German Women in the Four Zones of Occupied Germany, 1945-1949, a Comparative Study
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THE OVERLOOKED MAJORITY: GERMAN WOMEN IN THE FOUR ZONES OF OCCUPIED GERMANY, 1945-1949, A COMPARATIVE STUDY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By John Robert Stark, B.S., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Alan Beyerchen, Adviser Professor John Guilmartin ______________________________________ Adviser Professor John Rothney Department of History ABSTRACT When the Allies entered Germany in late-1944, most of the male population of Germany was either incapacitated or absent. German women, the majority of the German population, were confronted with rebuilding Germany under the supervision of military governments. This dissertation is a comparison of the experiences of German women in the Soviet, British, American and French zones of occupation. It also informs the historian and military commander regarding the effects of perceptions about women in the home country and how these can affect military occupation. The policies of the four occupying powers directly reflected the roles of women in the home countries. The Soviets immediately set up German socialist organizations to incorporate German women into the new communist government of the East. Through the benefits of these organizations and the communist punishment system, the communists worked to recruit German women to their cause. The British military government used a decentralized approach by allowing some British women to experiment with the education of German women. After the founding of a large centralized socialist German women’s organization in March 1947 in the Soviet zone, the British officially began educating German women to participate in Germany’s recovery. ii The Americans were rather late in recognizing German women as an important group. Once they did in late-1947 the Americans formed a Women’s Affairs Branch of their military government, which had a limited effect on assisting German women to become politically active. The French never had a program to assist German women. Instead, the French watched German women as a potentially dangerous political faction. German women now hold more seats in the German representative assemblies than women in any other large western-style democracy. This is partially a result of the work of German women in the Soviet zone combined with the reaction of the western occupation powers to stir German women to a new level of political consciousness. Historians will be interested in learning about the differences in the occupation policies of the four occupation powers. Commanders of military occupations can learn from the successes and mistakes of the four military governments of Germany 1945-1949. iii DEDICATED TO SYLVIA iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my dissertation committee beginning with my adviser, Alan Beyerchen, who has been a mentor in many ways to my intellectual development. Thank you to John Guilmartin and John Rothney for making this possible. I must thank my mother Vicki Stark and my brother Nathan Stark, who each helped with the research and provided encouragement. I also must thank MAJ Kristian Marks, MAJ Walt Kennedy, MAJ Kevin Murphy, LTC Tim Rainey, LTC Steve Arata, Prof. Phil Giltner, Dr. Jeff Lewis, Dr. Amy Alrich, Prof. Greta Bucher, Prof. Dennis Showalter, Prof. Linda Frey, Dr. Mark Spicka, Prof. Marsha Frey, Prof. John Flynn, Prof. Elizabeth Heineman, Prof. Leila Rupp, Prof. Katherine David-Fox, Prof. David Cressy, Prof. Dale VanKley, Karen Huber, CPT Kate Glass, CPT Iris Cowher, Prof. Tom Nimick, and many other colleagues for variously helping with teaching duties to make research possible, for reading manuscripts and providing feedback, and for putting me on the right track in finding the necessary materials. Without any of these people, this dissertation may not have been possible. Finally, I must thank my wife, Sylvia Dittmann Stark for her part in helping with research, keeping me sane, and in being able to withstand the extreme sacrifices this endeavor has required. Without her, I would not have been able to begin. v VITA May 27, 1969…………………………….Born – Monticello, Indiana 1991………………………………………B.S., United States Military Academy at West Point 2000………………………………………M.A., Student, Ohio State University 2000-2003……………………………...Assistant Professor and Academic Counselor United States Military Academy at West Point Fields of Study Major Field: History vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………... ii Dedication……………………………………………………………………….. iv Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………..…… v Vita……………………………………………………………………………… vi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………viii Chapters: 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………. 1 2. Historiography and Military Considerations.…………………………… 15 3. The Cold War and the Numbers……..…………………………………. 52 4. The Soviet Zone………………………………………………………… 77 5. The British Zone…………………………………………………………188 6. The American Zone……………………………………………………. 274 7. The French Zone……………………………………………………….. 360 8. Conclusions……………………………………………………………. 412 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………. 421 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1.1 Map of the occupation zones of Germany………………………………… 4 2.1 Trümmerfrau, Schönefeld, Berlin, 1945…………………………………… 19 3.1 Length of wars versus length of occupation. Independent variables………. 30 3.2 Venn diagram, culture encompasses all aspects of society………………… 42 7.1 Map of Bavaria…………………………………………………………… 281 7.2 The Bamberger Reiter……………………………………………………. 282 8.1 Women in the representative assemblies of western democracies………... 418 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION At the conclusion of the Second World War, women dominated the demographics of Germany. The census of 1946 revealed that there were 124 women for every 100 men and that in the 20-29 age group, there were actually as high as 171 women per 100 men.1 This amounted to a population that was 55 percent female overall, with the young working segment (20-29) at over 63 percent female. While these numbers are striking, the actual disparity in healthy persons in this age group would have been even more skewed due to the effects of the war on the young male population.2 The disparity among Germans grows even further when displaced foreigners and working prisoners of war (mostly male) were removed from the equation. Exact numbers taking all of these factors into consideration are not possible to support, but other numbers indicate the seriousness of the demographic disparity. Even after most POW’s had returned home and a new generation of births should have helped 1 Office of the Military Government in Germany, (United States Zone) (OMGUS) at the United States National Archives and Records Administration, 1999-2000. RG 260 stack 390/46/15/5 box 155. Memorandum: Résumé of the Needs and Problems of German Women with Suggested Proposals from Military Government Offices dated 17 October 1947. 2 It must be noted that certainly women had suffered health problems during the war as a result of restricted diets, stress, excessive work and Allied bombing raids (women were 60percent of bombing casualties), but the effects of battle on men were far more devastating. Over 4 million German servicemen died (or are still missing in action) in the war. About that same number were seriously wounded. 1 to even the numbers, the disparity continued. By 1960, the ratio of German women to men remained no less than 126:100 (55.8 percent female).3 While casualties and prisoners of war can explain the disparity, the effects of the disparity are less easily explained. In a society that had been inculcated for over 12 years with ultra-conservative rhetoric about values regarding women in the home as opposed to the workplace, the realities of the war had forced women to learn to fend for themselves. Even many of those who had supported the National Socialist plans for women in the state-approved roles of “children, kitchen and church” would often now have to survive in an environment for which they were totally unprepared. To add to their woes, German women faced occupying armies that were singly unprepared to deal with them or their new roles as family and community leaders. Thus a dichotomy existed between the expectations of occupiers and occupied as well as between the realities for each. This dissertation is unique in that I am comparing the activities of German women in the four zones of occupation—Soviet, British, American and French--and comparing their policies toward German women. I assert that the understanding of the German woman as a helpless bystander during the occupation is inaccurate. The situation of the German woman varied for many reasons. Each woman was affected by her families previous political leanings as well as whether she was urban or rural, middle class or poor, Catholic or Protestant, northern or southern, eastern or western, and the list of differences goes on. Still, most German women experienced something very similar in 1945 almost everyone was without male companionship and seemingly at the mercy of Allied occupation forces. 3 John Keegan, The Second World War, (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 592. 2 By the end of the occupation period three of the four military occupation governments had programs or organizations to aid German women in their attempts to gain agency in the new Germany. The Soviets were the first to officially sanction this activity with a centralized party-sponsored program. The British began slightly later, but did not have an official centralized policy regarding German women, nor did the British have a plan to aid German women until after the Soviets announced their plan to centralize all activities of German women in March 1947. The Americans founded their own program six months after this. The French never sponsored a program to aid German women attain agency. I assert that this activity had a role in influencing the German woman attain more political representation than women in most other western democracies experience today. As evidence for my claims I will discuss the idea of the German women in “politics.” By this I mean strictly the idea of women voting and running for office.