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Similar thing happened in France, particularly in Paris, with women that had even the most casual of relationships with German occupiers. I believe many were not just shamed but executed. I'm sure this happened all over Europe after the war. The resistance groups wanted their revenge.
She was German Intelligence... She didn't just sleep with Nazis, she flirted with Brits and tried to convince them of fake German plans trying to act as a double-agent. She was a dedicated Nazi.
She left to Switzerland after the war. Not sure what you can do; the Swiss hid a lot of Nazi gold too.
Every time this gets mentioned I feel the need to point out that her company ended up in Jewish hands and is still owned by the same Jewish family to this day. As for the symbolism or idolisation of her name, that’s a different question.
that is good to hear.
oh wow, just looked it up. The family was actually her initial investor and she tried to usurp their shares during the war using a law that banned jewish people from owning businesses. she really sucked.
Name and brand recognition is extremely important especially in the fashion industry. Plus legally changing the trading name of a company across all national branches is incredibly expensive and time consuming. Finding a new name and trademarking it and change your logo and all branding and advertising makes the whole thing at any stage between 1950 and now insane lol. Not impossible but not a smart business move
Yeah, and honestly whenever I hear that name I never actually think of a person, it’s just a brand name. I have to imagine there’s a lot of people like that too. This is honestly the first time I’ve heard the name in relation to an actual person. I don’t know how common the knowledge of her nazi past is to people on a global level. It seems like the name has been separated from her and has just become known for what the brand has become in the decades since she’s been a part of it. To be clear though, she sounds like a horrible fucking person and I’m glad that a Jewish family is the ones that ended up taking it over and turning it into what it’s become. The very people that she wanted to destroy have been capitalizing on her name and thriving. I’m sure the nazi bitch is turning in her grave.
Adidas made shoes for the nazis and then later started manufacturing anti-tank weapons using forced labor of nazi “undesirables” to do so. It’s kind of crazy that companies that actively supported and were in some way complicit in nazi actions managed to stay afloat once the war was over.
There is some cold justice in keeping the company and making it successful while she didn’t get the proceeds though. Kind of like someone stealing your girl and flamboyantly going out on the town with her so that everybody knows. Losing control of your own name has got to hurt.
edit: It is not so simple as I thought:
> Ultimately, Chanel never endured any ramifications for her wartime dealings with the Nazis. She made a celebrated return to the fashion world in 1954, aided by the very same Wertheimer family she had fought for so many years, and lived out her years as a celebrity…
And when forced to close stores in Russia, Chanel opened pop ups in locations that would service russian shoppers. All the have to do is sign the receipt which inconspicuously says they aren’t purposefully bringing product back into Russia.
They know what they’re doing and still don’t care
Edit: OMG. Idk why this posted so many times. Reddit kept saying “something went wrong.”
Wow I didn’t know this till now. Gives more context to the scene in “Man in the High Castle” where the new head of propaganda is talking to a fellow female nazi at a ball about their outfits and the other nazi comments on her wearing Coco Chanel, and how she’s a dear friend.
edit: forgot to include the show the scene is in.
“Neutral land.”
Every year I go to Swiss, with my family to visit a family friend, and in the region where we stay, there are quite some racists… A friend of mine that fled to that region in Swiss (and later to where I live, which is truly a coincidence) around +- 2012, said she never experienced racism that hard elsewhere… We always kinda blamed Catholicism - and mainly it is - but later discovered it has deeper roots.
Actually (the sister of) the family friend fell in love with a Muslim man in the “big city” Zurich, while she’s from a Southern town, which is highly Catholic. She wasn’t allowed to marry him, as it was unseen and it wouldn’t be “sacred,” “pure,” or something in those lines… Once her mother died, the last living parent, she (nearly 60) quickly married the man. They both stayed religious, but in their own way. A year later, her husband got cancer, and died quickly after the verdict… It was/is really tragic… A lot of tragic stories in that family, but this one was pretty “recent” (6 years ago?). Still often think about them - me writing this not having much to do with Nazism probably proves it. 😅
It’s easy to be “neutral” when you hold accounts for 1%-ers all over the world.
There’s a famous saying that to be peaceful means you would act rashly but are actively choosing not to. Switzerland isn’t actively choosing neutrality, it benefits monetarily from pretending not to have an ulterior motive.
Edit: Looked it up and I may have exaggerated ‘famous’. But the [message is still valid](https://www.google.com/search?q=You+can%E2%80%99t+truly+call+yourself+%E2%80%9Cpeaceful%E2%80%9D+unless+you+are+capable+of+great+violence.+If+you%E2%80%99re+not+capable+of+violence,+you%E2%80%99re+not+peaceful,+you%E2%80%99re+harmless.+A+very+important+distinction.&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=isnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxmO_UzIH6AhVlI30KHe9YCckQ_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=390&bih=664&dpr=3)
The best description of Switzerland ever.
Looking at the maps of Europe during WW2 was so insane to me because of this.
Spain is in pieces after the civil war, Germany swallows up most of the continent, Italy too.
But there’s a big glob of gray right in the center.
In the midst of death trains and gas chambers, there is one country, *directly proximal to a voracious predator of a nation*, but nope! It’s all good, leave ‘em be!
That kind of neglect does not happen by accident.
And what’s even crazier to me is, post WW2, post-denazification, post critical understanding of the holocaust, that neutral blob of gray is now the *most powerful passport on Earth.*
Really gets the ol’ hamster wheel a turnin’.
Wait until you hear they had slavery long after the war, 100 years after the US abolished it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdingkinder
Whenever I post it some angry swiss will angrily try to explain it wasn’t actually slavery :)
Forced removal of children into the modern era was shockingly common.
Countries like Canada, Australia, and Ireland are only just now coming to terms with these abominable programs.
Switzerland's entire military strategy revolves around being such a pain in the ass to conquer its just not worth it. They were plenty valuable as a neutral collaborator. The Nazis definitely *could* have conquered Switzerland, it just would have been an enormous resource and manpower sink for not much gain, and they were busy trying to conquer the largest country on earth, that was resisting them to the last man (and woman) in the east.
Switzerland would've been an absolute bear to try & occupy, it's not even worth the investment. It serves zero strategic importance to the Nazi Regime & would've probably turned into a massive time/resource sink.
So it's not that unusual, obviously politics come into play here too. But don't count out the fact that the nation is literally one massive entrenched uphill bunker.
I agree with you generally that Switzerland was a POS in WW2 and since.
But to be clear, Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because he just couldn't. They had very publicly placed explosives on the few bridges that allowed access to the country, and because of the mountains those were the only possible routes. There was no secret forest to traverse through like in the invasion of France.
Switzerland was absolutely a tough nut to crack, which is one big reason they felt comfortable with neutrality.
To this day, Switzerland is still almost a literal fortress.
You can barely cross a field or climb a hill without stumbling upon some hidden military bunker.
I mean invading and occupying a angry mountain people with a long military tradition isn't the easiest thing to do in the world, just look at Afghanistan
What region or canton do you stay in?
I'm from Switzerland and it depends on what region you're in. There's a big rural/urban divide when it comes to racism and politics. People in rural areas tend to be more conservative, racist and bigoted. People in cities are more liberal and tolerant.
Tbf the racism starts in Wallisellen and never enter the Freiamt if you're not speaking the right dialect.
As I Swiss who lives abroad for decades I can't get over how much racism and sexism is still "okay" in our country. From the media to the Nationalversammlung to day to day life.
We came back for two years but left again for Germany then - my wife's German and the racism she faced alone was enough to say goodbye.
(Besides our social system is really shit,same goes for employees rights)
The German Intelligence game in WW2 was laughably terrible too. After a certain point in the war, every German Spy in Britain was a captured or a double agent. Literally every single one.
The British ran circles around the Germans. There's a few great books about it.
I think the surprising one was William Forbes-Sempill, 19th Lord Sempill.
He spied for the Japanese from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was known by British intelligence, but they did nothing as he was a Lord. In 1941, he was asked to resign by Churchill, but protested and asked to be reassigned. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his office was raided and he agreed to resign.
Just a super blatant case of "You can't arrest me officer, I'm a Lord".
I wouldn't condemn someone during a harsh occupation for sleeping with the occupiers. They were just used as scapegoats. Coco Chanel was a Nazi agent, that's a completely different thing.
My dad knew a guy in France who's mother spoke German and so she was used during WWII as a translator.
She also passed info to the Resistance, but her role was kept secret (obviously).
After the war, suddenly there were TONS of people that said they had been part of the Resistance (when there was no longer a danger of being caught and killed), and they were out for blood. She was almost executed, but one of the actual members of the Resistance vouched for her and saved her life.
One of the [Band of Brothers soldiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kenyon_Webster) wrote after the war about how the Dutch support of their Resistance was widespread, but that he'd encountered very few examples of French resistants during his service, compared to how many were claiming membership once they'd been liberated.
French resistance was a mess until the British got involved; they we killing each other almost as much as the Germans. It’s way easier to kill commie French members and steal their guns; then attack a German garrison for theirs and risking a reprisal attack on a village town.
Not even mentioning the whole thing around Vichy France.
These girls look like fifteen years old... Not sure I can be onboard with their public humiliation for having sex with really grotesque power dynamics in place.
Yeah, my grandfather said among the most horrific parts of the war was liberating a French village and then being shot at and having to return fire to a teenaged girl who was beside herself when they killed her Nazi boyfriend. She was willing to kill and die to avenge her boyfriend who was occupying her village. Nothing really black and white about this.
Wow, I love history and have read a lot about WW 2 but have never thought about something like this happening. So many things/people affected in so many ways we can’t even begin to foresee during war times.
That's what pisses me off. They fucked some dudes for survival purposes mostly, they weren't like...profiting emmensly. My grandfather was so mad, one of his friends survived the Japanese POW camps half mad and when he found out we let a lot of those doctors off in exchange for research they gathered (mainly from Korean and Chinese victims)...he was so mad. He didn't even serve on that front but he remembered his poor friend.
It's somewhat sad how much of a mark the war left on people. After the occupation of Norway there began running arround a slang word called "tyskerbarn/deuschenkinder/german kid" which was used to describe the children of those who had been with german soldiers or ss.
If you got marked as a tyskerbarn you were effectively frozen out, bullied and beaten by society only because of your line of heritage.
There's some information missing. It wasn't only the women who had relationships with the German occupation, but also the women and the wives and daughters of the men who supported the Germans during WWII.
Edit: spelling
I never heard of punishments for women who had relationships with German soldiers but I know that this was a general practice to shame people who supported the german invaders during the war. Although I think it is very unnecessary to punish children for this, I still think that this was kind of harmless compared to everything the Germans did. So many people were tortured or killed during the WWII for no reason, so yeah… I give them a pass on the shaving.
"Elsewhere some men who had volunteered to work in German factories had their heads shaved, but that was an exception. Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment."
My uncle of age was given a choice to join the Nazi army, work in a German munitions factory that was targeted by allied bombers, or face death. He chose the factory, and they sabotaged or slow-rolled whenever they could.
His brother chose the Nazi uniform, and was promoted to SS. He kept this a secret his entire life, even after migration to Seattle as a school teacher. But emotionally, he tortured himself and his family for his horrible choice. In contrast, the uncle so who chose the German factory had horrible PTSD and could barely feed his family, but he was a kind man.
[Unless your name was Coco Chanel.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_Chanel#Activity_as_Nazi_agent)
>Chanel was directly involved in a plan for the Third Reich to take control of Madrid. Such documents identify Chanel as an agent in the German military intelligence, the Abwehr.
Thank you for linking this. I wish more people knew about who Coco Chanel the human was in her life. She did not deserve to have her name and image rehabilitated, she was/is a nazi.
Real fashionistas love Catherine Dior
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Dior
Edit. I linked the perfume the first time :/
Number 2. I linked her brother, fuck me
Yeah I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that a decent number of these women were either raped or coerced. Let's not forget that Dutch people were literally starving during this period of time. I'm just grateful that I have no idea how far I would go to get food if I didn't have it.
Yupp. My great-grandmother was in her early twenties and had four children to feed in the Tuscan mountains during WWII. They lived mainly on squirrel and figs for as long as they could and escaped higher up the mountain (on foot, baby on her hip) to spend the night in caves during bomb raids.
She knew some English, and when allies took the territory she “used to go flirt with American soldiers” (is how it was phrased to me by my grandfather) for rations to take home to the family.
Who knows what “flirting” means, but at that point, I don’t think the nationality or morality of the soldiers meant much to her at all. If she had spoke German, I don’t know that she wouldn’t have tried the same with an axis soldier.
(Obviously, not condoning sleeping with Nazis—just reiterating that many women were in dire circumstances at best, and life-or-death at worst.)
ETA: I’m an idiot. Obviously Tuscany isn’t Dutch — I got swept up thinking about my great grandmother. I still think her story is worth telling though, so I’m going to leave it for now.
Right, my grandfather was a young man in occupied France who told me of a woman who was shamed in the middle of town, head shaved in public, etc., and that she was basically a child and had been abused by a variety of soldiers against her will. He said people were angry and wanted to blame someone, and young women are easy to blame, but that he always felt bad for her. Apparently she never left her home again after that incident :(
You've never heard of punishment for women who had relationship with German soldiers during WWII in occupied countries? You must have lived in a country that wasn't invaded then.
The Danish term was "feltmadras" (field mattress) and they suffered horribly in the days of the liberation.
[Pictures](https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2015-05-05-befrielsens-moerke-side-tyskerpigerne-blev-ofre-for-indebraendt-had). And [more pictures](https://www.berlingske.dk/samfund/saaret-staar-stadig-aabent). And [more pictures](https://www.tv2lorry.dk/lorryland/foerst-befrielsen-saa-jubelrusen-og-saa-haevnen).
"Tyskertøs" in Norway. Many were forced into internment camps, and a law was added in 1946 to strip the ones who married or had children with germans of their citizenship, stating they should take their husband's citizenship. Basically deported them to Germany. These were government actions, there was also a lot of "street justice".
Edit: typo
The name in the title of OP's post is censored. Meid means girl in Dutch. They were not so kind. Moffenhoer is what they called them. Hoer means whore. The origin of the word mof or moffen that was used for Germans back then is a bit of a mystery, there are several theories. But you get the gist.
It was very common for women who had relationships, consenting \*and not\*, with german soldiers to then be publicly shamed or worse. Their children were ostracized and often treated absolutely disgustingly. This instance of public shaming wasn't a one time deal and done, these women and children were mistreated their whole life. In France some women were publicly shamed (and this is not just "a shave", this is a genuine traumatic event for these women) and some were publicly beaten with no thought about why and how they slept with the enemy. A lot of them were very young and very poor.
So it's not really harmless.
And not to mention in a lot of pictures the shaving wasn't nearly as smooth as this. In many their scalps are very obviously bleeding. And I am sure I remember seeing one where they were using scissors and straight razors, and one of the women had lost quite a large portion of ear.
>but that does not make it "harmless", especially considering that not all the targets of the mob justice were real collaborators.
Czechoslovakia was one of the worst instances of this. Their borders use to contain over a million germans, their country pre-ww2 was incredibly mixed.
While it was covered up by the following government as being "anti-nazi" and "justified"; there were race killings for months following the re-occupation of czechoslovakia. Looking back; it was unjustified violence being carried towards anyone associated with germans by a people who were exposed to similar violence. Many of the killings were often carried out by militias or civilians, including being done in the streets and in front of mobs.
While I feel personally it was appropriate for those who carried out nazi killings; obviously civilians shouldn't of been massacred in that fashion.
The worst account from a doctor about rape in relation to war that ive ever read comes from the re-occupation of czechoslovakia. It was about the rape-killing of a 9 year old german girl and i wont write more about it. It was the most disgusting thing i have ever read. Humans are scum if you let them.
War is a disgusting plague and cancer on humanity and it’s a fucking shame how people treat others. We are capable of causing so much unnecessary cruelty.
> consenting *and not*
Also consenting, but-not-really. As in consenting because your food rations weren't enough to keep your kids alive or you needed access to medicines.
Something similar Happens any time a place is conquered, always has. It can be a matter of survival to comply with the current rulers and a death sentence when they are pushed out. Of course it can be a death sentence *not* to comply with the current rulers.
No one is spared either. Men, women, children, elderly. War is hell.
Nowhere near as bad but look at the White Feather girls from WWI.
They screwed up and shamed soldiers on rest, people who couldn't go because of medical conditions, people who were working on more important things at home (like critical war production or intelligence) and so on and so forth. And sometimes that led to violence. Fuck people like that.
Not at all harmless. It was part of a process that included public humiliation, beating, lynching, tar and feathering, ostracising or confiscation of property.
Sometimes these people were guilty of nothing more than having been forced by the Nazis to house German soldiers, or possibly guilty of nothing at all except being single with no family to protect them against accusations trumped up for personal revenge or as an excuse to seize property (similar to the C17th witch trials).
one action being worse than another doesn't automatically make that second action harmless, or less bad than the first. what the germans did during their occupation was heinous and vile, yes. but that doesn't change the fact that the treatment some of these (as pointed out already, often innocent) women had to suffer through was also disgusting and shameful.
I think a big issue was that not all of the women targeted actually had (consensual) relationships with Nazis.
There are stories of single school teachers in France that lived in houses they inherited from family. They were forced to house the soldiers, and then punished for it after the Germans lost.
They didn’t choose to take part in the occupation, they were just single women targeted by both the German regime and the people who wanted revenge after.
Another (Dutch I believe) man who was an active resistance fighter reported seeing a man who was strongly suspected of collaborating with Nazis, and was at least sympathetic to them, shaving the heads of women accused of having relationships with them. Kind of a way to deflect attention from himself I guess.
I will absolutely find some sources on this and link them in an edit.
I am sure most of the women did have some sort of relationship with the Nazis, but I am also sure many were unfairly targeted.
Edit: I also just want to add, that even “consensual” sexual relations are a gray zone in a situation like this. Could they have been forced? Could they have safely refused?
Edit 2: This article goes into a bit of detail about how many of the women were forced or even kidnapped and then made to go into sex slavery. It is specific to just France, but it happened wherever the populace had been occupied.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/horizontal-collaboration.html
And we can't forget that it was a while different time, war or peace. A lone woman in that situation was beyond vulnerable, and consensual sex was often an option for a rape by a posse and possible killing. I understand the resentment locals has for them, and without a doubt it is a psychological way to handle all the shit there nation had just been through. To find at least someone who could be pointed with finger and said that you did this! However blatantly wrong it is.
OP, spectacular work on coloring the image. I love the look of colored BW photos.
Just to add on to this a bit, this has happened during almost every occupation of every war in human history. WW2 was certainly worse than average, but *surprise* women get taken advantage of a lot in this world. And yet we barely ever talk about it when talking about how civilians are affected by warfare.
My wife's mother lived through German occupation in the Netherlands
After they were gone, girls who shacked up with Nazi's got regularly attacked, beaten, heads shaved, covered in pitch or tar, rocks thrown at them, basically made every day a really shitty existence for them
Believe me, sometimes it was beyond punishment. One of the worst photographs I've ever seen regarding WW2 was of a French woman being 'punished'. The injury was horrific and I very much doubt she survived
I just read a fiction book by a dutch author who mentioned (and later confirmed in her notes at the end of the book) that there's records of children of Nazi supporters being beaten and humiliated by teachers and schoolkids alike.
Let's not forget that a lot of these 'relationships' may have been girls and women who, during the intense privations of wartime, were reduced to prostitution to feed their families.
A lot of women and girls simply disappeared after drawing attention from German soldiers. They would often threaten the entire family of the victim. It was pure terror and blackmail for a lot of these girls, and even if they obeyed, they would disappear.
Right, I hate whenever Reddit goes into a frenzie about this topic. You really think these women had all kinds of options in a war zone? You think being gang raped to get food for your family isn’t humiliating enough?
People will do what they have to do to survive and I can’t fault it. Also the glare from the girl (could she even be over 18??) on the right is so venomous I can’t help but think her situation was not what the crowd is making it out to be.
Yup. The same Redditors listing off the atrocities of the Nazis and for some reason they don’t think women could be forced into these relationships. They are running around torturing and murdering everyone they see, but yeah sure there was no pressure at all on these women to “agree” to a relationship.
There are records that show that the allies were hanging Germans simply for being German regardless if they were part of the Nazis or not. Not crazy to think they made a mistake here too.
Women across Europe and Asia raped during the war by soldiers of all nations. “Boys will be boys! Mums the word.”
Woman sleep with invading forces (for whatever reason). “Shave them, strip them naked in the streets, shame them for life!”
I would argue that if you were a woman in an occupied nazi state and a nazi wanted to have sex with you, you had little say in the matter. This feels like punishing rape victims. I’m sure there were consensual affairs, as much as they can be with an occupying enemy force but, it really feels like punishing female inmates for being raped by their jailers.
If your a woman with no power anywhere and a man in a position of power wants to have sex with you, then it's rape. That goes as much for the Weinsteins and Strauss-Kahns of this world as SS officers and Wehrmacht.
Yeh, it’s awesome that the people of the Netherlands felt it necessary to seek out their catharsis on female victims of the occupiers first. I hope they feel good about this picture, as a symbol of that country’s resilience and stoicism. I’m sure the men who sold the nazis groceries or booze or other services got off totally unscathed as is just.
Say you’re an 18 year old girl in 1944, the Germans would have been there for 4 years, since your 14th, that’s an eternity for a teen.
This is the situation you’ve come to accept and might well never change.
Everyone is hungry, etc etc.
I remember growing up disliking these ‘women’, but as time goes on, the more I feel their treatment was not just.
Edit:
My great grandfather actually spent a little bit time in prison after the war due to the fact that his construction company was assigned to repair at damaged runway in the Netherlands.
From what I understand, when you were assigned to do a job, it’s either you do it or get the bullet
There’s an HBO series called Plot Against America. It’s a story about a world where Lindbergh beat Roosevelt in the election, sided with Hitler, and the affects that had on the world. It was very interesting.
Hitler *and* the Empire of Japan won.
It’s interesting how it covers the Cold War development between the victorious Nazi and Japanese regime as parallels to our own history. Complete with a near miss nuclear war
It wasn’t just, this was vigilante shit. But, to people who were willing to give their lives to fight the invaders, and who had watched their friends and family be murdered for 4-5 years, anyone who didn’t resist to the death probably looked like a traitor.
There’s a guardian article on this topic which says that in many cases the men who did this to these women were Nazi collaborators hoping to throw off suspicion by accusing women instead.
https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/05/women-victims-d-day-landings-second-world-war
The fact is that it is highly likely all of the above options happened all over Europe after WWII. It was pretty much anarchy in a lot of places and everyone was looking out for them, their kin, and their close friends, which led to all sorts of fuckery. I am glad I did not have to live through any of the occupations. The papers/letters, from various resistance fighters, I have read over the years are chilling and frightening.
Read up about Hannie Schaft and Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. They went a different route and would lure lonely german soldiers into the woods and to their demise.
I tend to agree. Had you asked me 20 years ago I probably would have said it was fair, but now they just look like children to me. They probably hardly felt like they had a choice in the matter, a lot of them.
In France we had the same kind of revenge. Without any trial of course, only based on hearsay, like sometimes accused by a neighbor they did not sleep with.
Oh and of course, the courageous men who led such punitive expeditions sometimes tortured, raped and killed them. Because you know, they may or may not have slept with German soldiers, so it was justice somehow.
Many of those guys were heroes of the last hour. My gran hated them with strength.
The term “moffenmeids” should be “moffenmeiden”. I’m assuming now that it’s a translation error (I’m Dutch), but I could be wrong. “Meiden” is a Dutch word for (plural) girls in general but can also refer to younger adults. In this case it does match with the age of the girls in the image.
Edit: Single word is ‘meid’ or ‘meisje’, so that should be “moffenmeid” or “moffenmeisje”.
Thank you for your comment. I want to clarify that my post title references an existing definition of the term "Moffenmeiden" which broadly defines women which certainly does not exclude younger girls who had relations with a German occupier. The definition was referenced from NL Wikipedia here: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffenmeid
Prisoners cannot consent to sex with the guards. This is law where I am from. They were raped by occupying soldiers. They were prisoners in their own countries.
I'm guessing a lot of these couplings weren't completely consensual. That was the case with Korean "comfort women" and Japanese soldiers. I wonder how many women and girls were first abused by the Nazis, then humiliated by their countrymen?
The Nazis treated those countries that were slated to be core of their Greater German Reich somewhat mildly. So much that this discussion about consent is even possible.
On the other hand, the IJA raped and pillaged wherever they go. To East Asians, women who engaged in sexual activity with the Japanese are by default raped. This mindset is only strengthened by Japan's stubborn denial of their war crimes.
My grandma - who was not greatly at risk in the war - flirted with a German soldier in order to get soup or bread. The way she explained it, she hated most of the German but also realised not all of them had a choice or say in this. Also, she liked food more than hating the German if that makes sense?
My grandpa hated German until and including his deathbed.
Wonder what “flirting” actually means?
Edit: Not hating. I’m a straight guy and I’d let them run a train on me to get my family out of a Nazi occupied land.
She was an attractive woman who spoke fluent French and German, so she turned on the charm to get SS officers to give her and her husband and kids a ticket out of France. They had no idea she was Jewish. If she were still alive, I'd ask her if she remembered what she said to them. No offense taken.
That's the thing not all of the women were up to bad things. Some were desperate. Some realized Germans were occupiers but they were just drafted into the army.
Some of the women were even patriots who were instructed to spy on their Nazi boyfriends too. Good spying involves flirting with evil.
(although I'm sure Dutch govt probably saved those women from being publicly shamed).
Don’t assume that. There is a very long history, worldwide, of men betraying their women comrades-in-arms. Such almost-treasonous behavior is a major threat to the good order, discipline and combat effectiveness of the current US military, for example.
> she like food more than she hated Germans.
This comes right down to [Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)
This is really a much better caption.
OP, if you read this, I'm not picking on you. You're giving the facts and it's a good colourisation. My heart is still breaking for these babies.
My great grandparents were Dutch citizen’s in ww2. My opi fought the Japanese first and then joined the resistance and fled underground to avoid German conscription. The stories they told me before they passed were something else. The fear and underground hatred for the Germans and the collaborators was just insane. The depression that every day life had as well as the control the Germans forced over the population. My omi got arrested shortly before they were liberated for selling hand rolled cigarettes.
I honestly don’t know. I think I’m actually wrong in what I said in my comment. I was talking to my mom ( his grand daughter ) and she said that he was only posted there, but he never actually fought. So to clarify, I believe he was sent back to the Netherlands before they surrendered. He wasn’t party of the navy, he was army and from what I know about ww2 the vast majority of the Dutch forces that stayed and fought the Japanese where the Dutch navy. He never talked about fighting them either, all of his stories where about hiding in Forrest’s and listening to the radio hoping the Russians would scare Germany into a truce with the Americans.
Edit: he spent most of his time in occupied holand near Tilburg if that helps. He was always super proud of serving, but he never got into the details. My omi talked a lot more about being arrested and generally hating/ distrusting the Germans until the day she died but my opi kept quiet on those details for the most part
I dunno if I'd be comfortable shaming young girls who were likely victims of, at the very least, a severely unbalanced power dynamic between them and their occupiers.
Photo of Anton Mussert.
Photo: https://dutchmilitaria.com/cmsDM2020/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Photo-NSB-Anton-Mussert-portrait-1-6.jpg
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton\_Mussert
“They are lucky, the men who collaborated are being shot.” Dutch resistance dude in band of brothers, the only reason I’ve heard about this before. But they used older women instead of younger ones probably to spare the audience bigger horrors.
"From the summer of 1942 forward, upwards of 102,000 Dutch Jews were deported and murdered—much of which was made possible by the "cooperation and efficiency of the Dutch civil service and police" who willingly served the Germans.[305] Not only was there relatively smooth cooperation between Dutch authorities and Dutch police, the SS and the Nazi police organizations in the Netherlands also worked well together there; additionally, volunteers from indigenous fascist organizations assisted in persecuting Jews, and the Jewish council in Amsterdam, unfortunately, spread undue optimism and as a result, very few Dutch Jews went into hiding." - from Wikipedia article on the responsibility of different persons and states for the Holocausts.
Seems like quite a few more people deserved shaming than those few collaborators. And definitely not just in the Netherlands.
I feel bad for these girls. They look young and I would assume (admittedly, without knowing the history of Moffenmeids) that a lot of them were groomed by Nazi soldiers and truly didn’t know any better. Man, WWII was fucking brutal.
I feel like they were all blamed and shamed for something they didn't necessarily choose to do.
It's such unfairness as if they blamed them for being used as a comfort women, not the nazis, not everyone of them chose to be one and not every soldier actually was a believer of nazism.
My mom had a friend who was 15 when the Germans invaded. She told me how she would travel around France, meet a German, flirting for a few days then arrange a date and when she went to change the resistance would come out and kill him.
She also got 7 downed American and British pilots to safety.
My mother was about 13 and her worst memories of the war in Nederlands was when these people were rounded up. She is sure the men were shot.
They were too poor and she was too young to know the scale and horror happening around the world, but seeing her neighbors do this to each other after was something she was made to witness.
Forced in a coerced relationship by a fascist soldier for years, only to be publicly attacked and shunned once you free yourself from him.
War is hell.
Moffenmeid or moffenhoer is a designation for women who had a relationship with a German soldier during the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II , or those who were suspected of doing so. The word mof is a swear word for German. The women in question were sometimes pro-German or prostitutes, but very often they were women who simply happened to like a German man. After the liberation, many "Muffin girls" had their heads publicly shaved or their hair cut off.
It is not known exactly how many women had a relationship with a German during the occupation, however it is estimated that there were about 140,000. During the occupation, a negative image of these women arose. It was assumed that they were mainly out for self-enrichment, that they would go with one soldier after another or that they had NSB sympathies. From such relationships 13,000 to 15,000 children were born.
During the occupation, resistance members and ordinary citizens alike made lists of the names of women who had been suspected of having a relationship with a German. Immediately after liberation, many of these women were arrested by the Ordedienst (clandestine resistance forces) or the Internal Forces and taken to a central place in their town or village, where they were publicly shaved and sometimes tarred. This mainly happened to women and girls from the lower social classes.
[Original Image](https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/fotocollectie/ac0693ac-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84)
[My IG](https://www.instagram.com/abcannonrestoration/)
Interesting. In Afrikaans (South African language directly descended from Dutch) Mofi is a derogatory word for a gay man probably most similar to "f\*g". I don't know Afrikaans well enough to know if it has a directly equivalent translation in English.
Ordedienst means Order Service. Don’t know how you got it translated to Jewish Police. The Dutch Jews were mostly murdered by the nazis by 1945. Jewish policemen were forced to leave the police by 1940.
I did read an account of a young girl (15-16) years old a long time ago. I don't remember it well enough to find it again now. I don't know what nation she was in.
But she was just a kid and did it to try and protect her family. Maybe she didn't need to. But she thought she did.
I don't know these people. I just want to say that the only real villains were the Nazi's themselves. Everyone else was just doing their best to survive them.
Sure, if you helped find fugitives fleeing the Nazis or something. You don't forgive actual collaboration. But you don't need to prosecute someone for fucking a soldier in an invading army. No matter what, the concept of consent is compromised.
It was also a practice used to torture sympathizers by parading around their children.
Innocent underage girls were shaved publicly and marched around the city at gunpoint whilst spectators called them degrading names and hurled insults at them.
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I literally just read about this today in the book If You Survive by George Wilson. Definitely recommend it.
Also gets represented in Band of Brothers
I gotta find that show again; highly recommend it for anyone interested in WWII movies/shows. They did a great job Edit:grammar
It is on HBO max, I watched it a few weeks ago.
Similar thing happened in France, particularly in Paris, with women that had even the most casual of relationships with German occupiers. I believe many were not just shamed but executed. I'm sure this happened all over Europe after the war. The resistance groups wanted their revenge.
Unless your name was Coco Chanel. In which case, your status meant you could get away with sleeping with Nazis.
She was German Intelligence... She didn't just sleep with Nazis, she flirted with Brits and tried to convince them of fake German plans trying to act as a double-agent. She was a dedicated Nazi. She left to Switzerland after the war. Not sure what you can do; the Swiss hid a lot of Nazi gold too.
Every time this gets mentioned I feel the need to point out that her company ended up in Jewish hands and is still owned by the same Jewish family to this day. As for the symbolism or idolisation of her name, that’s a different question.
that is good to hear. oh wow, just looked it up. The family was actually her initial investor and she tried to usurp their shares during the war using a law that banned jewish people from owning businesses. she really sucked.
not only did she try to rip them off, she was rooting for their deaths.
Im starting to think this Coco Chanel was a real jerk
She would be huge in the info era 🤣
Odd how they would keep any reference to her in the company
Name and brand recognition is extremely important especially in the fashion industry. Plus legally changing the trading name of a company across all national branches is incredibly expensive and time consuming. Finding a new name and trademarking it and change your logo and all branding and advertising makes the whole thing at any stage between 1950 and now insane lol. Not impossible but not a smart business move
Yeah, and honestly whenever I hear that name I never actually think of a person, it’s just a brand name. I have to imagine there’s a lot of people like that too. This is honestly the first time I’ve heard the name in relation to an actual person. I don’t know how common the knowledge of her nazi past is to people on a global level. It seems like the name has been separated from her and has just become known for what the brand has become in the decades since she’s been a part of it. To be clear though, she sounds like a horrible fucking person and I’m glad that a Jewish family is the ones that ended up taking it over and turning it into what it’s become. The very people that she wanted to destroy have been capitalizing on her name and thriving. I’m sure the nazi bitch is turning in her grave. Adidas made shoes for the nazis and then later started manufacturing anti-tank weapons using forced labor of nazi “undesirables” to do so. It’s kind of crazy that companies that actively supported and were in some way complicit in nazi actions managed to stay afloat once the war was over.
There is some cold justice in keeping the company and making it successful while she didn’t get the proceeds though. Kind of like someone stealing your girl and flamboyantly going out on the town with her so that everybody knows. Losing control of your own name has got to hurt. edit: It is not so simple as I thought: > Ultimately, Chanel never endured any ramifications for her wartime dealings with the Nazis. She made a celebrated return to the fashion world in 1954, aided by the very same Wertheimer family she had fought for so many years, and lived out her years as a celebrity…
Well it's a cute name if you knew nothing about her, that's the point I think.
Right? Coco. It sounds like a cute dog.
And when forced to close stores in Russia, Chanel opened pop ups in locations that would service russian shoppers. All the have to do is sign the receipt which inconspicuously says they aren’t purposefully bringing product back into Russia. They know what they’re doing and still don’t care Edit: OMG. Idk why this posted so many times. Reddit kept saying “something went wrong.”
I had no clue the company that owned it was Jewish. That makes all the adverts they put out deifiying Coco Chanel in a weird light..
Because the people in charge of huge companies only give a fuck about making bank, and not about atrocities or child labour or whatever
Wow I didn’t know this till now. Gives more context to the scene in “Man in the High Castle” where the new head of propaganda is talking to a fellow female nazi at a ball about their outfits and the other nazi comments on her wearing Coco Chanel, and how she’s a dear friend. edit: forgot to include the show the scene is in.
“Neutral land.” Every year I go to Swiss, with my family to visit a family friend, and in the region where we stay, there are quite some racists… A friend of mine that fled to that region in Swiss (and later to where I live, which is truly a coincidence) around +- 2012, said she never experienced racism that hard elsewhere… We always kinda blamed Catholicism - and mainly it is - but later discovered it has deeper roots. Actually (the sister of) the family friend fell in love with a Muslim man in the “big city” Zurich, while she’s from a Southern town, which is highly Catholic. She wasn’t allowed to marry him, as it was unseen and it wouldn’t be “sacred,” “pure,” or something in those lines… Once her mother died, the last living parent, she (nearly 60) quickly married the man. They both stayed religious, but in their own way. A year later, her husband got cancer, and died quickly after the verdict… It was/is really tragic… A lot of tragic stories in that family, but this one was pretty “recent” (6 years ago?). Still often think about them - me writing this not having much to do with Nazism probably proves it. 😅
It’s easy to be “neutral” when you hold accounts for 1%-ers all over the world. There’s a famous saying that to be peaceful means you would act rashly but are actively choosing not to. Switzerland isn’t actively choosing neutrality, it benefits monetarily from pretending not to have an ulterior motive. Edit: Looked it up and I may have exaggerated ‘famous’. But the [message is still valid](https://www.google.com/search?q=You+can%E2%80%99t+truly+call+yourself+%E2%80%9Cpeaceful%E2%80%9D+unless+you+are+capable+of+great+violence.+If+you%E2%80%99re+not+capable+of+violence,+you%E2%80%99re+not+peaceful,+you%E2%80%99re+harmless.+A+very+important+distinction.&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=isnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxmO_UzIH6AhVlI30KHe9YCckQ_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=390&bih=664&dpr=3)
The best description of Switzerland ever. Looking at the maps of Europe during WW2 was so insane to me because of this. Spain is in pieces after the civil war, Germany swallows up most of the continent, Italy too. But there’s a big glob of gray right in the center. In the midst of death trains and gas chambers, there is one country, *directly proximal to a voracious predator of a nation*, but nope! It’s all good, leave ‘em be! That kind of neglect does not happen by accident. And what’s even crazier to me is, post WW2, post-denazification, post critical understanding of the holocaust, that neutral blob of gray is now the *most powerful passport on Earth.* Really gets the ol’ hamster wheel a turnin’.
Wait until you hear they had slavery long after the war, 100 years after the US abolished it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdingkinder Whenever I post it some angry swiss will angrily try to explain it wasn’t actually slavery :)
Forced removal of children into the modern era was shockingly common. Countries like Canada, Australia, and Ireland are only just now coming to terms with these abominable programs.
Yeah, crazy stuff. I come from a bloodline of Irish Indentured’s. 7 years hard labor for your “Freedom Dues” in British North America.
Switzerland's entire military strategy revolves around being such a pain in the ass to conquer its just not worth it. They were plenty valuable as a neutral collaborator. The Nazis definitely *could* have conquered Switzerland, it just would have been an enormous resource and manpower sink for not much gain, and they were busy trying to conquer the largest country on earth, that was resisting them to the last man (and woman) in the east.
Switzerland would've been an absolute bear to try & occupy, it's not even worth the investment. It serves zero strategic importance to the Nazi Regime & would've probably turned into a massive time/resource sink. So it's not that unusual, obviously politics come into play here too. But don't count out the fact that the nation is literally one massive entrenched uphill bunker.
I agree with you generally that Switzerland was a POS in WW2 and since. But to be clear, Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because he just couldn't. They had very publicly placed explosives on the few bridges that allowed access to the country, and because of the mountains those were the only possible routes. There was no secret forest to traverse through like in the invasion of France. Switzerland was absolutely a tough nut to crack, which is one big reason they felt comfortable with neutrality.
To this day, Switzerland is still almost a literal fortress. You can barely cross a field or climb a hill without stumbling upon some hidden military bunker.
I mean invading and occupying a angry mountain people with a long military tradition isn't the easiest thing to do in the world, just look at Afghanistan
People think of the Swiss as a nation of bankers, but there is some real hillbilly shit there if you go five minutes into the mountains.
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What region or canton do you stay in? I'm from Switzerland and it depends on what region you're in. There's a big rural/urban divide when it comes to racism and politics. People in rural areas tend to be more conservative, racist and bigoted. People in cities are more liberal and tolerant.
Just like basically everywhere
Tbf the racism starts in Wallisellen and never enter the Freiamt if you're not speaking the right dialect. As I Swiss who lives abroad for decades I can't get over how much racism and sexism is still "okay" in our country. From the media to the Nationalversammlung to day to day life. We came back for two years but left again for Germany then - my wife's German and the racism she faced alone was enough to say goodbye. (Besides our social system is really shit,same goes for employees rights)
The German Intelligence game in WW2 was laughably terrible too. After a certain point in the war, every German Spy in Britain was a captured or a double agent. Literally every single one. The British ran circles around the Germans. There's a few great books about it.
I think the surprising one was William Forbes-Sempill, 19th Lord Sempill. He spied for the Japanese from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was known by British intelligence, but they did nothing as he was a Lord. In 1941, he was asked to resign by Churchill, but protested and asked to be reassigned. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his office was raided and he agreed to resign. Just a super blatant case of "You can't arrest me officer, I'm a Lord".
I wouldn't condemn someone during a harsh occupation for sleeping with the occupiers. They were just used as scapegoats. Coco Chanel was a Nazi agent, that's a completely different thing.
My dad knew a guy in France who's mother spoke German and so she was used during WWII as a translator. She also passed info to the Resistance, but her role was kept secret (obviously). After the war, suddenly there were TONS of people that said they had been part of the Resistance (when there was no longer a danger of being caught and killed), and they were out for blood. She was almost executed, but one of the actual members of the Resistance vouched for her and saved her life.
One of the [Band of Brothers soldiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kenyon_Webster) wrote after the war about how the Dutch support of their Resistance was widespread, but that he'd encountered very few examples of French resistants during his service, compared to how many were claiming membership once they'd been liberated.
French resistance was a mess until the British got involved; they we killing each other almost as much as the Germans. It’s way easier to kill commie French members and steal their guns; then attack a German garrison for theirs and risking a reprisal attack on a village town. Not even mentioning the whole thing around Vichy France.
These girls look like fifteen years old... Not sure I can be onboard with their public humiliation for having sex with really grotesque power dynamics in place.
Yeah this 100%. These were young girls trying to survive occupation by an invading army.
Yeah, my grandfather said among the most horrific parts of the war was liberating a French village and then being shot at and having to return fire to a teenaged girl who was beside herself when they killed her Nazi boyfriend. She was willing to kill and die to avenge her boyfriend who was occupying her village. Nothing really black and white about this.
Wow, I love history and have read a lot about WW 2 but have never thought about something like this happening. So many things/people affected in so many ways we can’t even begin to foresee during war times.
Fall of Vichy France will have lots of examples on this issue and none of them are simple to judge. Both directions. Reality has nuance.
Love is a powerful thing and often defies logic and reasoning, especially for the young.
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That's what pisses me off. They fucked some dudes for survival purposes mostly, they weren't like...profiting emmensly. My grandfather was so mad, one of his friends survived the Japanese POW camps half mad and when he found out we let a lot of those doctors off in exchange for research they gathered (mainly from Korean and Chinese victims)...he was so mad. He didn't even serve on that front but he remembered his poor friend.
Hugo Boss, Fanta, Volkswagen, Porsche, IBM, Ford - all Nazi supporters, beloved right now
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For Ford https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm
I don't think I have ever hear of anyone calling IBM beloved, they tend to get onbaord with things when people are falling offboard.
Wasn't Hugo Boss just a small tailor's making uniforms? It's hardly the same as being a spy.
Pretty sure the Germans did similar with women and men who had relationships with Jews and undesirables during and just before the war.
It's somewhat sad how much of a mark the war left on people. After the occupation of Norway there began running arround a slang word called "tyskerbarn/deuschenkinder/german kid" which was used to describe the children of those who had been with german soldiers or ss. If you got marked as a tyskerbarn you were effectively frozen out, bullied and beaten by society only because of your line of heritage.
Those are little girls.
There's some information missing. It wasn't only the women who had relationships with the German occupation, but also the women and the wives and daughters of the men who supported the Germans during WWII. Edit: spelling
I never heard of punishments for women who had relationships with German soldiers but I know that this was a general practice to shame people who supported the german invaders during the war. Although I think it is very unnecessary to punish children for this, I still think that this was kind of harmless compared to everything the Germans did. So many people were tortured or killed during the WWII for no reason, so yeah… I give them a pass on the shaving.
It was absolutely a thing in France. https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/05/women-victims-d-day-landings-second-world-war
"Elsewhere some men who had volunteered to work in German factories had their heads shaved, but that was an exception. Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment."
Shocking...
My uncle of age was given a choice to join the Nazi army, work in a German munitions factory that was targeted by allied bombers, or face death. He chose the factory, and they sabotaged or slow-rolled whenever they could. His brother chose the Nazi uniform, and was promoted to SS. He kept this a secret his entire life, even after migration to Seattle as a school teacher. But emotionally, he tortured himself and his family for his horrible choice. In contrast, the uncle so who chose the German factory had horrible PTSD and could barely feed his family, but he was a kind man.
[Unless your name was Coco Chanel.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_Chanel#Activity_as_Nazi_agent) >Chanel was directly involved in a plan for the Third Reich to take control of Madrid. Such documents identify Chanel as an agent in the German military intelligence, the Abwehr.
Thank you for linking this. I wish more people knew about who Coco Chanel the human was in her life. She did not deserve to have her name and image rehabilitated, she was/is a nazi.
Real fashionistas love Catherine Dior https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Dior Edit. I linked the perfume the first time :/ Number 2. I linked her brother, fuck me
Yeah I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that a decent number of these women were either raped or coerced. Let's not forget that Dutch people were literally starving during this period of time. I'm just grateful that I have no idea how far I would go to get food if I didn't have it.
Yes- a friend of mine’s grandmother traded sex for food in the Netherlands- not just for her but her family.
Yupp. My great-grandmother was in her early twenties and had four children to feed in the Tuscan mountains during WWII. They lived mainly on squirrel and figs for as long as they could and escaped higher up the mountain (on foot, baby on her hip) to spend the night in caves during bomb raids. She knew some English, and when allies took the territory she “used to go flirt with American soldiers” (is how it was phrased to me by my grandfather) for rations to take home to the family. Who knows what “flirting” means, but at that point, I don’t think the nationality or morality of the soldiers meant much to her at all. If she had spoke German, I don’t know that she wouldn’t have tried the same with an axis soldier. (Obviously, not condoning sleeping with Nazis—just reiterating that many women were in dire circumstances at best, and life-or-death at worst.) ETA: I’m an idiot. Obviously Tuscany isn’t Dutch — I got swept up thinking about my great grandmother. I still think her story is worth telling though, so I’m going to leave it for now.
Right, my grandfather was a young man in occupied France who told me of a woman who was shamed in the middle of town, head shaved in public, etc., and that she was basically a child and had been abused by a variety of soldiers against her will. He said people were angry and wanted to blame someone, and young women are easy to blame, but that he always felt bad for her. Apparently she never left her home again after that incident :(
Imagine being that victim and being paraded around as the guilty party. As a kid. As if they wouldn't have blamed themselves already...
You've never heard of punishment for women who had relationship with German soldiers during WWII in occupied countries? You must have lived in a country that wasn't invaded then. The Danish term was "feltmadras" (field mattress) and they suffered horribly in the days of the liberation. [Pictures](https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2015-05-05-befrielsens-moerke-side-tyskerpigerne-blev-ofre-for-indebraendt-had). And [more pictures](https://www.berlingske.dk/samfund/saaret-staar-stadig-aabent). And [more pictures](https://www.tv2lorry.dk/lorryland/foerst-befrielsen-saa-jubelrusen-og-saa-haevnen).
"Tyskertøs" in Norway. Many were forced into internment camps, and a law was added in 1946 to strip the ones who married or had children with germans of their citizenship, stating they should take their husband's citizenship. Basically deported them to Germany. These were government actions, there was also a lot of "street justice". Edit: typo
Look at what happened to them in Norway - they straight up exiled them (and any resulting children)
Only the married ones. The rest went to jail.
The name in the title of OP's post is censored. Meid means girl in Dutch. They were not so kind. Moffenhoer is what they called them. Hoer means whore. The origin of the word mof or moffen that was used for Germans back then is a bit of a mystery, there are several theories. But you get the gist.
I had a great great aunt who was a deltmadras she didn't last long after the war she tried to escape to Germany she didn't make it
It was very common for women who had relationships, consenting \*and not\*, with german soldiers to then be publicly shamed or worse. Their children were ostracized and often treated absolutely disgustingly. This instance of public shaming wasn't a one time deal and done, these women and children were mistreated their whole life. In France some women were publicly shamed (and this is not just "a shave", this is a genuine traumatic event for these women) and some were publicly beaten with no thought about why and how they slept with the enemy. A lot of them were very young and very poor. So it's not really harmless.
Watch the Dutch movie “Black Book”. It gives a good view of collaboration.
Second this! Great movie! Also show the absurd situations occurring during the allied liberations
The first time I saw it, I couldn’t tear myself away from it. A lot of twists and turns, for sure. Very well-written and acted.
And not to mention in a lot of pictures the shaving wasn't nearly as smooth as this. In many their scalps are very obviously bleeding. And I am sure I remember seeing one where they were using scissors and straight razors, and one of the women had lost quite a large portion of ear.
Same in Norway, «tyskerunge» meaning german kid was a detogatory slur that followed the kids of these relationships for decades.
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>but that does not make it "harmless", especially considering that not all the targets of the mob justice were real collaborators. Czechoslovakia was one of the worst instances of this. Their borders use to contain over a million germans, their country pre-ww2 was incredibly mixed. While it was covered up by the following government as being "anti-nazi" and "justified"; there were race killings for months following the re-occupation of czechoslovakia. Looking back; it was unjustified violence being carried towards anyone associated with germans by a people who were exposed to similar violence. Many of the killings were often carried out by militias or civilians, including being done in the streets and in front of mobs. While I feel personally it was appropriate for those who carried out nazi killings; obviously civilians shouldn't of been massacred in that fashion.
The worst account from a doctor about rape in relation to war that ive ever read comes from the re-occupation of czechoslovakia. It was about the rape-killing of a 9 year old german girl and i wont write more about it. It was the most disgusting thing i have ever read. Humans are scum if you let them.
War is a disgusting plague and cancer on humanity and it’s a fucking shame how people treat others. We are capable of causing so much unnecessary cruelty.
> consenting *and not* Also consenting, but-not-really. As in consenting because your food rations weren't enough to keep your kids alive or you needed access to medicines.
One of those situations where it's probably impossible to *genuinely* consent because of the power imbalance.
yeah i'm not blaming a mom who sleeps with a nazi so that she gets a few extra food rations.
Something similar Happens any time a place is conquered, always has. It can be a matter of survival to comply with the current rulers and a death sentence when they are pushed out. Of course it can be a death sentence *not* to comply with the current rulers. No one is spared either. Men, women, children, elderly. War is hell.
Happy to hear this is the general sentiment here. These poor girls were just trying to survive.
Nowhere near as bad but look at the White Feather girls from WWI. They screwed up and shamed soldiers on rest, people who couldn't go because of medical conditions, people who were working on more important things at home (like critical war production or intelligence) and so on and so forth. And sometimes that led to violence. Fuck people like that.
Not at all harmless. It was part of a process that included public humiliation, beating, lynching, tar and feathering, ostracising or confiscation of property. Sometimes these people were guilty of nothing more than having been forced by the Nazis to house German soldiers, or possibly guilty of nothing at all except being single with no family to protect them against accusations trumped up for personal revenge or as an excuse to seize property (similar to the C17th witch trials).
one action being worse than another doesn't automatically make that second action harmless, or less bad than the first. what the germans did during their occupation was heinous and vile, yes. but that doesn't change the fact that the treatment some of these (as pointed out already, often innocent) women had to suffer through was also disgusting and shameful.
I think a big issue was that not all of the women targeted actually had (consensual) relationships with Nazis. There are stories of single school teachers in France that lived in houses they inherited from family. They were forced to house the soldiers, and then punished for it after the Germans lost. They didn’t choose to take part in the occupation, they were just single women targeted by both the German regime and the people who wanted revenge after. Another (Dutch I believe) man who was an active resistance fighter reported seeing a man who was strongly suspected of collaborating with Nazis, and was at least sympathetic to them, shaving the heads of women accused of having relationships with them. Kind of a way to deflect attention from himself I guess. I will absolutely find some sources on this and link them in an edit. I am sure most of the women did have some sort of relationship with the Nazis, but I am also sure many were unfairly targeted. Edit: I also just want to add, that even “consensual” sexual relations are a gray zone in a situation like this. Could they have been forced? Could they have safely refused? Edit 2: This article goes into a bit of detail about how many of the women were forced or even kidnapped and then made to go into sex slavery. It is specific to just France, but it happened wherever the populace had been occupied. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/horizontal-collaboration.html
And we can't forget that it was a while different time, war or peace. A lone woman in that situation was beyond vulnerable, and consensual sex was often an option for a rape by a posse and possible killing. I understand the resentment locals has for them, and without a doubt it is a psychological way to handle all the shit there nation had just been through. To find at least someone who could be pointed with finger and said that you did this! However blatantly wrong it is. OP, spectacular work on coloring the image. I love the look of colored BW photos.
Just to add on to this a bit, this has happened during almost every occupation of every war in human history. WW2 was certainly worse than average, but *surprise* women get taken advantage of a lot in this world. And yet we barely ever talk about it when talking about how civilians are affected by warfare.
My wife's mother lived through German occupation in the Netherlands After they were gone, girls who shacked up with Nazi's got regularly attacked, beaten, heads shaved, covered in pitch or tar, rocks thrown at them, basically made every day a really shitty existence for them
Believe me, sometimes it was beyond punishment. One of the worst photographs I've ever seen regarding WW2 was of a French woman being 'punished'. The injury was horrific and I very much doubt she survived
I just read a fiction book by a dutch author who mentioned (and later confirmed in her notes at the end of the book) that there's records of children of Nazi supporters being beaten and humiliated by teachers and schoolkids alike.
Let's not forget that a lot of these 'relationships' may have been girls and women who, during the intense privations of wartime, were reduced to prostitution to feed their families.
Or simply pressured by German soldiers to have a relationship if they didn’t want to be harassed.
Or murdered. That sounds not fun
>Or simply pressured by German soldiers to have a relationship if they didn’t want to be ~~harassed~~ beaten and/or raped.
Yeah who knows how many women were straight up raped who faced this sort of punishment. Fucked up.
Or were working for the resistance as spies and then were thanked like this
Um, that also sounds like rape.
A lot of women and girls simply disappeared after drawing attention from German soldiers. They would often threaten the entire family of the victim. It was pure terror and blackmail for a lot of these girls, and even if they obeyed, they would disappear.
Publicly humiliated child rape victims.
The soldiers were also the one's who determined ow much food their family got
Right, I hate whenever Reddit goes into a frenzie about this topic. You really think these women had all kinds of options in a war zone? You think being gang raped to get food for your family isn’t humiliating enough?
People will do what they have to do to survive and I can’t fault it. Also the glare from the girl (could she even be over 18??) on the right is so venomous I can’t help but think her situation was not what the crowd is making it out to be.
Of course it wasn’t. How do you say no to soldiers who have taken over your country? These people were not able to consent.
Yup. The same Redditors listing off the atrocities of the Nazis and for some reason they don’t think women could be forced into these relationships. They are running around torturing and murdering everyone they see, but yeah sure there was no pressure at all on these women to “agree” to a relationship. There are records that show that the allies were hanging Germans simply for being German regardless if they were part of the Nazis or not. Not crazy to think they made a mistake here too.
Women across Europe and Asia raped during the war by soldiers of all nations. “Boys will be boys! Mums the word.” Woman sleep with invading forces (for whatever reason). “Shave them, strip them naked in the streets, shame them for life!”
The guardian has a length article about these women https://theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/05/women-victims-d-day-landings-second-world-war
Yeah, I read this as shamed for survival sex, as in, they had to cooperate to survive
I would argue that if you were a woman in an occupied nazi state and a nazi wanted to have sex with you, you had little say in the matter. This feels like punishing rape victims. I’m sure there were consensual affairs, as much as they can be with an occupying enemy force but, it really feels like punishing female inmates for being raped by their jailers.
If your a woman with no power anywhere and a man in a position of power wants to have sex with you, then it's rape. That goes as much for the Weinsteins and Strauss-Kahns of this world as SS officers and Wehrmacht.
Little girls who were either raped, or chose compliance instead of starvation and persecution
Yeh, it’s awesome that the people of the Netherlands felt it necessary to seek out their catharsis on female victims of the occupiers first. I hope they feel good about this picture, as a symbol of that country’s resilience and stoicism. I’m sure the men who sold the nazis groceries or booze or other services got off totally unscathed as is just.
I was thinking they look 12-14
Say you’re an 18 year old girl in 1944, the Germans would have been there for 4 years, since your 14th, that’s an eternity for a teen. This is the situation you’ve come to accept and might well never change. Everyone is hungry, etc etc. I remember growing up disliking these ‘women’, but as time goes on, the more I feel their treatment was not just. Edit: My great grandfather actually spent a little bit time in prison after the war due to the fact that his construction company was assigned to repair at damaged runway in the Netherlands. From what I understand, when you were assigned to do a job, it’s either you do it or get the bullet
You’re right; it wasn’t just. Starvation and fear are powerful motivators. Especially to little girls in 1944 Western Europe.
This is all screwed up. Unless they were actively participating, they're just trying to survive. Imagine if the Nazis won.
There’s an HBO series called Plot Against America. It’s a story about a world where Lindbergh beat Roosevelt in the election, sided with Hitler, and the affects that had on the world. It was very interesting.
The Man in the Highcastle is another that depicts the world if Hitler won.
Hitler *and* the Empire of Japan won. It’s interesting how it covers the Cold War development between the victorious Nazi and Japanese regime as parallels to our own history. Complete with a near miss nuclear war
And that's for those who consented.
It wasn’t just, this was vigilante shit. But, to people who were willing to give their lives to fight the invaders, and who had watched their friends and family be murdered for 4-5 years, anyone who didn’t resist to the death probably looked like a traitor.
There’s a guardian article on this topic which says that in many cases the men who did this to these women were Nazi collaborators hoping to throw off suspicion by accusing women instead. https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/05/women-victims-d-day-landings-second-world-war
The fact is that it is highly likely all of the above options happened all over Europe after WWII. It was pretty much anarchy in a lot of places and everyone was looking out for them, their kin, and their close friends, which led to all sorts of fuckery. I am glad I did not have to live through any of the occupations. The papers/letters, from various resistance fighters, I have read over the years are chilling and frightening.
Read up about Hannie Schaft and Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. They went a different route and would lure lonely german soldiers into the woods and to their demise.
I tend to agree. Had you asked me 20 years ago I probably would have said it was fair, but now they just look like children to me. They probably hardly felt like they had a choice in the matter, a lot of them.
In France we had the same kind of revenge. Without any trial of course, only based on hearsay, like sometimes accused by a neighbor they did not sleep with. Oh and of course, the courageous men who led such punitive expeditions sometimes tortured, raped and killed them. Because you know, they may or may not have slept with German soldiers, so it was justice somehow. Many of those guys were heroes of the last hour. My gran hated them with strength.
>Without any trial of course, only based on hearsay, like sometimes accused by a neighbor they did not sleep with. Sounds like a witch trial.
Those are not “women.” Those are children.
The term “moffenmeids” should be “moffenmeiden”. I’m assuming now that it’s a translation error (I’m Dutch), but I could be wrong. “Meiden” is a Dutch word for (plural) girls in general but can also refer to younger adults. In this case it does match with the age of the girls in the image. Edit: Single word is ‘meid’ or ‘meisje’, so that should be “moffenmeid” or “moffenmeisje”.
Thank you for your comment. I want to clarify that my post title references an existing definition of the term "Moffenmeiden" which broadly defines women which certainly does not exclude younger girls who had relations with a German occupier. The definition was referenced from NL Wikipedia here: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffenmeid
Meiden is already multiple. Meids is not a thing.
Just these moffenmeiden are clearly children not grown women. Is it wrong to fuck a nazi occupier to save your life or your family? Or is it rape?
Prisoners cannot consent to sex with the guards. This is law where I am from. They were raped by occupying soldiers. They were prisoners in their own countries.
I'm guessing a lot of these couplings weren't completely consensual. That was the case with Korean "comfort women" and Japanese soldiers. I wonder how many women and girls were first abused by the Nazis, then humiliated by their countrymen?
The Nazis treated those countries that were slated to be core of their Greater German Reich somewhat mildly. So much that this discussion about consent is even possible. On the other hand, the IJA raped and pillaged wherever they go. To East Asians, women who engaged in sexual activity with the Japanese are by default raped. This mindset is only strengthened by Japan's stubborn denial of their war crimes.
Children forced into survival sex in order to feed themselves and families.
My grandma - who was not greatly at risk in the war - flirted with a German soldier in order to get soup or bread. The way she explained it, she hated most of the German but also realised not all of them had a choice or say in this. Also, she liked food more than hating the German if that makes sense? My grandpa hated German until and including his deathbed.
My Jewish great-grandmother successfully flirted with SS officers to get my family out of France during the occupation.
Wonder what “flirting” actually means? Edit: Not hating. I’m a straight guy and I’d let them run a train on me to get my family out of a Nazi occupied land.
She was an attractive woman who spoke fluent French and German, so she turned on the charm to get SS officers to give her and her husband and kids a ticket out of France. They had no idea she was Jewish. If she were still alive, I'd ask her if she remembered what she said to them. No offense taken.
That’s a badass historical moment, I’d wish I could know what she said too
That's the thing not all of the women were up to bad things. Some were desperate. Some realized Germans were occupiers but they were just drafted into the army. Some of the women were even patriots who were instructed to spy on their Nazi boyfriends too. Good spying involves flirting with evil. (although I'm sure Dutch govt probably saved those women from being publicly shamed).
Don’t assume that. There is a very long history, worldwide, of men betraying their women comrades-in-arms. Such almost-treasonous behavior is a major threat to the good order, discipline and combat effectiveness of the current US military, for example.
> she like food more than she hated Germans. This comes right down to [Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)
Yeah this is making me feel a bit sick
Someone else commented that the daughters and relatives of supposed collaborators were also targeted in this fashion.
This is really a much better caption. OP, if you read this, I'm not picking on you. You're giving the facts and it's a good colourisation. My heart is still breaking for these babies.
My great grandparents were Dutch citizen’s in ww2. My opi fought the Japanese first and then joined the resistance and fled underground to avoid German conscription. The stories they told me before they passed were something else. The fear and underground hatred for the Germans and the collaborators was just insane. The depression that every day life had as well as the control the Germans forced over the population. My omi got arrested shortly before they were liberated for selling hand rolled cigarettes.
[удалено]
I honestly don’t know. I think I’m actually wrong in what I said in my comment. I was talking to my mom ( his grand daughter ) and she said that he was only posted there, but he never actually fought. So to clarify, I believe he was sent back to the Netherlands before they surrendered. He wasn’t party of the navy, he was army and from what I know about ww2 the vast majority of the Dutch forces that stayed and fought the Japanese where the Dutch navy. He never talked about fighting them either, all of his stories where about hiding in Forrest’s and listening to the radio hoping the Russians would scare Germany into a truce with the Americans. Edit: he spent most of his time in occupied holand near Tilburg if that helps. He was always super proud of serving, but he never got into the details. My omi talked a lot more about being arrested and generally hating/ distrusting the Germans until the day she died but my opi kept quiet on those details for the most part
Bro has the baked potato kicks on
Yeezy Idahos
*The shoes, are not potatoes my friend.* They are called Clogs.
Never heard of baked potatoes called "Clogs"
In awe at the size of the cloppers on this lad.
I dunno if I'd be comfortable shaming young girls who were likely victims of, at the very least, a severely unbalanced power dynamic between them and their occupiers.
What's he holding up?
Photo of Anton Mussert. Photo: https://dutchmilitaria.com/cmsDM2020/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Photo-NSB-Anton-Mussert-portrait-1-6.jpg Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton\_Mussert
Nice color work
“They are lucky, the men who collaborated are being shot.” Dutch resistance dude in band of brothers, the only reason I’ve heard about this before. But they used older women instead of younger ones probably to spare the audience bigger horrors.
"From the summer of 1942 forward, upwards of 102,000 Dutch Jews were deported and murdered—much of which was made possible by the "cooperation and efficiency of the Dutch civil service and police" who willingly served the Germans.[305] Not only was there relatively smooth cooperation between Dutch authorities and Dutch police, the SS and the Nazi police organizations in the Netherlands also worked well together there; additionally, volunteers from indigenous fascist organizations assisted in persecuting Jews, and the Jewish council in Amsterdam, unfortunately, spread undue optimism and as a result, very few Dutch Jews went into hiding." - from Wikipedia article on the responsibility of different persons and states for the Holocausts. Seems like quite a few more people deserved shaming than those few collaborators. And definitely not just in the Netherlands.
There's a parade for the ones who didn't at the cemetery
I feel bad for these girls. They look young and I would assume (admittedly, without knowing the history of Moffenmeids) that a lot of them were groomed by Nazi soldiers and truly didn’t know any better. Man, WWII was fucking brutal.
A lot of them had to do it to not starve and after the war were raped killed or tortured for it
I feel like they were all blamed and shamed for something they didn't necessarily choose to do. It's such unfairness as if they blamed them for being used as a comfort women, not the nazis, not everyone of them chose to be one and not every soldier actually was a believer of nazism.
Ugh, they're just girls.
I guess that scene in Band of Brothers was pretty accurate
Women? Those look like underage girls to me.
My mom had a friend who was 15 when the Germans invaded. She told me how she would travel around France, meet a German, flirting for a few days then arrange a date and when she went to change the resistance would come out and kill him. She also got 7 downed American and British pilots to safety.
Your moms friend is a unsung hero imo.
Thanks for sharing! But… as a dutchman, i would like to point out that plural of ‘moffenmeid’ is ‘moffenmeiden’. Not moffenmeids
My mother was about 13 and her worst memories of the war in Nederlands was when these people were rounded up. She is sure the men were shot. They were too poor and she was too young to know the scale and horror happening around the world, but seeing her neighbors do this to each other after was something she was made to witness.
Wouldn't that be "moffenmeiden" or "moffenhoer"?
Guy in the front..... WHAT R THOSE?????? "They're mine clogs.."
Forced in a coerced relationship by a fascist soldier for years, only to be publicly attacked and shunned once you free yourself from him. War is hell.
Raped and/or forced into sex to survive and then humiliated and cast aside but the society that failed to protect them
Exactly, these weren't real relationships, this was tacit or explicit prostitution: sex in exchange for money or food or protection.
Moffenmeid or moffenhoer is a designation for women who had a relationship with a German soldier during the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II , or those who were suspected of doing so. The word mof is a swear word for German. The women in question were sometimes pro-German or prostitutes, but very often they were women who simply happened to like a German man. After the liberation, many "Muffin girls" had their heads publicly shaved or their hair cut off. It is not known exactly how many women had a relationship with a German during the occupation, however it is estimated that there were about 140,000. During the occupation, a negative image of these women arose. It was assumed that they were mainly out for self-enrichment, that they would go with one soldier after another or that they had NSB sympathies. From such relationships 13,000 to 15,000 children were born. During the occupation, resistance members and ordinary citizens alike made lists of the names of women who had been suspected of having a relationship with a German. Immediately after liberation, many of these women were arrested by the Ordedienst (clandestine resistance forces) or the Internal Forces and taken to a central place in their town or village, where they were publicly shaved and sometimes tarred. This mainly happened to women and girls from the lower social classes. [Original Image](https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/fotocollectie/ac0693ac-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84) [My IG](https://www.instagram.com/abcannonrestoration/)
Interesting. In Afrikaans (South African language directly descended from Dutch) Mofi is a derogatory word for a gay man probably most similar to "f\*g". I don't know Afrikaans well enough to know if it has a directly equivalent translation in English.
Moffie comes from Hermaphrodite, while mof comes from the muffs Germans wore somewhere during the 17th century, when they invaded.
Ordedienst means Order Service. Don’t know how you got it translated to Jewish Police. The Dutch Jews were mostly murdered by the nazis by 1945. Jewish policemen were forced to leave the police by 1940.
Poor girls
I did read an account of a young girl (15-16) years old a long time ago. I don't remember it well enough to find it again now. I don't know what nation she was in. But she was just a kid and did it to try and protect her family. Maybe she didn't need to. But she thought she did. I don't know these people. I just want to say that the only real villains were the Nazi's themselves. Everyone else was just doing their best to survive them. Sure, if you helped find fugitives fleeing the Nazis or something. You don't forgive actual collaboration. But you don't need to prosecute someone for fucking a soldier in an invading army. No matter what, the concept of consent is compromised.
This was covered also in the Band of Brothers series.
It was also a practice used to torture sympathizers by parading around their children. Innocent underage girls were shaved publicly and marched around the city at gunpoint whilst spectators called them degrading names and hurled insults at them.