Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the beginning, women in Nazi Germany were not involved in the Wehrmacht, as Adolf Hitler ideologically opposed conscription for women, [3] stating that Germany would "not form any section of women grenade throwers or any corps of women elite snipers." [4] However, with many men going to the front, women were placed in auxiliary positions within the Wehrmacht, called Wehrmachtshelferinnen ...
As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes of women took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation of Germany by soldiers from all advancing Allied armies, although a majority of scholars agree that the records show that a majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet occupation troops. [1]
The historiography of "ordinary" German women in Nazi Germany has changed significantly over time; studies done just after World War II tended to see them as additional victims of Nazi oppression. However, during the late 20th century, historians began to argue that German women were able to influence the course of the regime and even the war.
At one of the post-war hearings, Oberaufseherin Herta Haase-Breitmann-Schmidt, head female overseer, claimed that her female guards were not full-fledged SS women. Consequently, at some tribunals it was disputed whether SS-Helferinnen employed at the camps were official members of the SS, thus leading to conflicting court decisions.
The auxiliary war service of RAD was prolonged with another six months in April 1944, and at the end of November all time limits for service were removed. The majority of the additional draft of 150,000 young women were to serve in the Luftwaffe air defenses . [ 17 ]
In 2015, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that German historian Miriam Gebhardt "believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany. The author ...
That was generally regarded as a reaction to the deployment of young women at the end of World War II. Though women were exempt from direct combat functions in accordance with Nazi-ideology, several hundred thousand German women, along with young boys and sometimes girls (as Flakhelfer), served in Luftwaffe artillery units; their flak shot down ...
Herta Oberheuser (15 May 1911 – 24 January 1978) was a German Nazi physician and convicted war criminal who performed medical atrocities on prisoners at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. [1] For her role in the Holocaust, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the Doctors' Trial, but served only five years of her sentence. A ...