploiting all social problems, especially sexual, which inevitably arise, increase of juvenile delinquency, adultery, pregnancy, venereal diseases; circulating in one enemy country political statements, jokes and satires derogatory to it.”45 Although recent scholarship has negated the impact of using sexualized imagery to demoralize enemy troops, pornographic images showing women cheating while soldiers were in combat, egged on the soldier’s fear and resentment against the woman he left back home.46 That resentment was taken out on many women in occupied lands.

Furthermore, psychological experiments performed in the U.S. analyzed the impact of exposure to sexual images and male aggression and concluded that some males were more like to use sexual coercion after viewing degrading images of women.47 However, outside of the

23 psychology labs, controversy continues regarding the connection between violence and sexual images. Yet, when soldiers are aggressive towards women during war, such acts are often dismissed because war creates domination-submission relationships between the victors and the vanquished. This is commonly expressed by victorious soldiers who express domination by raping conquered women.48 Clearly, those reprehensible acts prove that overtly sexualized images of women incited the vicious attacks on women in conquered territories both during and after WWII.

In addition to objectifying women as objects for male pleasure in visual art, WWII literature enforced negative female stereotypes. In many writings, women were viewed “almost entirely as ladies-in-waiting, solacing outsiders or resented beneficiaries of suffering.”49 Poems of World War II also reflected “intense hatred of women, notably in the recurrent images of war as a man-destroying prostitute (Charles Causley poem): ‘O war is a casual mistress/And the world is her double bed./She has few charms in her mechanized arms/But you wake up and find yourself dead.”50 In addition, Norman Mailer’s 1948 novel, The Naked and the Dead, reiterates the notion that women do not belong in the war. Although banned in Canada and Australia for its profanity and graphic descriptions of battle, the novel was critically praised in America for its realistic portrayal of war and the physical and emotional struggles between men. Mailer’s novel focused on the competition between men as “The average man always sees himself in relation to other men as either inferior or superior. Women play no part in it. Whether they are dead, disloyal, or frigid wives, randy girlfriends or raunchy whores, they’re a yardstick among other gauges.”51 The message that women were inconsequential and untrustworthy was a common theme.

The sexualized images of women not only increased male hostility but also furthered fears amongst soldiers who questioned the fidelity of the women they left back home. Ironically, male infidelity was handled privately between wife and husband but female infidelity was a national concern and a military problem that sabotaged" the nation's war effort.”52 This was largely due to gendered nationalism, as evidenced by the symbolic roles women played “in fighting for the ‘mother country’ or the recognition of ‘gold star mothers’ who sacrificed one or more children for their country.”53 Moreover, the public scrutiny of female infidelity increased the bitterness that many soldiers felt towards the women who were enjoying the comforts of home while they were on the front lines fighting for their freedom.

The aggression felt by many soldiers was due to the punitive policies of the U.S. military’s occupation of Germany. Yet, the policies were viewed as punitive not only to the U.S. soldiers but to the Germans as well. Before the occupation began, soldiers were issued a forty- three-page Pocket Guide to Germany, prepared by the Army Information Branch which clearly stated, “There must be no fraternization. This is absolute!”54 Fraternization was viewed as having any unnecessary contact with the German people, which was ironic, given that the Pocket

Guide also listed instructions for marrying a foreign woman. The pocket guide stated, “Before you get too romantic remember that foreign girls do not automatically become citizens upon marriage to an American. It takes three years in the States before she can even take the examination.” This did not deter many U.S. servicemen who found ways around such obstacles, especially as many of the rules soldiers were instructed to follow were the same rules that the commanding officers disobeyed.

In addition to the Pocket Guide, some U.S. soldiers were shown the short film, Your Job in Germany, before deployment to reinforce U.S. policy, particularly as it pertained to

25 fraternization. Written by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) in and directed by Frank Capra and 1945, the film echoed the agenda that stressed that soldiers were to serve and guard U.S. interests in

Germany without much interaction with the people. Directed by Frank Capra and narrated by

Frank Lund, instructions to U.S. servicemen were clear: “occupation soldiers were to exercise mute vigilance over their newly defeated foe while leaving the experts with psychology PhD’s to change the minds of the Germans.55 The soldiers were there for brute force: all brawn, no brain.

As more U.S. soldiers went off to war, U.S. policy makers worried about American and

German relations after the war, especially as it pertained to fraternization. In preparation for the occupation, The United States Information and Education Services developed an orientation program for American family members going to Germany. In fact, “children over fourteen and spouses of occupation personnel met with a military representative for a total of four hours to discuss the role of families in the occupation mission and their expected relations with the

German people.”56 While many military officials expected the families to portray the ideals of

American democracy, their main focus was to warn families about getting too close to the

German people. In fact, the last hour of the orientation was dedicated to another Capra film, the full-length documentary, Here is Germany, which detailed the atrocities committed by the

Germans during WWII.57 It was initially only shown to U.S. soldiers as a reminder of how dangerous Germans were, but was eventually also viewed by the military wives and children who were going overseas to Germany to join their husbands and fathers.

While the military prepared the soldiers and their families for occupation life, U.S. foreign policy makers struggled to finalize the goals of the occupation. While the Joint Chiefs of

Staff Directive 1067 (its full title being “Regarding the Military Government of Germany in the

Period Immediately Following the Cessation of Organized Resistance) was the official U.S.

Policy for the occupation of Germany, the directives therein would change throughout the occupation.58 The tone of JCS 1067 was harsh. Its objective was to establish a "stern, all- powerful military administration of a conquered country based on its unconditional surrender, impressing the Germans with their military defeat and the futility of all further aggression."59 It consisted of five main points: “dissolution of the Nazi party; demilitarization; controls over communications, press, propaganda, and education; reparation for those countries wanting it; and decentralization of the German governmental structure.”60 JCS 1067 would be the only approved policy statement on Germany. The overt goals of the policy are often referred to as the three D’s: denazification, democratization, and demilitarization. However, the implementation of JCS 1067, especially the non-fraternization ban, was difficult to enforce and was therefore changed over the course of the occupation due to a largely female population. The occupation soldiers had expected opposition and attacks by “werewolves” but, were faced with a starving

German populace and a country that laid in ruins.

In addition to not being prepared for the female German population they were to occupy;

U.S. soldiers were not enthusiastic about staying for the occupation. While Americans and

Allies rejoiced after VE Day, U.S. soldiers resented their placements. In fact, “to be in Germany in May 1945 was ‘like remaining in a ballroom after the ball is over,” highlights the desolation and aimlessness that millions of service personnel now confronted: the battle against Nazism was over, but their deployment was not.61 Servicemen and women could not share in the excitement over the end of the war because many of them were expected to stay. This created tension both abroad and at home as families wished to be reunited. Many occupation soldiers were uncertain of their duties towards the civilians and began to rebel. Consequently, soldiers were reprimanded for varying offenses such as not wearing their uniforms and reckless driving.62 The soldier’s

27 frustration over their lack of control on how long they were required to serve fueled bitterness, especially when many of the orders were coming from men serving not in the military, but in government offices in Washington, DC. In addition, geopolitical factors extended the length of the occupation even though the defeated population of Germany seemed more than willing to welcome the Americans. Still, the soldiers were not given any timeline for their service during the occupation due to a new enemy: Joseph Stalin and the spread of communism. As a result,

U.S. foreign policy makers viewed the American occupation soldiers as a necessity for

“reorienting Germany and Japan along liberal capitalist lines as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism.”63 As the soldiers could not control the politics of the occupation of Germany, their anger increased and they found another outlet for their hostilities: German women.

The B-24 bomber Miss Yourlovin. Source: American Airpower Heritage Museum Archive. Nose art on the B-24 Liberator "Windy City Kitty" ... "It's Up to You" ...in the Arizona desert after WWII at Kingman AAF

B-24 Liberator “Net Results” Nose Art

CHAPTER TWO

Fraternization: Friend or Foe?

As U.S. soldiers fought their way through Germany and finally took control of Berlin in

July of 1945, they had witnessed the total disrespect of human life perpetuated by the Germans under Nazi rule. American GIs had already witnessed the brutality of the Wehrmacht and the atrocities discovered by GIs at the death camps fueled American soldiers’ revulsion towards the

Nazis. However, their revulsion and hatred were replaced by the shock of the near total destruction of the German capital and by the people who emerged from the rubble. Instead of surprise attacks by Nazi sympathizers around every corner, “the occupation troops found that the

Germans, overwhelmed by the destruction all round them, tended to be passive, apathetic, and preoccupied with their own private affairs.”64 This was partly due to the destruction and devastation at the hands of Russia’s Red Army soldiers and their attacks on the German people in Berlin. Red Army soldiers occupied Germany from early May until July before U.S. occupation troops took control of the American Zone. During that time, many women in Berlin emerged from hiding to look for food, fuel, or water, scrounge through ruins, try to locate relatives or recuperate belongings, only to discover how dangerous public spaces were for women.65 Regardless of age, women of all ages in Berlin were brutalized in the streets and in their homes by the Red Army Soldiers as well as other Allied troops. As the Red Army soldiers moved out of Berlin, many German women were hopeful that the arrival of American GIs would bring better living conditions.

The arrival of the Americans did little to ease the suffering of the German people, especially the German women. The gender disparity in post war Germany created an imbalance

30 of power that tipped the scale in favor of American servicemen. The GIs outnumbered German women by far and the gender imbalance continued into the first two years of the occupation before the POW’s returned. In fact, “for every 100 men there were 171 women in the 20-25 age group, and 153 in the 35-40 age group.”66 This was not the demographic that the U.S. soldiers had been prepared to control. Many of the soldiers sympathized with the fragile and shell- shocked Germans in Berlin. Consequently, by the end of the first year of the occupation, many

GIs viewed Germany as a feminized nation whose ability and will to wage war had disappeared.67 Still, the “feminized view” that connotated women as victims did not stop some

American soldiers from taking advantage of the weakened German population as they waged their own type of war against German women. This stemmed from the belief of some American

GIs who viewed German women as the enemy as they were complicit in the extermination of the

Jewish people. As a result, some German women were brutalized by American GIs.

Even before the Americans took control of the U.S. sector in West Berlin, reports had already been filed in the local courts against American GIs for assaults on German women.

According to Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 study of assaults in occupied Germany, American- perpetrated rape “revealed a spike during March to July 1945.”68 Many people blamed the unruly new male recruits who used sex as a means of vengeance against German women.

However, the rapes did not cease nor initially decline after American GIs took control in Berlin.

In fact, nine months after the end of WWII, Anne -Marie Durand-Wever, a Berlin physician, noted the “loathsome situation of continuing rapes, venereal disease, unwanted pregnancies, and mass abortions” in February of 1946.69 Such actions were viewed as a detriment to the acceptance of the American occupation by the German people. American military officials tended to downplay the number of assaults, however the “comparison of an Army of young men-

31 the most crime-prone population within a human society – within a city of all different ages is problematic—the criminal behavior of the Army in Germany between 1945-1947 was not normal.”70 As more GI’s came into daily contact with the German people, especially German women, more problems arose.

The sexual behavior of some American GIs threatened the military’s mission and tarnished America’s image in the minds of many Germans. According to J. Robert Lilly, leading scholar of GIs and rape in Europe, “The U.S. Army tried and convicted 284 soldiers in 187 rape cases from January to September in 1945.”71 As news spread of rape by American soldiers in occupied Germany, the American goals for the occupation were in danger. By the end of 1945,

Jon Dos Passos, a writer for Life Magazine, stated: “Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. People never tire of telling you the ignorance and rowdyism of American troops.”72

According to OMGUS surveys, most complaints were regarding fraternization and GI behavior toward locals. According to the monthly operations report of the Third U.S. Infantry Division for September 1945, GIs continued to break curfew and frustrate German males by fraternizing with German women.73 The GI’s “rowdiness” continued throughout the occupation as did their assaults on German women.

The attacks on German women by American GIs varied in severity and frequency as did the responses to them. Some American GI’s enjoyed sexually harassing and humiliating German women publicly. According to Andy Rooney, a former Stars and Stripes reporter, American

GI’s behaved so badly, that it took the “power of a four-star general (McNarney) to stop the

America soldier’s habit of leaning out of a moving jeep to slap the fannies of frauleins walking along the sidewalk.”74 However, one general’s admonishment did little to stop the U.S. soldiers’ attacks on the German women. In many of the sexual assault cases, alcohol intoxication of

American soldiers was a consistent factor. Yet, instead of taking control of incoming shipments of alcohol, military leaders ignored the reports that linked alcohol to the assaults. In fact,

“despite clear evidence of disciplinary problems associated with the excess consumption of liquor and black marketing, the European Theater command decided during September 1945 to increase the amount of liquor available to soldiers.”75 Sadly, the physical and emotional toll that the German women had to bear from alcohol induced rapes were discounted. Instead, the rapes were “coded as public issues, not as an experience of violent sexual assault, but as a social and medical problem that needed to be resolved.”76 The so-called “solution” for rape was abortion which was often performed at the expense of German women’s medical and mental health, as evidenced by local medical records. In the district office of the Berlin suburb of Neukӧlln in the

American Zone, 995 cases were approved for abortion on the grounds of rape between June 7,

1945, and June 17, 1946.77 Thus, rapes that produced offspring were expected to be handled by

German women privately while the public issue of rape was blamed on the apathy of German men. At the same time, many American GIs were seemingly absent from the public discussion and from taking responsibility for their offspring.

The apathy of many German males (including returning POW’s) contributed to the feminized and demoralized view of postwar Germany. German males were often blamed for the rapes of their female family members. German men were demoralized from the defeat of war in the public sphere and from the defeat of their wives and daughters by the liberators in the domestic sphere. Yet, rather than providing comfort to these women, many German males blamed the women who they accused of fraternizing with American GIs. Therefore, many

German women were “met with suspicion that they had failed to resist or had succumbed to blandishments and material benefits offered by the Allies.”78 The underlying message was that

German men had lost control not only over their country, but also over their women. American

GIs were the victors and the German men and women were vanquished. Consequently, GIs disregarded the fraternization ban and continued contact, whether consensual or not, with

German women.

Many American soldiers despised the fraternization ban and considered it a threat to their masculinity. In fact, they saw themselves “in competition with other men for sexual access to

German women, and any measure to reduce their freedom of action was considered inherently unfair.”79 The initial outlook for enforcing the ban was promising, but quickly changed as the demographics (female majority) supported the likelihood of repeated contact between GIs and

German women. Indeed, Major Arthur Goodfriend, Chief of Information Branch of the Civil

Affairs Division and editor in chief of the Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes went undercover as an ordinary enlisted man and surmised that the fraternization ban would not work.80 Goodfriend argued that since the military officers violated the ban on a consistent basis, their soldiers did also, without punishment. In the fall of 1945, the Army surveyed its troops regarding the frequency of contact with the German people and concluded that more than one- quarter of the troops engaged in sex with German women yet had no relationship with German men their own age.81 As German men saw firsthand the frequency of contact, the American press, in Germany and in America, fueled the fire between German and American males by continually advertising the Americans soldiers’ disregard for the fraternization ban, complete with photographic proof.

The press often victimized or sympathized with soldiers who engaged in fraternization.

By the summer of 1945, the American press provided photographic evidence of the soldiers’ disregard of the fraternization ban. Percy Knaugh of Life Magazine wrote: “For the GI it is not a

34 case of policy or of politics or of going out with girls who used to go out with the guys who killed your buddies. It´s more a matter of bicycles and skirts waving in the breeze and a lonesome, combat-weary soldier looking warily around the corner to see if a policeman is in sight.”82 The image of the depressed and lonely soldier who needed comfort was a common theme, yet was in some ways, inaccurate. While some GIs respectfully engaged in relations with

German women, many male servicemen often exerted their physical dominance over German women with ease and without fear of punishment. In fact, the July issue of Life devoted an entire page to a photograph showing a GI pinioning a young woman against the wall with a caption “In a back yard near Wiesbaden, U.S. soldier corners a pretty, laughing German girl,”83 (see figure

1) Despite the seventy non-fraternization radio messages prepared for the American Forces

Network (AFN), American servicemen continued to ignore the ban.84 The frequency of fraternization in American press signified the new alliance and long-term commitment between

The United States and Germany during the Cold War.

While “fratting” continued to be highlighted as part of the norm in the press, German women who socialized with American soldiers were routinely and unfairly villainized for it.

By the fall of 1945, Americans still had a distrust of the German people and therefore, opinion polls still showed that many Americans opposed fraternization. Not surprisingly, American women regularly voiced concerns about German women’s behavior and demanded that

American wives and family members be allowed to join their husbands in Germany. Clearly,

¨the strong opposition among young women suggests that for them more was at stake than the weakening of American resolve in Germany as American women perceived the GIs’ fraternization with German women as a personal affront.”85 In addition, magazine ads attempted to dissuade American servicemen from any sexual contact with German women by appealing to

35 their military duty. The ads showed American servicemen staying focused on the job and their loyalty to America, despite Germany’s beautiful women: “Pretty girls can sabotage an Allied victory. Don´t fall for that booby trap. Don´t fraternize.”86 Ironically, German women were not officially punished for fraternizing, whereas American GIs could be fined or reduced in rank.

Although this irritated American soldiers who argued that both parties should be punished for

“frattin,” many Germans were simply unaware of the ban on fraternization.

Despite warnings and punishments, wealthy American GIs continued to fraternize with

German women. As impoverished German women engaged in relationships with wealthy

American servicemen, the line between socializing and prostitution blurred. Some German women offered their bodies in trade for their family’s survival or for their own, especially to high ranking officers. Subsequently, many women survived due to the “physical and sexual hunger that combined with a flourishing black market to make sex a commodity to be traded for the necessities of life.”87

Still, other American servicemen viewed their relationships with German women as part of their duty to protect Germany’s decimated female population. This connected to the

American view held by many that German women were also victims under the Nazi Party. In fact, even though German women had participated in the war efforts, “GIs and their superiors held on to the traditional notion that warfare and political agitation were male domains and that women and children were largely passive bystanders.”88 However, the victimization of German women did not apply to those who fraternized with American GIs.

The renegotiation of sexual boundaries continued due to deteriorating conditions in

Germany. Julian Bach, and American war correspondent reported, “When a buxom fraulein, taught by Hitler to loathe and despise all ‘North American Apes,’ turns around and, for the sake

36 of a handful of Hersheys, cuddles up to a GI whose name she does not know, then moral values are in travail.”89 This sarcastic caption diminished women’s responsibility to feed their families during the food crisis and also presumes a continued sexual encounter would occur. During the early occupation period, the blurred lines between sexual encounters and possible prostitution for survival often led to doubt about sexual assaults. Many accounts of rape were ignored due to the perception that the encounters were “consensual.” This perception stemmed from the relationships built on availability of American luxury goods such as chocolate, butter and cigarettes that were handed out by healthy American GIs to a starving female German population. The starvation was due to the meager official daily food ration in the US zone which, by the end of 1945, had already “slid to 1550 calories per day and fell even lower to 1275 by spring of 1946, but as low as 700 in some of the remote areas, many women used their bodies for collateral.90 As a result, many American GIs joked that food was “frau bait” and that all German women, even underaged girls as young as 15 who loitered around military clubs in Berlin, were available for a price.91 American servicemen showed very little restraint and continued to utilize their economic power for sex. It was such a common practice that terms emerged in the popular vernacular such as, “Schokoladensau (chocolate bitch), Schokoladenhure (chocolate whore), which asserted the connection in the popular mind between fraternization and prostitution.92 In reality, they justified their behavior by providing German women food to survive.

American GIs justified fraternization and found creative ways around the ban. In July

1945, Life alerted its readers to the way that GIs would ‘renationalize’ women by pretending that

German girlfriends were French, Belgian or Russian.93 American servicemen faced no fear even if they were caught lying about the nationality of the women they dated. Subsequently, the

Twelfth Army Group headquarters “began issuing colored cloth armbands to DP’s that would

37 identify them by nationality” to try to thwart the breach of command, it did little good: the soldiers simply started selling the armbands on the black market.94 American GIs also disregarded the ban due to the light punishment, if any, that was given for the infraction. Many officers turned a blind eye because they also were fraternizing with German women or they disagreed with the ban as well. In truth, the fines for fraternization for enlisted men (equal to two- or three-months’ net pay) were rarely docked from their pay.95 With no consequences handed out, American servicemen continued their sexual encounters with German women.

As more German women and American servicemen “socialized,” changes to the fraternization ban were enacted. U.S. policy first approved of contact with German children but soon relaxed and included German families as well. In fact, U.S. officials linked fraternization to the process of denazification and democratization in an attempt diffuse tensions of both the soldiers and the American people.96 Once the ban was lifted, measures were taken to eliminate the soldiers’ infractions and to focus more on how interactions between the American GIs and the German women could promote American political goals in Germany.

American GIs were the unofficial ambassadors of democracy as they had direct and daily contact with the Germany’s dominant female population. Therefore, their relationships with

German women were crucial for the acceptance of American occupation policies in Germany.

Some German women viewed their encounters with GIs as a long-term investment, resulting in marriage. While most American GIs were only initially only interested in casual sexual relations, despite the fact that by 1946, six to seven million women in Germany were of marriageable age.97 No matter, the relationships between German women and American GIs continued American policy was changed to reflect the increase in marriage applications. As a result, the allotted quotas for acceptance of foreign brides increased. “According to U.S.

38 statistics, 15,028 German brides, bridegrooms, fiancées, and fiancés entered the USA between

1946 and 1949.”98 Therefore, German women of the occupation bridged the gap between the fear and loathing of the Nazi past and the hopeful acceptance of American democratic ideals of the new German woman. Surprisingly, (given the contempt by German males towards Ami-

German relations), the German press fell in line “with the American strategy to integrate former enemies into their alliance against Communism as German-American couples were rebranded as symbols of successful reconciliation between old wartime enemies.”99 Due to the long-term relationships forged by America GI’s and their German girlfriends, along with the numerous marriage applications, the American War Brides Act was issued in December of 1945. Initially, restrictions made against German American marriages difficult. American GIs who married

German women had to leave Germany during the first month of marriage as they were not allowed to live in a German household (even if it was run by their own wife). GIs then had to obtain a 90 day visa for their bride but had to leave a deposit of five hundred dollars in case the marriage was not finalized.100 These restrictions were eventually lifted in 1947 as American policies softened and German women were viewed as vital to the protection of American democracy in occupied Germany.

German women’s relationships with American GIs were used by U.S. policy makers as a barometer to measure future social and political relations between American and German men.

Initially, German men criticized women who “fraternized” with the enemy, whether she did so willingly or not. Yet, German men “were unwilling to defend the women for whose safety they had supposedly been fighting for and were in instead preoccupied only with saving their own skins.”101 Such sentiments accounted for the hatred and built up aggression that U.S. occupiers feared could lead to attacks by German men on U.S. servicemen. In order to prove they had shed

39 their Nazi past, German males were expected to accept the relationships between German women and American soldiers. Julian Bach, editor at Life, noted: “the extent to which German men accept “fratting” is the thermometer which registers the degree to which they accept defeat, contain their national pride, and look forward to a new amore congenial way of life.”102 Many

German males viewed any acceptance of fraternization as traitorous. According to monthly operations report of the Third U.S. Infantry Division for September 1945 under the heading of

Resistance Organizations, “a number of incidents occurred which reflected the growing resentment on the part of German males because of fraternization between German females and

American soldiers.”103 Not surprisingly, reports of German male aggression against American

GI’s was higher during the first few years of the occupation. In fact, by April 1946, three GI’s

“were wholly or partially castrated by German assailants in retaliation for fraternization with

German women.”104 Ironically, American GIs received harsher punishment from German males over fraternization than they did from the American government which instituted the ban.

German women who fraternized with American GIs risked more than just the damage to their moral reputation. American soldiers continued their harassment of German women “while on their trucks, they amused themselves as they sped along by trying to hook girls’ ankles with a cane.”105 Similarly, German men resented the relationships between their women and “the liberators” and often responded to fraternization by verbally or physically assaults. German men’s acceptance of democratic principles was crucial for the success of the American occupation. Therefore, German males were held accountable for their actions. In fact, the first case of a German soldier to be tried for anti-fraternization activity was brought to court in the summer of 1945 because after he saw a woman chatting with an American serviceman, “he grabbed her and with a pair of nail scissors, clipped off the girl’s hair.”106 In addition, German

40 women showed public disdain for their fellow country women who chose to fraternize with

American soldiers. Beyond being referred to as ‘Ami-whores,’ German women who fraternized put their families at risk for public scrutiny. Some Germans who despised the new romantic relationships went so far as to dump garbage in front of the houses of German women caught fraternizing or force them to wait in line longer at the markets.107 Such outbursts and disdain brought attention to the dangers and risks that German women were exposed to simply for their relationships with American servicemen.

German women who fraternized with black servicemen faced even harsher retribution from both German and American males, especially as many of the anti-fraternization movements were racially motivated. By 1946, Military Government officials worried that “the increase of troubles between white and colored soldiers would undermine the occupation.”108 Yet, decisions made by American occupation authorities increased racial tension by “sympathizing not with their own black troops, who they blamed for improper behavior, but with the occupied

Germans.”109 In addition, not only did they sympathize with the German men, they exacted punitive measures against the German women who were involved as well. For example, “at

Wertinger near Stuttgart, Military Government officers organized a raid against women involved with Black soldiers on the pretense that the rate of venereal disease among local black troops was unacceptably high; fifty-four women were arrested.110 Ironically, white GIs and German males bonded over their hatred for the relationships between German women and Black GIs. As

Americans were punishing the Germans for their treatment of the Jews under Nazi ideology,

American GIs brought American racial prejudice to occupied Germany and provided an atmosphere that was conducive for German men to discriminate against African American GIs.

Interracial fraternization ushered in a new dynamic between white American GIs and

German males. In fact, they spoke the same language as it pertained to interracial fraternization as “white men of American and German nationality employed a common epithet,

Negerliebechen or “nigger lover,” newly popularized in the German language, to slander women who associated with black troops.”111 Yet, German women were not the only victims of the racial divide. In reality, African American GIs were targeted and prosecuted more for rape than white GIs. As a result, warnings to black soldiers about their behavior were highlighted in a six- page pamphlet entitled, “Let’s Look at Rape!” as prepared by a military chaplain who signed his work as ‘a Negro chaplain.’”112 (see figure 5) Interestingly, the pamphlet (directed towards

African American soldiers) placed the responsibility for sexual actions on the men. This was in stark contrast to posters and other propaganda directed towards white soldiers, which always placed the blame on the German women (see figure 2).

German women’s sexuality was targeted in both American and German anti- fraternization propaganda. As rates of venereal disease (VD) increased, German women were used as scapegoats for the public health crisis. Posters warned both American and German men to stay away from German women. Used repeatedly in the press and in military circles,

“Veronika Dankeschön” was a euphemism for venereal disease that only applied to German women.113 (see figure 5 and 6) This implied that all German women were willing participants in sexual encounters, despite reports of rape by German women. Making matters worse, sexual assaults “became an official problem located in the public sphere because they had social health and political consequences that required medical intervention: venereal disease and pregnancy.”114 Even though German women had endured sexual harassment and assault, they were further humiliated and shamed and dubbed “unclean.” Displayed on posters around

German towns as well as in business and medical offices, young German women were drawn as

“Veronika Dankeschön,” a sexual promiscuous seductress guilty for the spread of syphilis and gonorrhea. In addition, “placards that rhetorically asked, “Do you even know each other?”

(Kennt Ihr Euch überhaupt?) were posted in numerous public places” to guilt German women into remaining chaste.115 Evidently, the expression of sexual agency by German women was viewed as a threat to public health.

By politicizing and medicalizing women’s sexual activity, the U.S. military instituted controversial and sometimes illegal measures to control the spread of venereal disease. The military implemented measures to thwart the spread of VD. In fact, “The American Health

Branch requested the War Department to provide penicillin for the treatment of gonorrhea among the Germans as early as 1945.”116 Yet, by June of 1946, the rate of infection for venereal diseases in Germany continued to rise. As a result, “the headquarters of the US Armed Forces issued instructions for the control of VD, declaring that ‘the prevention of venereal disease was a problem of major military importance.”117 Such preventive measures were often at the cost of females in Germany, whether they were citizens or female displaced persons (DPs). In addition, women who were found near military bases were tagged as prostitutes and placed in nearby camps and isolated by the Liaison and Security Office.118 Many of the women were falsely identified and initially let go and thus continued to live nearby. Consequently, many were taken into custody again and were considered repeat offenders (with or without VD) and were given jail sentences.119 Although these punishments were harsh, many women who lived in occupied

Germany were subjected to even more intrusive forms of military control.

Under American military regulations, German women and female displaced persons

(DPs) suspected of having VD were forced to endure intrusive medical examinations. Sainz de

43 la Pena, chief of The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) health division for the US zone stated that, “since September 1945, we have been subjected to pressure from the Army to perform these [compulsory venereal disease] examinations.120 The identification for women who were forced to endure such examinations was discriminatory towards female DP’s and was also unreliable. As a result, Pena cautioned that “subjecting female DP’s to this preventative anti-VD examination is unethical and onerous as it tacitly implies that all female DP’s are potential prostitutes.”121 Pena’s suggestions were ignored by military leaders. According to the minutes of a conference of the US zone, chief medical officers and nurses discussed the proposal of inspecting females for venereal diseases: “the broad outline of this scheme would be: whereas DP’s have been accused of infecting Army personnel, it is suggested that it might be of great value for repudiating such statements to start a screening process of all women between 16 and 50 years in the DP camps.”122 The army continued to support policies which suggested that only women could have the infections and spread them to males who were then easily excused for their hasty sexual decisions.

During the occupation, males were able to receive treatment for VD without retribution or shame. The military made the decision that the presence of a venereal disease infection would not be grounds for discipline and “encouraged soldiers to receive treatment and distributed ‘V-

Packettes’ to all soldiers which included condoms and chemical treatments. In addition, prophylactics were distributed at Red Cross Clubs and train stations throughout the American occupation zone.”123 The American military continued its policy for liberal use and distribution of penicillin to GIs in in hopes of thwarting the public health epidemic of venereal diseases.

The public health crisis was overshadowed by the flailing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. As a result, public opinion regarding German women’s sexual

44 relations changed. German women were no longer viewed as traitorous seducers and carriers of venereal diseases and instead were viewed as agents for change and hope for Germany.

Ironically, their relationships with American GI’s, previously berated in the press, became symbols of the future for democracy in Western Europe (see chapter 5). GI and German female relationships encouraged “public debate about sexual practices, attitudes, and mores that became a key means to negotiate the transition from fascism to Western democracy.”124 However, the new attitude regarding fraternization often excused and legitimized the previous actions of

American GI’s and German women who were both villains and victims.

Figure 1: Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Figure 2: A photographer uses the German word for spa “Bad” to playful advantage in documenting the ban on fraternization (National Archives)

Figure 3: History.Net Archives

Figure 4: Veronika Dankeshön Warning

Figure 5: “Let’s Look At Rape!” Box 12, Folder 2, MS 709: Morris Kertzer Papers, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.

CHAPTER THREE

A German Woman’s Work is Never Done

As German women emerged from the rubble, they had more to fear than the risk of sexual assault. The bombing of German cities by the Allies, as well as the requisition of houses by American soldiers, left many Germans homeless. Although estimates vary, more than 50% of dwellings in the inner cities were uninhabitable and rural areas had difficulty housing Germans who had fled the cities during the Allied bombings.125 Consequently, due to the gender disparity in postwar Germany, many German women assumed the role of the head of household. Many of those responsibilities: securing food, clothing, and shelter for their families, extended German women’s work into the public sphere. Although some German women’s paid labor such as clerical work, industrial labor and teaching, had been essential in carrying out Nazi aims during the Third Reich due to a labor shortage, women’s work during the occupation was a necessity due to the shortage of German men.126 As German women entered the labor force, they were in constant contact with the occupiers. As a result, the punitive measures under the denazification and democratization directives stated in JCS 1067 softened, especially as German women’s labor aided the physical and economic recovery of postwar Germany.

The necessity of German women’s work in the rehabilitation of Germany changed

American directives during the occupation. First, German authorities were authorized to employ women for “building and reconstructive work, including rubble clearance” under Law 32, Article

I.127 While rubble clearance was considered men’s work, the Trümmerfrauen (women who cleared the rubble) were expected to perform heavy labor for less pay128. By forming a human chain of multiple women, they transferred the bricks from the collapsed buildings to the street to be cleaned and stacked and collected wooden household items to be reused. Even though this

47 work was physically demanding, it was not economically valued by OMGUS, as evidenced by the poor pay but increased ration card allowance.129 Displaced Persons received the highest food rations near 3,000 calories daily versus those of working German women which were typically a thousand to fifteen hundred less. However, many German women made more money trading goods on the black market and decidedly avoided reporting for assigned work. Berlin’s black market was synonymous with a cigarette economy: “Black marketers sold them at a reported

1500 marks per carton; US personnel sold them to black marketers; and everyone used them for trading.”130 Ironically, the categories for ration cards as determined by the American Military

Government, devalued women’s paid labor which forced many women to ignore their work orders and to instead barter on the black market. In response to the lack of voluntary female workers, Allied Control Council passed Command Number 3, which required all individuals capable of work (men between 14 and 65 and women between 15 and 50 years of age) to register with labor offices to clear the rubble and participate in both rural and city work allocation.131

Many women continued to ignore the law and conducted transactions in the black market. They also raised their children, revived cities and communities as they worked in traditional male occupations, and in effect accomplished, under the most adverse conditions, the major portion of the reconstruction of Germany.132

BERLIN, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 01: Bucket brigades of mostly women civilians working to clear rubble after the end of WWII. (Photo by Keystone/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

While the Trümmerfrauen cleared the cities, other women helped transform them.

Women such as acclaimed designer Lily Reich, helped to reestablish the needed design aesthetic during the postwar years. Ms. Reich was a member of the German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists, known as the Werkbund. Although it was formed in

1907, the Werkbund was the only German design institution that was not under the American denazification policy, even though it had a pre-1945 history.133 The importance of the association’s work during the postwar years was its attention to utility. The postwar world conjured an “emergency functionalism,” where old military hardware, usable wreckage, and assorted wartime odds and ends were often converted into badly needed utensils and everyday necessities (see photo below).134 Under the denazification policy, the Werkbund moved away from the material excess of the Nazis to create a postwar German identity of regeneration.

Indeed, there were numerous exhibitions during the immediate postwar years (including the 1947

Berlin show Value beneath the Rubble: An Exhibition about the Recovery of Valuable Eco-

49 nomic Goods) geared toward helping survivors identify things buried beneath the rubble that might be salvaged and made over as usable personal items.135

Makeshift everyday objects made from military hardware, 1945. Source: Die blasse Dinge, ed. E. Siepmann and A. Thiekötter (Berlin, 1989), 12. Courtesy of Werkbund-Archiv, Berlin.

As German women contributed the economic recovery during the postwar years, more women were employed as skilled laborers. This was partly due to the influx of refugees and

German POW’ who added postwar Germany’s dependency ratio. Consequently, OMGUS approved women’s labor in fields dominated by men in order to facilitate Germany’s economic recovery. In addition, German women’s skilled labor was utilized to bridge the cultural gap as

German women who spoke English were promoted to technical or clerical work at U.S. bases.136

As American families arrived from overseas, German women were heavily recruited as more translators were needed to welcome American women and to promote the image that German women had been “Americanized.” As skilled laborers German women received incentives such as an additional two meals per day plus a base salary.137 As a result, many German women ate at

50 work and saved their ration cards for family members. Other job opportunities with food benefits included laundry services and cooking on the base. Subsequently, German women were in close proximity to high ranking officers and their families on a consistent basis. The repeated contact between Americans and German women at work fostered relationships that continued out into the community and eventually led to the creation of the Women’s Affairs Section under

OMGUS.

Other job opportunities for German women fostered their relationship with the German public during the postwar years through public forums. Some German women were given opportunities to work in radio broadcasting and journalism. As most of the population in the

AMZON were women, radio stations under American control (Radio Frankfurt, Radio Stuttgart and Radio Munich) reinstituted women’s radio programs (Frauenfunk). However, rather than utilizing the prewar formula, some stations incorporated Frauenfunk departments which initially covered current affairs, news and politics. Yet, by 1947 most women’s programs had been moved into cultural branches of the institutions and focused on domestic issues.138 Many women worked at the stations as secretaries, sound technicians, etc., as well. German women were also given another opportunity to engage the public through journalism. As women were given authority to report the news, they did so outside of the male dominated power hierarchy.

The Information Control Division granted some German women approval (even a few who had worked under the Nazi Regime) to affect public opinion, while reaching domestic and overseas audiences.139 The ICD continued to utilize the perspective of German women as a means of reeducation throughout the occupation in the AMZON as their roles as wives and mothers were integral to the aim of U.S. Cold War Policy.

While many harsh tenets of denazification policy eased, many German women were punished under the policy of demilitarization. As directed by the demilitarization policy stated

JCS 1067, the occupation government suspended military pensions to war widows, veterans and orphans.140 This embittered many German women towards Americans as they depended on pensions to feed themselves and their children. In an attempt to rectify the loss of wages and to encourage voluntary German female labor, the Allied Control Council passed a supplement to

Directive 14 in September of 1946, which permitted equal pay for equal work of female and minor workers to those of male workers.141 This was also in response to the announcement made in the Soviet Zone in August that women would receive pay equity. The implementation of equal wages varied throughout the AMZON and as DPs and other refugees flooded into the

AMZON, many German women were relegated back inside their homes as unpaid domestic laborers. Ultimately, whether German women worked in the private or public sphere, their contributions were not enough to stave off the housing shortage in the AMZON.

The increased housing shortage in the AMZON negatively impacted relations between

American GIs and German women. Due to failed attempts to stimulate construction under the

Weimar Republic and Nazi Regime, there was a yearly shortage of 1.5 million housing units from 1935 until the beginning of World War II.142 During the last two years of WWII, continual air raids by the Allies depleted German cities of their resources and conditions for inhabitants were dangerous. While some women could leave the city (usually based on woman’s age or age of children), not all women were evacuated from the bombed-out cities. In fact, working mothers as well as women without children continued to work, despite worsening conditions.143

By the end of the war, Allied soldiers who requisitioned houses and apartments, only added to the increasing shortage of livable space in Germany cities. In addition, refugees and DPs who

52 returned to Germany added to the burden of supplying Germans with shelter. According to historian Elizabeth Heineman, by the war’s end, “some 4.11 million apartments were destroyed and millions more damaged: fourteen million people were without homes.”144 As a result, many

German women were forced out to move in with strangers or out onto the street. Yet, as debilitating as the housing crisis was, it paled in comparison to the food shortage in Germany.

American policy changed in occupied Germany as hunger became a politicized issue. By

May of 1946, essential work could not be performed, children stopped growing properly, and malnutrition was rampant amongst all age groups.145 Photographs of emaciated German women and children appeared that appeared in American newspapers engendered sympathy from

Americans back home. Even hardened Generals, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned about the global perception of the starving German public in the AMZON. He related the conditions of starving Germans to Holocaust camp survivors and warned U.S. officials about the

“consequences of having “the American Flag flying over nation-wide Buchenwalds.”146

American military leaders in occupied Germany were also aware of the dangers of a hungry

German populace and the risks of revolt. Subsequently, Military Governor of the AMZON,

Lucius Clay, warned “There is no choice between becoming a communist on 1,500 calories and a believer in democracy on 1,000 calories.”147 Yet, even Clay’s warning could not stop the inflation in Germany and the increase of DPs who flooded into the AMZON.

In April of 1946, the daily food ration was cut from 1,500 calories to 1,275 calories to people of all age groups, except infants.148 Inevitably, German children’s frail bodies were photographed to gain sympathy for their hunger plight. As German women worked in the public sphere during the day and then tended to their household chores at night, their food intake was insufficient. Indeed, the housewives’ ration card was the lowest in all zones of occupation and

53 was given the nickname ‘ticket to the graveyard’ by German women.149 Yet, Allied leaders were quick to point out how healthy German women’s bodies appeared. Consequently, German medical professionals used women’s bodies to counter those arguments by diagnosing German women who had excess fat on their hips, cheeks and bosoms with Hungerfettsucht (hunger- plumpness).150 Ironically, American leaders expected German women to carry the burden but could not look like they carried any additional weight.

By the end of 1946, images of starving German women and children appeared in magazines and newspapers. As a result, relief efforts formed to help the German people.

Formed by different religious groups in 1945, CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances to

Europe) began to help Europeans (Germans were not initially included due to harsh policies) by sending food and other supplies. However, policy changes and public opinion concerning

America’s ability to provide for the Germans resulted in the approval of CARE packages sent to

Germany by President Truman in 1946.151

Contents of a typical CARE Package: Image Courtesy of C.A.R.E

Food shortages altered the enforcement of U.S. policies in occupied Germany. As women were necessary for the rebuilding of Germany, the ability of German women to work was crucial. According to reports, by May of 1946, essential work by women could not be

54 performed, and malnutrition was rampant amongst all age groups.152 As a result, by May 1947, the UK and US zones merged into a united economic territory, providing identical daily caloric rations every four weeks. The image of America as the provider and protector was questioned as more photos of starving women and children appeared in print. Finally, JCS 1067 was replaced by JCS 1779 which focused on German economic rehabilitation instead of punishment. Along with the Marshall Plan of 1947, U.S. policy focused on building German and American relations.

In addition to the food and housing shortage, German women also faced the lack of clothing, shoes and other textiles in occupied Germany. Health officials in the AMZON evaluated the dire conditions women faced when trying to battle the bitter cold and lack of clothing, by highlighting their ingenuity as they used newspapers for diapers, blanket scraps for shoes and tablecloths and curtains into shirts.153 This was in stark contrast to the abundance of goods the Americans stockpiled. German women in badly bombed cities had at most two changes of clothes and one pound of soap for the year, while one American went through 23 pounds of soap per year.154 As American occupiers followed directives regarding relief supplies and bare minimum standards for the Germans, morale in the AMZON sunk as the cold winter approached.

To raise the standard of living, German women utilized the American denazification and democratization policies of the military government to their economic advantage. Under denazification policy, German military uniforms in their original color were forbidden to be used by German civilians, so German women created dies from beetroots and ivy leaves to alter the hue.155 As a result, German women’s employment as seamstresses flourished. Praise for

German women’s revival of the textile industry reflected well on other aspects of female labor.

In the September issue of the US Armed Services Bulletin, women were described and “an

55 important factor in the economic life of the country.”156 The early relief efforts of German women to clothe their loved ones for survival in the early postwar years, rejuvenated Berlin’s fashion industry and created new opportunities for women. By late 1949, adds for women’s employment in fashion included sales assistants, illustrators, designers, and fashion schoolteachers.157 Although many of the jobs were gender typical, such positions offered employment in the public sphere.

While German women refashioned Germany, new clothing offered a hope to Germans and the possibility of a new identity. Cultural historian Herman Glaser noted the changes that clothes made to the people in Berlin: “The change of clothing, of conviction, and the new cultural consciousness all belong together. Good clothing lightened the burdens of everyday life.

Amid the rubble, there stirred a people who were neatly, and soon also stylishly, attired. The

‘rubble look.’”158 As Americans controlled the media in the AMZON, German women were continually bombarded with images of American women’s fashions. As a result, German women became consumers of American goods such as American-modeled brassieres, makeup, and colorful dresses.159 In order to fund the new expenditures, women utilized items sold through the American black market to their economic gain. In fact, according to University of

Salzburg Professor, Reinhold Wagnleitner, nylons, cigarettes, chocolate, coffee, milk, and chewing gum could be used by German women as hard currency.160 Clearly, German women were adept at bartering on the black market and were influential in spreading American mass consumer culture.

The stabilization of Germany’s economy after 1947 was detrimental to women’s economic independence. After the introduction of the new currency, the Deutschmark (DM), in

June of 1948, labor became more expensive, which led employers to increase layoffs and

56 cutbacks, especially of German women. This negatively impacted the purchasing power of

German women, even though the new currency increased their access to consumer goods.

Merchants who had previously hoarded their goods due to inflation and decreased market value, seemingly overnight filled their windows with housewares such as rugs and appliances.161 As access to consumer goods increased, the need for the black market dissipated, as well as the bartering skills that many German women used for their economic advancement. Consequently,

German women who had avoided mandatory labor during the early occupation years were punished by the Central Office for Labor which classified those women as “not eligible for unemployment compensation.”162 As Cold War tensions grew, men regained the role of head of household and many German women returned home and resumed their roles as wives, mothers, and unpaid laborers.

By the end of the American Occupation, many economic gains made by German women were reversed. The pendulum of public opinion which had initially praised women’s public employment, eventually swung in favor of women’s return to the home. For some German women, the return home was a blessing and a return to normalcy. In fact, a survey taken in 1949 claimed that between 1947 and 1949, the rate of exhaustion and insomnia experienced by

German women had almost doubled.163 The physical labor not only took its toll on women’s bodies, but also created a legitimate reason to force women out of public employment, especially as women’s return to the domestic sphere ensured German men’s return to the public sphere.

Consequently, female transit conductors were replaced by men due to “imminent danger” to women’s organs as a result of the constant vibrations.164 As Cold War politics emphasized family as the backbone of a successful democracy, German women’s bodies and their ability to reproduce were once again, prioritized over their desire to work.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Cultural Reeducation of German Women

In May 1945, the U.S. Army took control of the German media and cultural production in the American Zone and established a monopoly on information. Under Military Government

Law Number 191, all publishing, printing, and film production activities ceased, while newspapers, radio stations, wire services, printing presses, public and university libraries, museums, archives, theaters, and movie theaters were shut down.165 Under the denazification and reeducation policies in JCS 1067, Nazi rhetoric was to be removed from all aspects of

German life under American occupation. Under the direction of Brigadier General Robert A.

McClure, The Information Control Division (a successor of the Psychological Warfare Division during the war) controlled all information coming into Germany (mass media) and issued new licenses for all German press and media in the AMZON.166 However, due to the labor-intensive identification process of the denazification policy, the implementation and control of the reeducation policy was passed to the Education and Religious Affairs Branch (E & RA).

The E & RA’s decision to ignore JCS 1067 policies was a result of the overwhelmingly female German population. Initially, the responsibility of the E & RA Branch was to develop education systems at the regional level that denounced National Socialism and instead focused on democratic ideals and citizenship. Yet, staffing shortages and budget cuts limited the leaders of the E & RA’s ability to execute their orders, especially as most German men suitable for employment after the war were either tied to the Nazi Party or sick and injured from the war.167

As a result, radio managers disregarded the denazification and nonfraternization policies by hiring German women who had worked under the Nazi regime in Frauenfunk (women’s programming).168 Frauenfunk programs addressed German women’s concerns and covered

58 harsh political, social and economic conditions that plagued women in postwar Germany. Radio chiefs also recognized the importance of engaging German women who comprised the highest percentage of listeners. To retain German women’s attention, familiar and well-respected

German women were chosen to direct programs for women that were engaging and helpful.

Gabriele Strecker, founder of the Christian Democratic Union, was named as the first head of women’s programs at Radio Frankfurt in 1945, as was Helma von Feldmann at Radio Stuttgart, a former teacher and social worker, and Ilse Weitsche at Radio Munich, despite her former employment as political advertiser during the Third Reich.169 While Frauenfunk programs connected German women working in the public sphere to female listeners in the domestic sphere, not all Germans were supportive of hearing female announcers over the airwaves.

Resistance to German women’s position in the public sphere was challenged when angry male listeners called into the radio station in Berlin after broadcasting Frauenfunk that suggested equal rights for women should be written into the Bonn Constitution.170 German men were angered not only by the suggestion of female equality, but also by the timing of women’s programming during evening hours which had previously been reserved for political and economic updates designed for male listeners. Sadly, as Cold War initiatives took precedent after 1947, the focus of Frauenfunk turned to cultural and domestic issues that directed many German women back to their homes.

American military leaders utilized women’s cultural and domestic issues to justify the

German women to help establish control over print media in the AMZON. In October 1945,

Dwight D. Eisenhower outlined the policies and goals of Die Neue Zeitung, (the American newspaper published in the German language), as the voice of the military government.171

However, the nonfraternization policy outlined in JCS 1067 was disregarded by the military

59 government as German and American men and women worked together at Die Neue Zeitung.

One of the most controversial issues over employment was issued by the editor-in-chief of Die

Neue Zeitung, U.S. Captain Hans Habe, who staffed the entire paper with Germans, not

Americans.172 While there was initial backlash from American policy makers over the obvious violation of the fraternization ban, the paper was quickly approved for print. Additionally, the

ICD identified women as an important target group in rebuilding Germany and agreed that

German female journalists were best suited for the task.173 Internal Control issues and varying

Cold War political agendas altered the paper from that of constructive criticism of the military occupation to censoring any admonishment of the American occupation.

German women benefitted from the blatant disregard of the nonfraternization and denazification policies by high ranking U.S. officials. First, senior staff of publications in the

AMZON offered German women employment opportunities, despite punitive occupation policies. In fact, Americans implemented a very women-friendly personnel policy in the hiring of female German journalists, regardless of their ties to the Nazi party (due to the presumed apolitical nature of their participation during the Third Reich).174 For example, Elisabeth Noelle, a former political editor for Das Reich (which published editorials by Joseph Goebbels), was hired at Die Neue Zeitung, despite recommendations by other members of the ICD to the contrary due to some of Noelle’s articles that were considered by many to be antisemitic.175 The argument was that women brought a different perspective and that they could relate to the largest audience- German women. As more female journalists were employed, the focus on German women’s issues were highlighted. Furthermore, special women’s sections devoted to political, economic, and social issues were published in the Die Neue Zeitung, which was read by more

Germans than any other publication during the occupation.176 Ironically, German women

60 employed at Neue Zeitung were given preferential job assignments which were typically awarded to men due to softening of policies towards German women. For example, Hildegard Brücher, chemistry student, was hired as the correspondent for natural science articles.177 These opportunities impacted German women’s lives by opening doors to new career options. After leaving Die Neue Zeitung, Elisabeth Noelle founded the German counterpart of the Gallup Poll, the Institut für Meinungsforschung in Allesbach (which is still the most prominent barometer of

German public opinion research).178 While German women’s employment at Die Neue Zeitung furthered career opportunities for other women, it also undermined and devalued the implementation of the denazification policies of other print sources in the AMZON.

Under the denazification policy and following the mandate of Control Council Order No.

4, the U.S. Army compiled a list of approximately 1,000 forbidden books and thirty-five magazines, and hundreds of thousands of volumes were first concentrated in central collecting points and then destroyed.179 Due to the paper shortage, Americans altered their plans to purge the libraries of Nazi texts. Subsequently, Americans preferred pulping over book burning because it provided paper for new schoolbooks. While the bulk of destruction occurred between

July and August 1946, by 1947, hundreds of thousands of books had been pulped.180 However, many American novels which were already translated into German were not purged, even though their portrayal of American democracy was considered questionable. OMGUS leaders focused on purging German political and historical texts rather than popular American fiction novels.

This was also due, in part, to the dominant female readership who patronized the German public libraries.

The female dominated landscape of postwar Germany undermined efforts to enforce the reeducation policy under JCS 1067. Under the policy, the American military government was to

61 promote books that showed American life and democracy in a positive light. From July to

September 1945, only eight publishers were licensed in the AMZON.181 Ironically, Margaret

Mitchell’s novel, Gone with The Wind, was approved for publication in the AMZON despite the novel’s depiction of American racism in the South. In addition, the lead female character

(Scarlett O’Hara) was not the image of a dutiful and obedient woman, as she was married three times and was the head of the household for half of the novel. A possible reason for the re- release of the novel under OMGUS was that it was pertinent to postwar German society; it was narrated from the losing perspective and the lead character refuses to look back, while absolving herself of responsibility for her circumstances.182 Also, German women related to Scarlett

O’Hara because they could identify with a woman who made troubling and admirable choices in a postwar society plagued by economic hardship. For example, Scarlett O’Hara offers her body to Rhett Butler in order to save her family’s farm, Tara. Similarly, many German women during the occupation engaged in sexual relationships with American GI’s in exchange for food and protection. Even U.S. Military Governor, Lucius Clay noted the impact of the novel when he stated in a 1948 report that the initial edition of Gone with the Wind had sold out.183

In addition to print media, illustrative media was used to reeducate German women into their roles in a democratic society. Heute (Today), was designed as a German copy of America’s successful Life magazine and was published in autumn of 1945 in Munich. The magazine appeared twice a month and was specifically designed for a non-academic, female readership.184

The goal of the magazine was to utilize photojournalism to exploit the idea that in America, anything is possible. Oftentimes, images of successful American women were used on the cover to draw German women readership but highlighted U.S. political agenda inside the magazine

(see image below).

185

Heute also encouraged German women be fearless with their fashion choices as it showed their courage and independence. 186 The paradoxically messages sent to German women--be independent and hardworking but maintain your femininity--continued during the early years of the occupation until Cold War politics aligned with home and family. By featuring American fashions, the magazine also directed German women towards the consumption of American culture. In order for German women to be reeducated, they needed to look the part, which meant they needed to buy American goods.

With the increase of German women’s readership of Heute, Americans followed with Sie, a premiere women’s weekly magazine that focused on women in the fashion industry. A year later, Ruth Andreas Friedrich, one of Sie’s founders, started a more radically feminist publication, Lilith, that utilized clothing style as a means of political identity.187 Photojournalism ads that featured fashion illustrations helped sell the American sense of style and the American consumption of female products. Werner Eggert, an editor at Lilith, conceded: “This is an inevitable compromise- if one wants to sell a paper these days, the democratic reeducation just cannot happen without any talk about cosmetics, diets, and fashion.”188 This was indicative of

63 the importance of the female demographic and the purchasing power assumed by German women.

As Cold War tensions increased after 1947, German women’s acceptance of democracy was crucial to the goals of ensuring a democratic Germany. Therefore, the illustrated media, under American authority, assumed the task of shaping female spectators’ modes of self- perception, along with training the postwar consumer behavior.189 This highlights the impression by American policy makers that German women had economic agency to make purchases without social or familial constraints. According to University of Salzburg History Professor,

Robert Wagnleitner, “German women began to look like their American sisters, wearing more colorful dresses, using makeup and wearing American bras to match the images of American women in magazines.”190 Ultimately, the adoption of American fashions by German women was connected to the acceptance of the American Occupation Cultural policies as well.

Fashion was a point of contention between hardline American policy maker and OMGUS leaders who ignored cultural policies that negatively impacted its ability to clothe women and children. Clothing was a visible sign that separated the winners and losers of the war. Raggedy clothes and torn uniforms were representative of a defeated German populace. As women dominated the public sphere, their war-torn clothes and shoeless children were daily reminders of their hardships. Instead of relishing in victory, OMGUS officials violated American policies of

“revival of industrial production over human regeneration” by donating 35,000 excess articles of

US army clothing and provided the sewing machines and thread to German seamstresses to help clothe German women and children. 191 In addition, an attempt to distract Germans from the misery of early occupation life, art exhibitions and jazz concerts were held in Berlin. Visual art was extended to clothing as Berlin’s first postwar fashion show was approved by OMGUS in the

64 fall of 1945.192 German women’s ability to refashion themselves symbolized their acceptance of western societal and cultural ideals.

In addition to fashion magazines, German women were bombarded by images of the ideal woman through film. Indeed, female characters in the early postwar American films such as,

Edith Schröder (played by the then well-known Lotte Koch) and Mizzi Burkhardt in The

Heavens, wore clothes by American designers.193 The clothing signified the success of

American capitalism and leapt from the screen onto the pages of magazines to entice German women of all ages.

Besides clothing (as propaganda for acceptance of American ideals), films in the

AMZON also used storylines to refashion the image of German women in the postwar world.

For example, early rubble films focused on women cleaning up the material remnants of the past in order to turn them into practical tools for creating a new life was a visual replica that supported the temporary need for Trümmerfrauen.194 Films were also used as propaganda to support the importance of the alliance between occupied and occupier. Romance between

German women and American men were common during the occupation and alluded to postwar political and economic alliances as well. The Hollywood comedy, I Was a Male War Bride, starring Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan was covered extensively by Heute and by the Neue

Illustrierte, as well as The German film Hallo Fräulein, with the German star Hildegard Knef, which featured German–American romance.195 The romance theme was implemented after

American GI’s ignored the nonfraternization ban and had relations with German women. As there was no way for U.S. military officials to control or censor the public displays of affection between GIs and German women, policies were altered to highlight the love connections instead of damning them. Eventually, war brides were used as role models for successful cooperation

65 between the USA and West Germany. Relationships between German women and American men were politically charged and were presented as love stories with a happy ending of marriage and family life in the ‘Land of the Free’.196 Therefore, German women played an important role in the acceptance of American culture and democracy.

German women promoted democratic ideals and furthered the American reeducation policy. German women were not initially considered for employment as teachers or professors.

However, Inge Scholl co-founded a new community college in the small southern German town of Ulm that paid homage to her brother and sister who were killed for their anti-Nazi resistant movement, “the White Rose.”197 Scholl’s mission was to foster a true democratic school that eradicated German nationalism and militarism.198 The acceptance by OMGUS of a German woman in an educational leadership position had long lasting positive effects on German female employment. By 1947, women represented sixty-five percent of teachers in the U.S. Zone – an increase from 30 percent in 1939.199 By bringing in women, the Education Branch created an environment where different perspectives were encouraged, and new teaching methods were considered. As a result, German women’s roles in education in postwar Germany also democratized a portion of the German economy.200

German women also educated themselves in the U.S. Information Centers, also known as

Amerikahäuser. Initially the Amerikahäuser were modest reading rooms, but they rapidly evolved into cultural centers that offered lectures, recitals, films, children’s events, English classes, and art exhibits. These communal cultural spaces were meant to reintroduce the

Germans to American literature and contemporary art, and to encourage the emergence of a

German democratic culture.201 Of course, the new German democratic society was modeled after American society. In order to resurrect the idea of women at home and the refocus on

66 family life, German women were invited by American women to participate in the cultural exchange programs under the Women’s Affairs Branch.202 Many of these cultural tours highlighted new technology to make working at home easier. German women were bombarded with pictures and models of American kitchen- equipped with dishwashers, mixers, refrigerators, and electric stove.203 The so called “cultural exchange” was only one way as American women hoped that German women would adopt American culture once they returned home.

The idea of “home” in postwar Germany had changed as the absence of men forced

German women to accept and shoulder the burdens and economic responsibility for their family’s survival. As German men returned home, they were disillusioned by women they used to know. Married German women were often disappointed after their husband’s returned from the war, as they were often viewed as another mouth to feed. In fact, divorce rates, which increased 20 percent in 1947, peaked in 1948 in the Land Hesse region with 225.3 divorces per

100,000 people after the return of German prisoners-of-war from Western Allied captivity.204

Some of the resentment held by German women was a result of the expectation of their unpaid labor in the home.

In an attempt to stabilize German family life with the return of women to the domestic sphere, The American Military Government limited German women’s ability to end their marriages. First, OMGUS offered no financial support for soldiers’ wives who filed for divorce.205 In addition to the lack of financial support, German women faced public scrutiny, especially as they were directed to renew their relationships with their husbands to ensure the continuation of German society in articles published by Neue Zeitung. 206 Subsequently, the pressure for German women to stay married was also influenced by the courts. By 1948, the regional courts (Landgerichte) declared that German women were “solely guilty” for the breakup

67 of marriages in roughly 25% of cases.207 Consequently, the courts found some German wives ineligible for spousal support payments. However, not all relationships between German women and American men were approved or protected by OMGUS. In fact, German women who fraternized with Black American GIs were just as likely to experience racism. In the April 1947 issue of Der Spiegel posted two photos of German American dancers at a party in Berlin’s

Delphi-Palace. Subsequently, the photograph of dancing girls with highly swinging skirts met with some criticism among the Spiegel’s readership because the American dancing partner was black.208 This was a detriment to German and American male relationships that were necessary for the political and cultural goals of a successful American occupation in Germany. Therefore,

German women bore the blame and responsibility for the acceptance of American policy in

Germany by American and Germen men.

German women’s role in America’s cultural policy was that of utility. During the initial years of occupation, German women’s importance to OMGUS leaders was due to the shortage of

German men. From the radio, print and illustrative, to cultural centers and exchange programs,

German women were valued for their ability to influence other German women. Yet, throughout the occupation, German women entered the public sphere into arenas that were forbidden to

German men. OMGUS leaders relied on German women to spread America’s Cultural policy goals of democratization and reeducation. Even though most German women were relegated back to the domestic sphere by the end of the occupation, they were different women due to their experiences as consumers, travelers, journalists and teachers. For other German women, their most important role was the ability to stay in the public sphere, as equals to German men, and that happened in the political arena.

CHAPTER FIVE

Equality for All?

As German women received mixed messages via mass media regarding their acceptance into the public sphere under cultural policy directives, OMGUS closely monitored the political activities of Germans. However, there was discontinuity in the implementation of policies from

OMGUS, especially as they applied to German women. The initial punitive measures under JCS

1067 signified that German women were accountable for their support of National Socialism.

U.S. denazification and nonfraternization policies initially limited contact and employment of

German women. Yet, policies softened towards women under the harsh postwar conditions and the threat of Soviet expansion. By the end of the 1949, German women were once again, extolled for their roles as wives and mothers as the family was viewed as the bulwark against communism. Ironically, American policy makers blamed German women for their support of

National Socialism, but not for raising the men who created, followed, and implemented Nazi policies. The disconnect between German women as political activists who supported Hitler and

German women as virtuous mothers who instilled compassion and values to their children impacted their ability to attain full political agency during the American Occupation of Germany.

German women’s culpability in the rise of the Nazi Party initially limited their social, political and economic agency under the U.S. Denazification Policy. German women had fought for their equality and the right to vote by 1919. Under the Weimar Republic, German women were elected officials and were visible in the political arena. According to historian Claudia

Koonz, “between 1919 and 1933, approximately eight percent of the national legislature was composed of women…This relatively large representation of women was one indication of the importance accorded to women’s issues at that time.”209 Yet, the political agency and

69 independence experienced by many women during the Weimar Republic, was all but stunted under National Socialism. So, why would any German women purposely vote to empower a political party that viewed women as reproductive bodies or cannon fodder during the air raids by the Allies? Clearly, not all German women were equipped for life in the public sphere.

Furthermore, the Nazi policies of Kitchen, Church and Children, lent credence to some German women who wanted to return to a way of life they viewed was threatened by industrialization, war, and economic crisis.210 These women were viewed by the Allies as the stereotypical female Nazi supporters and were deemed as enemies of the state and therefore subject to the harsh tenets under JCS 1067. As a result, German women were not initially spared from the strict denazification and nonfraternization policies of JCS 1067. However, after a few months into the occupation, American GI’s built relationships with German women and children as they viewed them as “victims” and not enemies.

American policy makers utilized the idea of German women as victims to justify the implementation of democratization through German women’s engagement in politics. Initially,

American politicians falsely assumed that German women had been forced to follow the Nazis, especially as they were underrepresented and marginalized by the party. In some cases, that was true, such as some pre-1933 women’s organizations that were disbanded and incorporated into the Nazi Frauenschaftbund (Women’s League), some against the will of, or at least without the consent of the membership.211 Yet many women openly chose to support National Socialism. In fact, the denazification boards were well aware that The Nazi Women’s Bureau under Frau

Scholtz-Klink was supported by many women in Nazi Germany, although it had escaped the label of ‘criminal organization’ at the Nuremberg trials because its ideas were not accepted by all

German women.212 As a result, American policy makers focused their attention on German

70 women who opposed The National Socialist German Workers' Party. For example, The

Federation of German Women’s Organization dissolved in May of 1933 rather than to succumb to the Nazi party.213 This gave rise to the opinion by some U.S. military leaders that German women in the AMZON would be willing to adopt American democratic principles. In fact, minutes taken by Robert Wolfe (publications control officer for OMGUS) during his meeting with Marianne Weber (German activist and former chair of the BDF (Bund Deutscher

Frauenvereine/Federation of German Women’s Organizations) in November 1945 state:

“Individual women stood up remarkably against the Nazis and if properly led, their influence can be highly beneficial.”214 Therefore OMGUS relieved German women not only from Nazi guilt, but also from the stringent denazification policies in order to politically engage German women in the AMZON.

German women reengaged in political activity by distancing themselves from National

Socialism. In December of 1945, Frankfurt Women’s leader, Helli Knoll, stated that “women’s politics should overcome National Socialism by integrating all women into a concept of citizenship and by securing women’s influence in the newly built institutions.”215 This was a clear departure of the political agenda enforced by the Nazis. Yet, by turning their back on Nazi rhetoric and its ‘men’s state’ (Mӓnnerstaat), many middle-class German women focused on self- empowerment by defining their own needs, rights, and obligations in postwar Germany.216 To garner support and credibility for their political agency, German women established training courses for women to learn parliamentary systems and built women’s organizations at the local and state levels. Agnes Zahn-Harnack, a pre-war member of the German women’s movement regarded the expansion of the ‘female sphere’ within the realm of institutionalized politics included everything ‘from needlework to the atomic bomb.’217 Therefore, German women

71 actively participated in the democratization process during the postwar by adhering to the western liberal idea of Staatsbürgerschaft (citizenship).218 According to German feminist historian Marianne Zepp, German women’s political engagement during the early occupation was “an attempt to legitimize a German voice in the process of reconstruction in a political state where the nation state had ceased to exist and where everything German was morally discredited.”219 As German women were the largest demographic in postwar Germany, differing ideologies challenged a unified women’s political agenda.

Divisions between the older feminists and the new members of the women’s movement in Germany threatened political freedoms in postwar Germany. The first leaders of the postwar women’s movement were feminists from before 1933, which included women from the SPD

(German Social Democratic Party), the KPD (German Communist Party), and parties representative of those who suffered in the concentration camps.220 The older generation of women utilized their experiences and shared the conviction that women’s struggle for equality often placed them in direct contrast to men. Not only did these traditional feminist views differ from German men, but they also clashed with American policies that promoted women’s importance in the domestic sphere. The return of women to the home supported by OMGUS was directed to the younger German feminist generation’s concerns that focused around issues such as the housing shortage, cookery, nourishment to the family, and the education of children.221 Despite their differences, German women debated political issues in public forums which centered around concepts of American democracy promoted by OMGUS.

The acceptance of democracy by German women was evident as they demanded equal treatment during the occupation. In Stuttgart, 5,000 women took to the streets in 1946 to join in a women’s “walk of supplication” initiated by the women’s local executive board to protest

OMGUS authorities evicting them from their homes.222 By claiming the evictions violated their democratic rights under the conditions of distress, neglect and misery it would have on their families, German women were actively engaged in the American democratic process and were holding the occupiers to their own laws. Furthermore, support for German women’s political engagement was covered by the America press in the U.S. According to the New York times article on January 30th, 1946, Americans supported the notion that “military government officials should pay respectful attention to the importance of the women in present-day Germany as they outvoted men in support of the leftist Social Democratic party.”223 By drawing attention to the political voice of the German women and by asserting their importance in the future of

German politics, the American press provided data for American women to propose the addition of a Women’s Section to the military government in Germany. Hence, the support by American women to German women’s issues during the postwar positively impacted the status of German women.

Attention to German Women’s political movements aligned with the Cold War competition in the AMZON by U.S. policy makers for women’s support. American women were essential in bringing attention to German women’s issues. Clara Boothe (U.S. ambassador and Congresswoman) urged Assistant Secretary of State, John Hildring, to include German women in the political process.224 However, OMGUS leaders had other concerns regarding

German women’s political agency, especially German women’s susceptibility to communism.

Their concerns were justified as the DFD (Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands-

Democratic Women’s League of Germany), which was founded in the Soviet Zone, expanded and attracted supporters in the Western Zones.225 Clearly, the democratization policies implemented by OMGUS to open the zone to different political parties in the AMZON had the

73 reverse intended effect. In the licensing of political parties for the local elections in January

1946, the communist party attracted a number of supporters willing to sign petitions to legalize the party that resulted in the rise of membership of the Communist Party (KPD) members from

106 on the 8th of that month to 167 on the 20th.226 This certainly impacted the desire for

Christian Democrats to discredit the KPD. However, by comparison, the Christian Social Union

(CSU) had not achieved the same rise in membership as the party totaled only 157 signatures, of which 24 were women.227 The Soviets promised equal wages and promoted women as an integral part of the postwar world. Indeed, a Russian poster proclaimed, “Give us the women and the youth, and you keep the men,” promoted German women’s importance in the rebuilding of the Soviet Zone of occupation.228 Consequently, fear of German women’s susceptibility to communism grew amongst OMGUS leaders, especially due to their lack of attention to German women’s needs in the AMZON.

Married German women’s lives were politicized as they became symbols of East versus

West in the early stages of the Cold War. In the western zones, waiting wives (wives of POW’s and missing men) and war widows refocused public opinion on traditional female gender roles as they were viewed as dependents. In the absence of their husbands, the government (OMGUS) was presumed to take on the responsibility and provisions for these women. In the east, victim identity and domestic sphere association was discouraged and instead, policy makers focused on women’s participation in the paid labor force.229 However, many German women wanted more than equal rights; they wanted their husbands released and returned from Soviet prisons.

OMGUS leaders used the frustration of German women regarding their missing husbands to sway German public opinion against the Soviets. By the end of 1946, negative press against communists continued as Western allies had released most of their prisoners but the Soviet

Union continued releasing POW’s well into the 1950’s.230 As a result, many German wives and mothers in the AMZON were embittered by the absence of the men they loved and the pensions they were unable to receive and turned their back on communism altogether.

Attention to German Women’s political movements aligned with the Cold War initiatives that required women’s support. Early in October 1947, General Lucius D. Clay received a letter in his OMGUS headquarters in Berlin from the President of the American League of Women

Voters, Anna Strauss, urging him to investigate the “apparent lack of and dire need for a program to assist in determining the direction the activities of German women will take. In Germany today, as you know, women are the overwhelming majority of this adult population and might with assistance and encouragement assume more responsibility in public life than ever before.”231 Clay’s assessment regarding the importance of women in the democratization process and the lack of policies by OMGUS to target Germany’s largest demographic in postwar

Germany led to changes within OMGUS. Within 18 days of Strauss’s simple two-page letter,

General Clay evaluated the staff study entitled “Résumé of the Needs and Problems of German

Women with Suggested Proposals from Military Government Offices.”232 The report proved to

Clay that women were already organizing and that it was in the interest of American democratization to address their needs. The report included women’s political and non-partisan organizations as well as trade unions. This is evidence that German women pursued political and cultural interests outside of the necessities of survival and that those interests provided time for socialization with other women.

Political Party Women’s Groups

SPD- Headquarters, Hannover Secretary, Frau Herta Gotthelf LDP- (Liberal Democratic Party) Headquarter, Berlin Key Leader, Dr. Marie Elisabeth Lueders

CDU- Headquarters, Stuttgart Key Leader, Helene Weber KPD- Headquarters, Hamburg Secretary, Eva Steinschneider

Trade Unions Hesse Secretary Frau Frieda Walter Bavaria, Secretary Frau Harmuth Berlin, Secretary Frau Agnes Moehrke Württemburg-Baden, Secretary Frau Klara Doehring Köln, Secretary Frau Kippe-Kaule

Independent Organization of Non-Partisan Women’s Organizations In Hesse (24 local groups) President, Frau Fini Pfannes

Frankfurt International Leagues International League for Peace and Freedom National Secretary, Frau Betty Binder-Asch, Stuttgart

World’s Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) National President, Oberin Zarnack, Berlin

World Organization for Mothers of All Nations (WOMAN) National President, Wilma Moenckeberg, Hamburg233

Changes in American foreign policy impacted the democratization of German women. In

1947, President Truman announced in a speech the promise of U.S. military, political and economic support to any country fighting authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine was more commonly referred to as America’s containment policy as it aimed to contain the spread of communism. After it was enacted in 1947, J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, doubted the serious intent of the Truman administration to address the threat from the Soviets and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a warning of the dangers of communism to American liberties and families as he stated, “Children would be placed in nurseries and special indoctrination schools and women, relieved of child-care responsibilities, would go to work in factories and mines with the men.234 Consequently, women’s role in the public sphere was less vital to the success of the occupation than their political symbols as wives and mothers.

Women’s natural abilities to compromise and their compassionate nation mattered, especially as the family became the center of the resistance against communism.235 Just as Truman’s containment policy drew an imaginary line of east versus west, so too did the political argument of the role of family in democracy versus communism.

After the formation of the Demokratische Frauenbund Deutschlands (Democratic

Women’s League) in the Soviet Zone in March of 1947, American military government officials swiftly responded by arranging their own women’s conference in Bad Boll, a small town outside of Stuttgart.236 Although there was no formal party organization, the women at Bad Boll made their own requests of OMGUS:

• Information regarding democratic methods of organization

• Information regarding cultural, educational, social and civic interests of women in

the USA and elsewhere

• Help in learning how to understand public affairs through study and discussion on

a non-partisan nature.

• Assistance in regaining positions of responsibility in education, the professions,

and in public life

• The facilitation of contacts and cultural exchange with women of other countries.

Many desire to correspond with American women.

• Help in combating the social and economic conditions which are contributory to

the demoralization of girls and young women.237

Clearly, the fifth point was a request for OMGUS to end the punitive phase of the occupation, especially as German women blamed occupation policies implemented by OMGUS

77 responsible for the economic condition that led some German women into prostitution.

Although it was never specifically addressed by General Clay, he authorized the Group

Activities Branch on January 23, 1948 and it was fully staffed by March.238 The Women’s

Affairs section of this branch was created simultaneously, and Mrs. Lorena Hahn was the first chief. The directives regarding the political activities of German women were directly outlined and read almost exactly as a response to the requests of the women’s conference at Bad Boll:

• To formulate policies for the purpose of fostering the development of civic

education and political responsibility among German women, through an

understanding of democratic political principles and methods of community

leadership.

• To furnish information, advice and assistance to German women and women’s

organizations

• To stimulate women to accept their role as participating citizens in public affairs

and to develop and understanding of their responsibilities in the communities.239

For Hahn to legitimize the Women’s Section, policies needed to engage German women at the local level. Hahn suggested the Women’s Affairs Branch should focus on labor organizations, university groups and political organizations by invoking the threat of communism and its influence.240 She centered the programs around organizations and experiences that improved the lives of German women by immersing them in American culture and politics.

• An exchange of magazine and press articles, program material, individual and

group letters

• The sending of leading American women to Germany.

• Maintaining contact with women who might be enlisted in giving time to German

groups.

• The assuming of responsibility for receiving German women in America, looking

after them personally and arranging their orientation.241

The Women’s Affairs Section’s political concept was modeled after that of America as

German and American’s women’s movements followed similar paths.242 German women were encouraged to do voluntary work in commissions and women’s organization in which their motherly qualities served the public.243 The women’s organization prototype supported both publicly and financially by OMGUS was The Frankfurt Women’s Committee, which by 1947 was a registered umbrella organization for not only Frankfurt but also the state of Hesse.244 The

Frankfurt Committees demands were not revolutionary and they focused on all women’s issues without regard to particular political party ideas. The Committee’s demands included: equity in family law, the right to work, increases in positions in the social and education sectors and a higher value placed on housework.245 Their last demand was overwhelmingly supported by

OMGUS as it configured into the idea of the Germany’s “new woman.”

By 1948, media and public opinion in Germany supported the democratization of

Germany’s “new woman” only as it applied traditional gender roles. According to a published report on German families by American psychiatrist for the ICD, Bertram Schaffner, the German mother was considered a secondary figure due to her “natural subjugation to the undisputed authority of the father.”246 American publications in the AMZON, such as Die Neue Zeitung, ran a full article after the second women’s trizonal conference which questioned “who was to decide where family resides or who has the final say in the upbringing of the children, and finally- who

79 was to decide if husband and wife disagree?”247 Conservatives advocated a perspective around the natural laws and responsibilities of women as wives and mothers which appealed to German women who did not support equality for women in postwar Germany. Consequently, as social, political, and material conditions in Germany improved, women were not needed for political activism, especially as that prevented men from entering the public arena.248

Resistance to German women’s equality was monitored but not officially deterred by

OMGUS. Their “laissez-faire” approach to pushing women forward took a back seat to stabilizing German society. While German women were important in that stability, their equality was not. According to a 1947 published survey by OMGUS:

“Majority of Germans believe the women still belong in the home, ICD Opinion Survey study shows. Survey also discloses that scarcely any Germans believe there are public jobs, which should be held almost exclusively by women. They believe a man should have preference in every occupation he can fill satisfactorily. Half of interviewees believe young German women are dissatisfied, disillusioned and lonesome. Majority of Germans convinced the changes for marriage of young German girls are worse than in any other country.”249

German men’s resistance towards equality was often due to stress within the family structure. This stress increased as German women were selected to meet to discuss Germany’s laws under the new constitution. While 65 women were sent as delegates to the zonal conference, there were only four women among the 65 voting members of the Parliamentary

Council set up in 1948 to formulate new legislation in Germany’s constitution.”250 The lack of female participation and representation at the state level was indicative of German women’s political status by the end of the occupation: unnecessary. In fact, drafts of the constitution handed out at Bonn did not specify laws specifically for women as delegates thought that women were covered under the general language ensuring all citizens equality.251 What was designated

80 was the status of women and their role as wives as mothers. Article 3, Paragraph 2 addressed women’s equality and Article 6 addressed the state’s protection of marriage, motherhood, and the family.252 Clearly, as women’s domestic roles were protected under the state, that is exactly where they were expected to return- home. Historian Maria Höhn noted the irony by stating,

“German women continued to experience de facto discrimination in their roles as wives and mothers, while at the same time those very roles were elevated as defenders of democracy.”253

At the end of the occupation, OMGUS issued a final report on the status of women’s affairs before it was replaced by HICOG (U.S. High Commissioner for Germany). The report points to the negative impact of public opinion on women’s advancements in the public sphere.

The report also blamed “the passive acceptance of the role of women limited to the home by the great majority of women, which results in a lack of experience in civic affairs.”254 Yet, the report failed to connect the return of German women to the domestic sphere with its approved publications in the AMZON that showcased women in traditional gender roles as wives and mothers. While German women’s political movement shifted from inclusivity and no specific political affiliation during the first two years of occupation, the organization of parties at the local and national levels towards the end of the occupation divided the women against themselves.

However, not all German women returned home. There was a small glimmer of hope for the future of German women’s political agency at the end of the report: “There is an active minority conscious of the unreleased power of women, and with an urge for change in order that women may reach their full development and effectively play their role as citizens.”255 While the constitutional assembly voted unanimously that women and men were equal, it was done by piecemeal approach; not until 1977 were all articles of the Civil Code fulfilled in Article 3, Part 4

81 of the German Basic Law that asserted men and women were equal.256 As a result, German women’s status as mothers and wives were elevated to meet the ideal family standards of the

Cold War, while they were discouraged from participating in the political and economic public spheres.

By the end of the occupation, most German women were once again relegated to the duties naturally assigned to the domestic sphere. According to German historian Ute Frevert, roughly 26% of German women were employed in 1950.257 The occupation policies set by

OMGUS determined the importance of German women roles in postwar Germany. German women were necessary due to the gender imbalanced demographics immediately following the postwar. German women were used as the demarcation between democracy and communism by extolling American democracy. The purpose of American occupation policies was to change the

German culture. However, German women changed the initial negative impressions held by

American men and women. They married American GI’s and became U.S. citizens. They worked to rebuild Germany, they educated German children and they rallied for equality. By doing so, they defied and altered America’s nonfraternization, denazification and democratization policies established in JCS 1067. German women distanced themselves from their Nazi past and helped to define West Germany’s future.

CONCLUSION

It would be difficult to gauge the success of the American Occupation of Germany, 1945-

1949, without the inclusion of the contributions made by German women. Ironically, American policy makers failed to address German women’s concerns until 1948, despite their knowledge

Germany’s overwhelmingly female postwar population. Instead, OMGUS leaders enforced punitive American occupation policies on all Germans. As American occupiers moved into

German cities and towns, they requisitioned houses and apartments, leaving many Germans, especially German women, homeless. Furthermore, some American GI’s sexually assaulted

German women, while other GIs utilized their economic advantages to barter for sex. Despite dismal and dangerous conditions, many German women emerged from the rubble and became everyday fixtures in the public sphere in their role as head of household. To provide for their families and to survive, German women helped rebuild their cities, their political parties, and the postwar German economy. In addition, German women’s marriages to American men symbolized their acceptance of American culture and helped to establish long-term relationships between Americans and Germans, a necessity as Cold War tensions mounted. Moreover,

German women’s participation in women’s organizations and political parties was evidence of the democratization of German women, especially as women’s equality was used as a line of demarcation between democracy in the West and communism in the East. Therefore, German women’s political, social, and economic contributions made during 1945-1949, altered American occupation policies.

The impact of the contributions made by German women during the occupation ensured more opportunities for future generations of women. Despite the overwhelming female population in Germany in 1949, only four women were selected to help draft Germany’s

Constitution at the Parliamentary Council. However, the “four mothers of the Basic Law” refused to be ignored by the male representatives and demanded that German women be guaranteed equality under Article Three.258 As a result, German women have held seats in the

Bundestag and have been selected as Federal Cabinet members. In addition, Angela Merkel became Germany’s first female Chancellor in 2005 and is currently serving her fourth term.

Clearly, German women’s fight for equality during the occupation opened the door for German women to make the laws and policies that guide the social, political, and economic lives of

German people.

This research connects to the larger feminist historical framework which aims to shed light on patriarchal systems that result in social injustices and crimes committed against women.

Consequently, research materials for certain topics, such as sexual assault cases in the military, are difficult to find and/or sparse. This leads to generalizations regarding the perpetrators and the victims that may not be accurate. In addition, due to societal pressures and fear of retaliation or judgment, many victims of rape do not report the crime, further skewing the data.

To better understand the implications raised from this analysis, further studies could involve the comparison between Japanese and German women’s impact on American occupation policies. This research could also be useful in making comparisons for the changing roles of

American women during the postwar years. Furthermore, as American women were responsible for putting pressure on OMGUS leaders to focus on German women’s issues, further research could compare the similarities of the political, social, and economic status of both American and

German women during the occupation and the Cold War.

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ENDNOTES

1. Michaela Hoenicke Moore, Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 74. 2. Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Documents on Germany Under Occupation 1945-1954, (Oxford University Press, 1955), 15. 3. Records of the Office of War Information, Record Group 208, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 4. Moore, Know Your Enemy, 72. 5. Michele J. Shover, “Roles and Images of Women in World War I Propaganda,” Politics & Society vol. 5, no. 4 (December 1975): 469. 6. Ibid., 475. 7. Esin Berktaş “How Women Were Represented in the War Propaganda Posters: Soldiers, Mothers, and Families.” International Conference on Knowledge & Politics in Gender & Women’s Studies (October 2015): 351. 8. J. Robert Lilly’s Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II (UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 117. 9. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New York: St. Martin's, 1987. 10. For refugee, retuning Jewish women, and female DP’s experiences in postwar Germany, please reference Francis Graham-Dixon, The Allied Occupation of Germany: The Refugee Crisis, Denazification, and the Path to Reconstruction. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013 and two specific works from Atina Grossman, “Defeated Germans and Surviving Jews: Gendered Encounters in Everyday Life in U.S. Occupied Germany 1945-1949.” In German History from the Margins, ed. By Neil Greger, Nils Roemer, and Mark Roseman, 204-225. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006 and Atina Grossman, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 11. For sexual assault in the France, see Marie Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in WWII France, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 and J. Robert Lilly’s Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. 12. For an overview of German women’s lives during the occupation in all four zones, please see John Robert Stark’s “The Overlooked Majority: German Women in the Four Zones of Occupied Germany, 1945-1949, A Comparative Study.” PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2003 and Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation New York: Basic Books, 2007. For rapes in the Soviet Zone see Norman Naimark’s The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 13. John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 123-139. 14. For race and occupation children, please see Heidi Fehrenbach Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. See also Atina Grossman Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 15. Lilly, Taken By Force, 117. 16. Thomas J. Kehoe and E. James Kehoe, “Crimes Committed by U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1945-1946.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History vol. 47, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 78. 17. Robert Moeller, “The ‘Remasculinization’ of Germany in the 1950s” Signs Vol. 24, No. 1 (Autumn, 1998), 103. 18. Joyce P. Kaufman and Kristen P. Williams, Women and War: Gender Identity and Activism in Times of Conflict (Sterling, VA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010), 1. 19. Ibid., 2. 20. Kaufman and Williams, Women and War, 7. 21. Susan L. Carruthers, The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 278. 22. Ibid, 91. 23. Ibid, 61. 24. Mattie Treadwell, The United States Army in World War II: The Women’s Army Corps (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), 25. 25. Topical Outline of Military Government Handbook, prepared for the Military Government Division, Provost Marshall’s Office by the School of Military Government, Charlottesville, Virginia, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Record Group 389, Entry 443, Box 841.

26. Jessica Reinisch, The Perils of Peace: The Public Health Crisis in Occupied Germany, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 14. 27. Carruthers, The Good Occupation, 28. 28. Ibid., 29. 29. Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War and Vice Versa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 92. 30. Donna Alvah, Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965 (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 83. 31. Ibid., 84. 32. Susan Gubar, “This Is My Rifle, This Is My Gun”: World War II and the Blitz on Women,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, ed. Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret Collins Weitz (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 241. 33. Goldstein, War and Gender, 334. 34. Gubar, “This Is My Rifle,” 231. 35. Ibid., 240. 36. Elizabeth Heineman, “Gender, Sexuality, and Coming to Terms with the Nazi Past,” Central European History, vol. 8 no. 1, (2005): 48. 37. John Costello, Virtue Under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 77. 38. Goldstein, War and Gender, 350. 39. Ibid., 351. 40. Tracy Bilsing, “Mors Ab Alto: “The Dangerous Power of Women’s Images in WWII Nose Art.” Texas Review vol. 35, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2014): 88. 21. Pfau, Elizabeth Ann. Miss Yourlovin: GI’s, Gender and Domesticity During World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 9. 42. Douglas Bond, The Love and Fear of Flying (New York: International Universities Press, 1952), 22. 43. Pfau, Miss Yourlovin, 11. 44. Herbert Friedman, “Sex and Psychological Warfare,” http://www.psywarrior.com/sexandprop.html 45. Ibid., 2. 46. Military historian Joseph Balkoski negates the use of images through personal accounts of soldiers during WWII in Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Infantry Division in Normandy, (Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 1989). 47. Goldstein, War and Gender, 355. 48. Ibid., 333. 49. Gubar, “This Is My Rifle,” 240. 50. Goldstein, War and Gender, 372. 51. Gubar, “This Is My Rifle,” 253. 52. Pfau, MissYourlovin, 20. 53. Kaufman and Williams, Women and War, 6. 54. Carruthers, The Good Occupation, 55. 55. Ibid., 56. 56. Alvah, Unofficial Ambassadors, 134. 57. Ibid., 135. 58. Richard L. Merritt Democracy Imposed: U.S. Occupation Policy and the German Public, 1945-1949 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 62. 59. Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946 Army Historical Series (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1975), 104. 60. Ibid, 105. 61. Carruthers, The Good Occupation, 200. 62. Ibid., 201. 63. Ibid., 204. 64. Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2009), 171. 65. Atina Grossmann, “A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers,” October vol. 72, (Spring 1995), 58. 66. Raingard Esser, “Language No Obstacle: War Brides in the German Press, 1945-49,” Women's History Review, vol. 12 no. 4, (September: 2004): 584. 93

67. Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 44. 68. Thomas Kehoe, Control, Disempowerment, Fear and Fantasy: Violent Criminality during the Early American Occupation of Germany, March-July 1945,” Australian Journal of Politics & History vol. 62 no. 4 (December 2016): 563. 69. Grossmann, “A Question of Silence,” 54. 70. John Willoughby, “Remaking the Conquering Heroes: The Social and Geopolitical Impact of the Post-War American Occupation of Germany (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 19. 71. Lilly, Taken by Force, 119. 72. John Willoughby, “The Sexual Behavior of American GIs During the Early Years of the Occupation of Germany,” The Journal of Military History vol. 62 (January 1998): 139. 73. National Archives, Report of Operations, September 1945. RG 407, Entry 427, Box 5403, File 303-0.3 74. Willoughby, “Remaking the Conquering Heroes,” 41. 75. Ibid., 101. 76. Ibid., 103. 77. Grossmann, “A Question of Silence,” 42. 78. Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 24. 79. John Willoughby, “The Sexual Behavior,” 158. 80. Goedde, GIs and Germans, 58. 81. Willoughby, “The Sexual Behavior,” 159. 82. Goedde, GIs and Germans, 60. 83. Carruthers, “Unstoppable Force,” 63. 84. Goedde, GIs and Germans, 72. 85. Ibid., 78. 86. Ibid., 72. 87. Costello, Virtue Under Fire, 251. 88. Goedde, GIs and Germans, 45. 89. Ibid., 252. 90. Perry Biddiscombe, “Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria 1945-1948,” Journal of Social History vol. 34, no. 3 (Spring: 2001): 615. 91. Ibid., 617. 92. Stephen Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 216. 93. Carruthers, “Unstoppable Force,” 64. 94. Ibid., 65. 95. Ibid., 66. 96. Goedde, GIs and Germans, 78. 97. Hermann Glaser, The Rubble Years: The Cultural Roots of Postwar Germany 1945-1948 (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1986), 48. 98. Esser, “Language No Obstacle,” 581. 99. Biddiscombe, “Dangerous Liaisons,” 586. 100. Esser, “Language No Obstacle,” 583. 101. Grossmann, “A Question of Silence,” 60. 102. Fritz, Endkampf, 214. 103. Historical Program Files, Historical Division: Headquarters, U.S. Forces, European Theater, September 1945. National Archives, Washington, DC, 3. 104. Ibid., 215. 105. Willoughby, “Remaking the Conquering Hero,” 42. 106. Biddiscombe, “Dangerous Liaisons,” 620. 107. Ibid., 585. 108. Fritz, Endkampf, 217. 109. Ibid., 218. 110. Biddiscombe, “Dangerous Liaisons,” 628.

111. Heide Fehrenbach, “Black Occupation Children and the Devolution of the Nazi Racial State” in After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe, edited by Rita Chin, Heide Fehrenbach, Geoff Eley, and Atina Grossman (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009), 34. 112. Ronit, Stahl, “Stop Rape: A WWII Chaplain’s Advice,” Nursing Clio (blog) March 28, 2013 https://nursingclio.org/2013/03/28/stop-rape-a-wwii-chaplains-advice/ 113. Esser, “Language No Obstacle,” 578. 114. Grossmann, “A Question of Silence,” 49. 115. Dagmar Herzog, Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 66. 116. Jessica Reinisch, The Perils of Peace (Oxford: UK, 2013), 14. 117. Lisa Haushofer, MD, “The ‘Contaminating Agent:’ UNRAA, Displaced Persons, and Venereal Disease in Germany 1945-1947,” American Journal of Public Health vol. 100 no. 6 (Spring, 2010), 995. 118. Willoughby, “Remaking the Conquering Hero,” 38. 119. Ibid., 39. 120. Haushofer, “The ‘Contaminating Agent,” 995. 121. Ibid., 998. 122. Haushofer, “The ‘Contaminating Agent,” 999. 123. Willoughby, “The Sexual Behavior,” 163. 124. Herzog, Sex After Fascism, 64. 125. Jeffry Diefendorf, In the Wake of War: Reconstruction of German Cities After WWII (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 127. 126. Elizabeth Heineman, “Gender, Sexuality, and Coming to Terms with the Nazi Past,” Central European History vol. 38, no. 1 (2005), 57. 127. OMGUS, Enactments and Approved Papers of the Allied Control Council and Coordinating Committee, 1 July 1946- 30 September 1946, Vol IV. Pg. 9. 128. Maria Hӧhn, “Frau im Haus und Girl im Spiegel: Discourse on Women in the Interregnum Period of 1945-1949 and the Question of German Identity,” Central European History vol. 26, no. 1 (March 1996): 57. 128. Ibid., 63. 129. Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 22. 130. Major John Maginnis Diary, November 1945, box 2, John J. Maginnis Papers. 131. Melvude Akbulet-Yuskel, Melanie Khamis, and Mutlu Yuskel, “Women Make Houses, Women Make Homes,” Labour Economics vol. 49 (December 2017), 145. 132. Glaser, The Rubble Years, 50. 133. Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design- Weimar and Now. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 73. 134. Ibid., 83. 135. Ibid., 88. 136. Goede, GIs and Germans,89. 137. Ibid., 89. 138. Alexander Badendoch, “Time Consuming: Women’s Radio and the Reconstruction of National Narratives in Western Germany, 195-1948.” German History vol. 25 no.1 (January 2007), 52. 139. Deborah Barton, “Rewriting the Reich: German Women Journalists as Transnational Mediators for Germany’s Rehabilitation,” Central European History vol. 51, no. 4 (December 2018), 567. 140. Elizabeth Heineman, “Gender, Public Policy, and Memory: Waiting Wives and War Widows in the Postwar Germanys,” The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, edited by Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 217. 141. OMGUS, Enactments and Approved Papers of the Allied Control Council and Coordinating Committee, 1 July 1946- 30 September 1946, Vol IV, pg. 9. 142. Margerete Myers Feinstein, “All Under One Roof: Persecutees, DPs, Expellees, and the Housing Shortage in Occupied Germany,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies vol. 32, no. 1 (Spring 2018), 30. 143. Elizabeth Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 79. 144. Ibid., 79. 145. W.F. Ashe, “The Nutrition Program in Germany, U.S. Zone of Occupation in Germany, May 1945-May 1946,” The Bulletin of the U.S. Army Medical Department vol. 8 no. 1 (January 1948), 50. 95

146. Weinreb, “For the Hungry Have No Past”, 76. 147. Ibid., 76. 148. Ashe, “The Nutrition Program in Germany, 50. 149. Heineman, What Difference, 83. 150. Weinreb, “’For the Hungry Have No Past, 65. 151. Iris Kesternich, James P. Smith and Joachim Winter, “Individual Behavior as a Pathway between Early-life Shocks an Adult Health: Evidence from Hunger Episodes in Post-war Germany,” The Economic Journal vol. 125, no. 588, (November 2015), 377. 152. Ashe, “The Nutrition Program in Germany,” 50. 153. Irene Guenther, “Out of the Ruins: Fashioning Berlin, 1945-1952,” Fashion Theory vol. 21, no. 4 (February 2017), 393. 154. Ibid., 398. 155. Ibid., 399. 156. US Armed Services Bulletin September 21, 1947. 157. Curt Riess, Berlin! Berlin! 1945-1953. (Berlin: Dial Press, 1953), 58. 158. Glaser, The Rubble Years, 44. 159. Reinhold Wagnleitner, “Propagating the American Dream: Cultural Policies as Means of Integration,” American Studies International vol. 24, no. 1 (April 1986), 76. 160. Ibid., 75. 161. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 36. 162. Heineman, What Difference, 93. 163. Hӧhn, “Frau im Haus und Girl im Spiegel, 57. 164. Ibid., 66. 165. Cora Sol Goldstein, “A Comparative Analysis of Cultural Control: The German Military Occupation of France (1940-1942) and The American Military Occupation of Germany (1945-1949), Journal of Military History vol. 80, no. 4 (October 2016), 1104. 166. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 23. 167. Charles D. Biebel, “American Efforts for Educational Reform in Occupied Germany, 1945-1955: A Reassessment.” History of Education Quarterly- Special Issue: Educational Policy and Reform in Modern Germany (Autumn, 1982), 278. 168. Badenoch, “Time Consumption: Women’s Radio), 52. 169. Ibid., 53. 170. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 156. Bavaria monthly report, April 1948. 171. Erwin J. Warkentin, ed., The History of the U.S. Information Control Division: OMGUS 1944 to June 30th 1946, pg. 67 http://www.erwinslist.com/Files/History%20I.pdf 172. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 25. 173. Deborah Barton, “Rewriting the Reich: German Women Journalists as Transnational Mediators for Germany’s Rehabilitation,” Central European History vol. 51, no. 4 (December 2018), 569. 174. Ibid., 568. 175. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 40. 176. State Department, Women at War, 1952. 177. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 38. 178. Ibid., 173. 179. Cora Sol Goldstein, “A Comparative Analysis of Cultural Control,” 1105. 180. Ibid., 1106. 181. Emily Oliver, “Heaven Help the Yankees if They Capture You: Women Reading Gone with The Wind In Occupied Germany,” German Life and Letters vol. 71, no. 2 (April 2018), 196. 182. Ibid., 213. 183. Oliver, “Heaven Help the Yankees,” 198. 184. Esser, “Language No Obstacle, 580. 185. James Rolleston, “Heute, 1948: Photojournalism Frames the German Present,” South Atlantic Review vol. 69, no. 2 (2004), 81. 186. Heute, May 15th, 1946. 187. Ganeva Mila, “Fashion Amidst the Ruins: Revisiting the Early Rubble Films and the Heavens Above (1947) and The Murderers are Among Us (1946),” German Studies Review vol. 37, no.1 (February 2014), 71. 96

188. Quoted in Karin Friedrich, Zeitfunken: Biographie einer Familie (Munich: Beck, 2010), 275. 189. Mila, “Fashion Amidst the Ruins,” 64. 190. Wagnleitner, “Propagating the American Dream, 76. 191. Irene Guenther, “Out of the Ruins: Fashioning Berlin, 1945-1952,” Fashion Theory vol. 21, no. 4 (February 2017), 399. 192. Ibid., 398. 193. Mila, “Fashion Amidst the Ruins, 63. 194. Natalie Scholz, “Gender and the Morality of Things in Early Postwar Germany Clio vol. 2, no. 40 (2014), 92. 195. Heute, 25 October 1950, pp. 10-11. 196. Esser, “Language No Obstacle, 597. 197. Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects, 140. 198. Ibid., 141. 199. Brian M. Puaca, Learning Democracy: Education Reform in West Germany, 1945-1965. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 38. 200. Ibid., 39. 201. Goldstein, “A Comparative Analysis of Cultural Control,” 1106. 202. Ibid., 1108. 203. Wagnleitner, “Propagating the American Dream,” 76. 204. O. Jean Brandes, “The Effect of War on the German Family,” Social Forces vol. 29, no. 2 (December 1950), 171. 205. Ibid., 172. 206. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 70. 207. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood), 30. 208. Esser, “Language No Obstacle, 595. 209. Claudia Koonz. “Conflicting Allegiances: Political Ideology and Women Legislators in Weimar Germany” Signs, vol. 1, no. 3 (1976): 664. 210. John Stark, “The Overlooked Majority: German Women in the Four Zones of Occupied Germany, 1945-1949, A Comparative Study.” Ph.D diss., (Ohio State University, 2003), 335. 211. Ibid., 335. 212. Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 8. 213. Marianne Zepp, “Redefining Germany: Women’s Politics in the Post-War U.S. Occupation Zone,” in Continued Violence and Troublesome Pasts: Post-War Europe Between the Victors After the Second World War ed. by Ville Kivimake and Petri Karonen (Helsinki Public Library, 2017): 64. 214. ICD Report on Meeting in Heidelberg, 11 November 1945 Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) 5/240-2/44. 215. Zepp, “Redefining Germany,” 74. 216. Ibid., 64. 217. Ibid., 64. 218. Ibid., 65. 219. Ibid., 68. 220. Ute Gerhard, “Anything but a Suffragette! Women’s Politics in Germany After 1945: A Movement of Women? In When the War Was Over: Women, War, and Peace in Europe, 1945-1956 edited by Claire Duchen and Irene Bandhauer-Schoffmann (London: Continuum, 2002), 163. 221. Ibid., 165. 222. Zepp, 69. 223. New York Times, January 30, 1946. 224. “Report on Temporary Duty with ICD/Bavaria, RG 260, OMGBY 10/116-3-6 225. Rebecca Boehling, “The Role of Culture in American Relations with Europe: The Case of the United States’ Occupation,” Diplomatic History vol. 23, no. 1 (Winter 1999), 67. 226. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/47/6/5-7 box 1145. Records of Resident Liaison and Security Office at Bamberg, Party Membership records. 227. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/47/6/5-7 box 1145. Records of Resident Liaison and Security Office at Bamberg, Party Membership records. 228. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 156. Women in German Industry, October 1949.

229. Elizabeth Heineman, “Gender, Public Policy, and Memory: Waiting Wives and War Widows in Postwar Germanys, in The work of memory: New directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, edited by Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press), 216. 230. Heineman, “Gender, Public Policy, and Memory,” 224. 231. National Archives, OMGUS RG260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Letter from Anna Lord Strauss to General Clay, September 29, 1947. 232. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Memo dated 17 October 1947. 233. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Resumé of the Needs and Problems of German Women with Suggested Proposals from Military Government Offices, 17 October 1947, Appendix A, German Women’s Organizations. 234. J. Edgar Hoover, Testimony before HUAC, 26 March 1947, in Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 2nd ed. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 127. 235. Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 72. 236. Zepp, “Redefining Germany,” 68. 237. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Memo dated 17 October 1947. 238. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 152. Group Activities Branch cumulative reports 20 April 1948. 239. Report of the Military Governor for Germany (U.S.), No. 34, pg. 76, May 1947-April 1948. 240. Stark, “The Overlooked Majority,” 337. 241. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 153. Survey of Local Government, Leadership and Vocational Training Schools in the British and French Zones dated 17 October 1948. 242. For an in-depth study of American Feminism Post WWII, see Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor’s Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990). 243. Hanna Schissler, “German and American Women Between Domesticity and the Workplace” in The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook Volume I: 1945-1968 edited by Detlef Junker (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 561. 244. Gerhard, “Anything but a Suffragette!” 167. 245. Ibid., 168. 246. Bertram Schaffner, Father Land: A Study of Authoritarianism in the German Family (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 34. 247. NZ, 13, January 1948. 248. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible, 130. 249. OMGUS Records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Report on Women’s Activities, 1947, 1. 250. Glaser, The Rubble Years, 47. 251. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 45. 252. Ibid., 40. 253. Hӧhn, “Frau im Haus,” 79. 254. OMGUS records, National Archives II, RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Report on Women’s Affairs Branch, 27, July 1949, 10-11. 255. Ibid., 11. 256. Höhn, Frau Im Haus, 79. 257. Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Hanna Schissler, “Women in the Two Germanys.” German Studies Review vol. 13 (1990), 75. 258. Baer, Susanne. “The Basic Law at 60-Equality and Difference: A Proposal for the Guest List to the Birthday Party.” German L.J. vo. 11, no. 1 (2010): 70.