The End

I wish I had a little more time to do this blog. It's been really interesting and revealing. I think it's important that we take the time to research things like this, because even though it's painful to learn about, it's important that we take something away from this. I would literally spend hours on one post because once you start researching you could just follow links forever and never get tired of discovering new things. I have a big list of new books and movies I would like to get. I hope that these posts inspire and encourage other people to do some research on their own. Thanks so much!

Nose Art

I love pin up girls. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to post a little example of my favorite form of pin up art. Nose art are the images soldiers painted on the front of their bomber planes. These images were often scnatily clad women with a little saying of encouragement.

The Army Air Force attempted to censor these images, but decided that they were such a boost on morale that they couldn't afford to ban the art. It's my favorite form of pin up art because the pilot's painted it, it was their calling card. These men had dangerous jobs and many did not make it back home, so this nose art was their symbol of pride left behind.

Rosie the Riveter

Rosie the Riveter was an icon for women who went to work in the factories and took the jobs of the men who were off fighting in the war. Women were told it was their patriotic duty to keep the economy going and help build war machines and supplies for the soldiers.


The phrase Rosie the Riveter actually came from a cute little song featured in this video:

Coco Chanel

As much as I LOVE 40's fashion, this is not a post about fashion (although that's not a bad idea). I came across an article on Coco Chanel and her extracurricular activities during WWII. Apparently she spent the war years in Paris living in the Ritz with a Nazi officer. After the war and the search for Nazi collaborators was on she was reported to have offered this up as an excuse: “Really, sir, a woman of my age cannot be expected to look at his passport if she has a chance of a lover.” It was also reported that Winston Churchill himself spared her from the punishment of public humiliation that the other French women who were Nazi collaborators received. Even today Chanel has been spared the humiliation of supporting Nazis. I myself have a poster of Marilyn Monroe holding a bottle of Chanel No.5.

A French woman having her head shaved as a form of punishment for collaborating with the Nazis:


This got me thinking about other companies that could be linked to Nazi Germany. I was shocked to find that Volkswagens were quite literally created by and for Hitler. He wanted to create a well built but economical car for the German people. The literal translation of Volkswagen is "people's car." Hitler specifically requested that Ferdinand Porsche create a four-seater car with a streamlined shape "like a beetle."

It is approximated that 80% of VW's wartime workforce were slave laborers from concentration camps.

Another surprising company that supported the Nazis was Coca-Cola. They advertised in Nazi publications and continued to made product for the Nazi party. When they could no longer get the sugar syrup from the United States to make their drink they created Fanta, the fruit flavored soda. That's right, Fanta was created for Nazi soldiers by Coca-Cola. I'm never going to be able to drink a delicious Fanta grape soda without thinking of this ever again.

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

Sophie Scholl was a 21 year old German who opposed the Nazi party. Her brother Hans Scholl founded the group the White Rose after working as a medic in the German army. He witnessed soldiers shooting Jews in mass graves and was outraged. He wanted to raise awareness on the injustices of the Nazi party. At first he did not want to include his sister, Sophie, but she knew something was up and demanded to know. When she found out she wanted to be a part of it. They created their 6th and final leaflet urging Germans to leave the Nazi party and protest the war. They had skipped class to leave the leaflets in the halls and when class let out people picked them up. They noticed afterwards there were still several leaflets left and did not want to let them go to waste. So Sophie and Hans took them to the third floor of the main hallway and threw them over the railing. Unfortunately, a janitor witnessed them and turned them in. They were arrested by the Gestapo, tried and found guilty, and sentenced to death. A mere ten hours after being arrested they were executed by guillotine. Sophie's last words were, “God, you are my refuge into eternity.” Hans had to watch Sophie and a dear friend be executed before he was. His last words were, “Long live freedom!” There is a memorial for Sophie and the White Rose group in front of the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich that resembles the leaflets tossed to the ground. I would love to see this in person one day.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

I just wanted to share this really great website where I have gotten a lot of great stories from. It has tons and tons of pictures, interactive artifacts, videos, and personal stories. It is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. It's got so much information it would take me years and years to sift through it all. It's located in D.C. and I would really like to make a trip up there this summer if I can gather up the gas money.

Volksgemeinschaft (German Community)

So yesterday I did a post on sterilization of "lesser people" according to Nazi Germany and I thought today I would follow that with Germany's policies on German women having children. Like I talked about earlier Hitler was looking for a "master race." He wanted Germany's "racially pure" women to breed as many Aryan children as possible. Hitler wanted Germans to reproduce to create more soldiers and German citizens to take over the lands that Germany conquered. In 1936 the SS leaders founded the program Lebensborn, or Fount of Life. This program states every SS member should father at least four children, whether he was married or not. This program was not received well due to the immorality of children out of wedlock. Instead, they began rewarding German families who produced children by honoring them publicly, giving them monetary rewards, and the Cross of Honor of the German Mother. German mothers who bore four of five children received a bronze medal, six or seven children a silver medal, and eight or more got them a gold medal.

While reading about the sterilization experiments I found this upsetting story. Apparently after finding out a doctor had helped a SS leader's infertile wife conceive, they ordered him to conduct experiments on women prisoners in Auschwitz. He reportedly performed experiments on around 300 women and would tie them down and taunt them by telling them he had just inseminated them with animal sperm and monsters were now growing in their wombs.

1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

It's taken me a few days to actually get around to writing this post. Once you start researching these things you find some of the most horrific stories and pictures. You can only look at these things for so long before you need a break. I have a new sense of respect for the brave people who actually had to live through this. This post was inspired by an article I was reading in Mother Jones the other day. It was about the population crisis and had a specific section on 3,500 years of contraception. It mentioned the forced sterilization the Germans implemented in the 30's. I saw that and decided to research it a little more. This of course opened a floodgate of Nazi experiments, some of which I may talk about at a later time. In order to help create the "master race" and to rid the world of defective people (people with mental disorder, physical deformities, mentally handicapped, blind, deaf, and ultimately entire races) the Nazi's experimented on their prisoners. They tried a variety of methods including surgery, drugs, and X-Rays. When they finally settled on a quick and easy method of sterilization they broadened their procedures from prisoners to these "defective" people with the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. They used deception to administer the treatment. They would ask these people to fill out a few forms in a room. While they were in the room they would emit radiation into the room. This would render the person sterilized and they would leave without any idea what had taken place. The only visible side effects were radiation burns. Aside from the Nazi experiments some 400,000 people were sterilized.

This is a Nazi propoganda poster promoting the law. The top of the poster says "We do not stand alone." The shield the man is holding has the name of the law on it. The couple is standing in front of a map of Germany. Surrounding the edges of the poster are flags of other countries. The ones on the left are of countries who have already implemented similar laws. The ones on the bottom are countries that are considering similar laws. You may be as surprised as me to notice that the United States is on this poster. The Nazi's claimed to have gotten a lot of their ideas about sterilization from the laws passed in the United States. In 1907, Indiana became the first state to enact a compulsory sterilization law. Many states followed in their path. The laws targeted mainly mentally ill patients in homes and prisoners. After WWII the forced sterilization was not looked upon as favorably because of its connection to the Nazi genocides, but it continued at a high rate until the 1960's when it began tapering off and the final forced sterilization occured in 1981. In all the United States sterilized some 65,000 people were sterilized.

Anonyma

While researching women in WWII I found an interesting book, Anonyma. It is the anonymous journal of a German woman living in Berlin in 1945 just after the city was conquered by the Russian soldiers. The Russian soldiers took over the city that was largely populated by women at this point. This woman was raped twice the first day of the Russian occupation. Then later that same day four Russian soldiers broke into her home. She tells one of them she will be with him if he will protect her from the others. So she forms this relationship with him in exchange for food and protection. She is ashamed of herself and her story is truly heartbreaking. I find this book to be of particular interest because it is a story I have never heard. You always hear about the victims of the Holocaust and the countries who were bombed by Hitler and his allies, but the perspective of a suffering German woman is a new one to me. Many say that the Russians were just seeking revenge on the Germans for what they did to the citizens of the Soviet Union. In all, around two million German women were raped at the end of WWII. In 2008 this book was made into a movie with Nina Hoss as the anonymous writer.


I have not had the opportunity to read this book or watch the movie yet, but they are both on my wish list and I can't wait to get them!

Mary Baruth

Mary Baruth was a telephone operator when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She joined the Army after a fight with her boyfriend. she served in the Army Airways Connection where she investigated people who were going to be doing secret work to dig up as much information on them as she could. Before she joined women in the service had a reputation for being "raunchy."

I found this great propoganda poster warning soldiers about loose women. This is not aimed at the women in the service, but I thought it brought up an interesting point. Afterall, the soldiers who were sleeping with these women weren't being considered loose or carriers of disease.
She met some nice women who were in the Army and they convinced her that the things she had heard were not true. She decided to give it a chance and loved it. She says she is so thankful for her chance to serve her country and had a splendid time doing it.

Victory Gardens

I have been having difficulty getting this blog started. There are so many things I want to talk about, but I wasn't sure how to make them fit cohesively together. Then I realized that this isn't a paper, it's a blog! I am free to write as I please. And in my research I have found some really interesting things!!

The first thing I wanted to share with you all was the discovery of "victory gardening." I have recently acquired a small plot of land in the community garden and cannot wait to get started, so this was of particular interest to me at this moment.

During the war our country suffered food shortages. There was just not enough food to go around and in 1940 people were issued ration cards. In order to meet the demand the government began urging people to grow their own food. Any available green space was seen as an opportunity to provide food for the hungry. Not only were families encouraged to grow food for the summer months they were urged to can the surplus to feed them throughout the winter. Now nowhere does it say that this was a woman's job, but looking at the propoganda posters I found it seems to me they are geared specifically for women:



Apparently, they even had community canning centers where people could bring their food and have it put in real tin cans. This service was provided to them as long as they left 10% of their product to be donated to charities.

Class Project

I am writing this blog as a class project in my Gender and Women Studies class. WWII has always been a part of my life. My grandmother talks about it often. She noticed from the beginning that I had an interest in my family history and has been telling me stories of our family (many of which are from WWII). It seems everytime I go to her house she has some other little momento that she wants me to have. I have a suitcase full of them now (a WWII Navy issued suitcase, that is). I would like to take this interest further and pursue the stories of the women outside of my family as well. This blog is about them.