After the end of the Nazi occupation of France, thousands of women were victims of public harassment as a result of relationships established with German soldiers during World War II. These events, which took place between 1943 and 1946, became known as legal épuration, legal purges, or even, through the name of the victims, of thereyou are femmes tondues, shorn women, because the main punishment given to women was the shaving of their heads.
The crime these women allegedly committed was that they had sex with German soldiers during the period of Nazi occupation in France. They were accused of “horizontal collaboration” with an enemy of war, which led to them being the target of public moral lynchings.
The practice of legal purging carried out against women consisted of shaving their hair, one of the symbols of female seduction, and public parade through the streets of cities, towns or even small villages in rural areas after the expulsion of Nazi troops from these locations. Many of the women were also stripped naked and branded with the Nazi swastika through dye or even a hot iron. In addition to all the humiliation, they were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to one year for alleged collaboration with the enemy.
Possibly around 20,000 women have been targeted by legal purges in France. The accusations were usually made by neighbors or even real collaborators of the Germans who intended to divert attention from their actions in support of the war enemy. Many of the victims were prostitutes, who in the work of selling the body did not distinguish nationality, having both French and German clients.
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
Other victims were young mothers who had their husbands as prisoners of war in German camps and who, during the war, had no means of obtaining material support for their survival. One of the ways they got food for themselves and their children was through sex with German soldiers.
In Norway, around 5,000 women who had children of German parents were sentenced to a year and a half of forced labor. The children were directed to sanatoriums, being still used as guinea pigs in drug tests.
According to French historian Fabrice Virgili, the legal purges against women were patriotic and virile violence, the affirmation of a male punishment, strongly sexual. But this practice did not only occur at the end of World War II. Franco's fascists in Spain had a similar expedient against republican women. Such practices demonstrate that the horrors of wars and human actions are not limited to deaths on the battlefield.
* Image Credit: German Federal Archives
By Tales Pinto
Master in History
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PINTO, Tales dos Santos. "Women and legal purges in France"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historia/as-mulheres-as-purgas-legais-na-franca.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.
