German military brothels in World War II
Military brothels (German: Militärbordelle) were set up by Nazi Germany during World War II throughout much of occupied Europe for the use of Wehrmacht and SS soldiers.[1] These brothels were generally new creations, but in the west, they were sometimes expansions of pre-existing brothels and other buildings. Until 1942, there were around 500 military brothels of this kind in German-occupied Europe,[2] serving travelling soldiers and those withdrawn from the front.[3][4] According to records, a minimum of 34,140 European women were forced to serve as prostitutes during the German occupation of their own countries along with female prisoners of concentration camp brothels.[1] In many cases in Eastern Europe, teenage girls and women were kidnapped on the streets of occupied cities during German military and police round ups called łapanka in Polish or rafle in French.[3][4][5]
Occupied France[edit]
The Wehrmacht was able to establish a thoroughly bureaucratic system of around 100 new brothels already before 1942, based on an existing system of government-controlled ones – wrote Inse Meinen.[8] The soldiers were given official visitation cards issued by Oberkommando des Heeres and were prohibited from engaging in sexual contact with other French women. In September 1941, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch suggested that weekly visits for all younger soldiers be considered mandatory to prevent "sexual excesses" among them. The prostitutes had a scheduled medical check-up to slow the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.[9]
Forced prostitution[edit]
A 1977 German report by a neoconservative revisionist historian from Baden-Württemberg,[10] Franz W. Seidler, contended that the foreign women who were made to register for the German military brothels had been prostitutes already before the war.[11][12] Ruth Seifert, professor of sociology at the University of Applied Sciences in Regensburg, on the other hand, maintained that women were forced to work in these brothels by their German captors, as shown during the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946, further confirmed by the 1961 book published by Raul Hilberg.[13]
There were some prostitutes primarily in Western Europe who volunteered to work in the brothels, rather than to be sent to a concentration camp.[14][15]