I’m going to go ahead and call out the some of the women of Germany after WWII. While I agree that they did not deserve the punishment and harassment for their behavior, I feel like the reaction they received was an inevitable consequence from their actions. If you’re a German soldier fighting on the front, the last thing you would want to see when you came home was your wife, girlfriend, daughter, acquaintance, neighbor, etc. “fraternizing” with the enemy. And I think that the term enemy is important. To the men, it might have felt as if the women of their country had abandoned them in their time of greatest need and dejection and had even abandoned their own country and jumped on the winner’s bandwagon. And the women’s excuse – oh, I’m physically lonely and these guys are rich – rich in body, spirit, and goods. While I can imagine war time was tough for the women, especially with the absence and then deterioration of their men, bombings, and food shortages, I can imagine an equally tough and even worse time for the soldiers fighting. Some might argue that the men didn’t have it so bad, or that there is a double-standard, because the men were able to have all the women they wanted on their soldierly travels – but get real. How many women are half-starved and defeated German soldiers going to be getting in the latter years of the war? Regardless, some might sympathize with the women who were only trying to assert their natural right to happiness and satisfaction, but I tend to see the women instead abandoning more important virtues including loyalty, courage, and perseverance while adopting a degree of selfishness. I have to sympathize with the men, particularly the soldiers, who at the lowest of lows, have to in some cases endure more punishment and the complete stripping of any sense of masculinity.
An interesting perspective on the situation. While I think you certainly do a nice job of describing the male view of the situation, in war-torn Germany, priorities in food and supply always went to army, not to civilians. While German soldiers may well have suffered, so too did the citizens of Germany. Whichever side one sympathizes with, the point still remains that the anti-fraternization movement represented the attempt by German men to reassert ptriarchal control over women and to re-establish their male identities in the one area in which they could still call the shots: male-female relations
ReplyDeleteWow! While the professor put it more lightly, I would have to say that you really bought into that article hook, line, and sinker. You do completely ignore the utter devastation that German women experienced. Of course, the article did not try to give that view, but you also leave out any emotional aspect that the women had while fraternizing with American soldiers. To say that women were only interested in the "goods" is narrow in vision. You have to imagine what they experienced and the treatment they received from returning German soldiers was utterly disgraceful. It just further shows the heartlessness of the German soldier. While I understand your view of the soldier, I must call out your lack of fair treatment for the experience of the German women.
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