by Insa Meinen As soon as the Wehrmacht invaded Paris, it issued guidelines for controlling prostitution. A network of Wehrmacht brothels was juxtaposed with the persecution of French women suspected of having intercourse with Wehrmacht personnel. The German control system was characterised by the link between internment camps and brothels.

The Nazi Army and Prostitution in occupied France.

The Nazi German army had hardly conquered Paris before it proclaimed rules for the control of prostitution. A network of army brothels stood in contrast to the persecution of French women who were suspected of having relationships to soldiers. The connection between internment camps and brothel was characteristic for the German system.

Gender-specific dimensions of German warfare and occupation policy during the Second World War have so far received little attention in academic research. This also applies to the coercive measures introduced by the Wehrmacht against women in the occupied territories in order to organise sexual intercourse between its soldiers and the female civilian population. The Wehrmacht devoted considerable attention to this issue, with the actions of the German military administration in France serving as a model.

The Wehrmacht brothel was as much a part of everyday occupation life in France as the front bookshop and the soldiers' home. Equally important was the surveillance and persecution of women who were suspected of having uncontrolled relationships with members of the Wehrmacht. The establishment of brothels not only served to provide the German troops with sexual services under wartime and occupation conditions, but was also intended to prevent independent contact between soldiers and French women. This was a combination of medical, racial and defence policy objectives. The directives issued by the High Command of the Army (OKH) and the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) to regulate prostitution were firstly intended to curb sexually transmitted diseases. Secondly, they were part of the National Socialist laws and ordinances that sought to control gender relations according to racial-political criteria. Thirdly, the aim was to prevent the disclosure of military information and possible political influence on German soldiers by restricting contact with non-German women to brothels.

The following overview is based on research in eight French archives départementales and communales, the Archives Nationales in Paris and the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv in Freiburg.

Mainly responsible: Wehrmacht medical officers

The Wehrmacht's medical service was instrumental in controlling prostitution. With the armistice in June 1940, around two thirds of French territory, the so-called northern zone, was placed under German military administration. The occupied French territory was divided into four, now five, military administrative districts, which in turn were subdivided into field commanderies whose area of responsibility comprised one or more departments. At all levels of the military administration - the military commander, the district chiefs and the field commanders - senior medical officers and command surgeons were appointed. Alongside the heads of the medical departments in the OKH and OKW, these medical units were the main authorities responsible for monitoring prostitution. The fact that the Wehrmacht medics thus performed administrative functions in relation to the civilian population should also be emphasised because the Wehrmacht's medical system has not been sufficiently researched to this day. Far from being limited to the medical care of German troops, the command surgeons in France focused on the operation of Wehrmacht brothels and the initiation of reprisals against women suspected of prostitution.

The field gendarmerie fulfilled additional police tasks in the persecution of prostitutes, and from early summer 1942, when the police powers of the military administration were transferred to the SS, the representatives of the Reich Security Main Office also became involved; however, the medical officers remained in charge.

The special nature of the occupation structures in France meant that the German authorities delegated the implementation of the ordered surveillance measures to a large extent to local medical officers and the French police.

OKH directives on prostitution

In the second half of July 1940, the Army Surgeon General and the Quartermaster General in the Army High Command issued two complementary decrees, which initiated the establishment of Wehrmacht brothels and the persecution of prostitutes for the entire German-occupied French territory. The German army command ordered selected brothels throughout France to be confiscated for the occupying forces. They ordered the selection of brothel staff according to 'racial affiliation'. In addition, working conditions, earnings and police and medical checks on brothel employees were regulated down to the last detail with the help of a comprehensive catalogue of conditions.

At the same time, the OKH issued basic directives to the military administration to prosecute women suspected of prostitution. In order to enforce the brothel as a place of sexual intercourse between French women and the occupying forces, instructions were issued to exclude all street prostitution by police means.

The decision taken by the army general staff to centrally control sexual intercourse between members of the Wehrmacht and French women and to direct them to brothels is just as remarkable as the list of brothel regulations drawn up in Berlin, which amounted to a standard brothel for occupation purposes.

This centralisation and standardisation was one of the specific features of the brothel system initiated by the Wehrmacht and marked a fundamental difference to the regulation of prostitution in pre-war France.

The control of sexual contacts in occupied French territory was further emphasised by special precautions for German officers. After the OKH had generally banned the officer corps from visiting Wehrmacht brothels for disciplinary reasons and repeated admonitions to exercise restraint in French nightclubs had been unsuccessful, the Army Quartermaster General ordered the establishment of so-called "flophouse hotels" for officers at the beginning of August 1940.

Controlled brothels instead of "wild" prostitution

Based on the instructions from Berlin, the German occupying forces created a brothel and prostitution system over the following months, which was to continue until the liberation of France in 1944. The extent to which the medical services in the military administration had already implemented the OKH decrees in September 1940 is shown by a situation report from the Chief Medical Officer at District Chief B dated 23rd September 1940: "Brothels for soldiers have been set up in almost all larger towns and are constantly monitored; 'flophouse hotels' have also been set up in Biarritz, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Nantes, Angers, Vannes, La Baule and Lorient. Raids on free prostitution were carried out at the instigation of the commandant-surgeons in almost all the larger towns by the French vice squad, which appears to be working well. A number of wild prostitutes were recorded as sexually diseased and sent for treatment."

The occupation authorities had thus realised both sides of the regulation: the brothel system and the surveillance and prosecution of women suspected of prostitution or registered prostitutes (so-called "filles soumises") who worked outside brothels. The raids carried out by police forces on the streets, in pubs and hotels targeted French women who offered sexual services for financial gain. On the other hand, they targeted women from the lower classes who frequented suspicious establishments, were found in the company of Germans or had private contacts with Wehrmacht soldiers. While the occupying forces registered and monitored street and local prostitution in some large cities (such as Paris) and subjected it to excessive restrictions, they introduced a strict criminalisation of free prostitution in other places. In fact, the practice in the occupied territory differed in many respects from the regulations in Berlin and was adapted to the needs of everyday life under occupation.

As far as the extent of Wehrmacht brothels was concerned, the commandant-surgeons flexibly adapted brothel operations to the German troop presence and demand and continuously dictated new openings and closures in line with troop movements between France and the Eastern Front. The quantitative dimension of the Wehrmacht brothel system was anything but insignificant. At the end of 1941, for example, the German occupying forces claimed to have 143 Wehrmacht brothels in Military Administrative District A alone - an area that included around a third of the German-occupied northern zone - in which 1166 women worked. The mass character of the brothel system can also be seen in the example of the harbour town of La Rochelle, where at least 250 French women were working in brothels reserved for German troops in the course of 1942, as an analysis of contemporary documents from the local French health authorities reveals.

It can be assumed that there were women in occupied France who applied to work in a Wehrmacht brothel, whether on their own initiative or as a result of the violence of a private pimp, and the police repression of street prostitution also played a role that should not be underestimated in this context. At the same time, however, brothel work was based on direct, administrative coercive measures. The surviving sources show that French women were transferred from internment camps to Wehrmacht brothels.

Reason for imprisonment: sexual intercourse with German soldiers

Under the German occupation, the imprisonment of so-called prostitutes, which had been part of official prostitution control since the 19th century, took on a new quality and quantity. This is shown in particular by the fact that the representatives of the military administration not only had "filles soumises" and French women suspected of prostitution locked up in prisons, hospitals and workhouses, but also resorted to a form of detention that is considered the epitome of National Socialist rule: incarceration in internment camps.

The character and development of the camp system in France during the Second World War cannot be described here. It should at least be pointed out that these internment centres, to which mainly foreign and French Jews were deported, were the preliminary stage for the deportation of Jews from France from 1942 onwards. The French camps thus became part of the system of concentration camps that extended across German territory in Europe. They were also used for the administrative confinement of various groups of people of both sexes, including foreign women, political prisoners, so-called gypsies and inmates. The prison conditions were characterised by a basic and general lack of care, which resulted in illnesses and deaths. However, they must be distinguished from those of the National Socialist concentration camps in that they were not aimed at murdering the internees, only included forced labour measures to a limited extent and the prisoners were not subjected to a regime of terror that would have included corporal punishment or other systematic degradation by the guards.

The internment measures imposed in the context of prostitution monitoring, which have yet to be investigated in detail, can be illustrated using the example of the Jargeau camp in the Loiret department in central France, where at least 303 women classified as prostitutes from the surrounding region were sent between October 1941 and November 1944.

The motives and justifications for their incarceration reveal the arbitrariness with which the Wehrmacht disposed of French women who offered their company to German soldiers. In October 1941, the medical officer of the Orléans field command ordered the French police to arrest all "filles soumises" working outside the Wehrmacht brothels, whose services the German soldiers had used up to that point, and to transfer them to the camp. This reduction in the supply of prostitution by means of internment followed the intention of restricting prostitution to the Wehrmacht brothels. In addition, women who were accused of refusing to comply with official requirements and compulsory medical checks or treatment were also sent to the camp. Overall, the main purpose of imprisonment in camps was to remove from public life all those French women whose intercourse with members of the Wehrmacht was declared temporarily or in principle undesirable by the medical officers, in order to exclude any possibility of contact with the occupying troops.

From the camp to the brothel

The internment of so-called prostitutes in Jargeau was directly linked to the Wehrmacht brothel system. From December 1941, the occupation authorities had French women from the camp transferred by police forces to various brothels reserved for the Wehrmacht. Recruitment for brothel work was formally carried out with the consent and at the proposal of the internees. In fact, it was one of the few opportunities to leave the camp. The fact that some of the women transferred to Wehrmacht brothels had tried unsuccessfully to escape the camp with the help of individual petitions for release or by fleeing before reporting for brothel work indicates the pressure under which they agreed to be transported to a Wehrmacht brothel. It should also be emphasised that the field commandant's office did not grant all proposals, but made its own selection from among the women concerned.

This link between internment camp and brothel characterises the specifically Nazi form of official prostitution control. The coercion associated with the recruitment in the camp, the selection and placement of brothel applicants officially carried out by administrative bodies were an expression of administrative pimping and the persecution of prostitutes, for which there is no parallel in French history. At the same time, nowhere is the basic principle of German prostitution control in occupied France more evident than in the combination of camp and brothel, as this was a radical way for the German military administration to assert its right to decide which French women were to have sexual relations with members of the Wehrmacht and under what conditions.

The author

Insa Meinen (35), Diplom degree in education and social sciences, doctoral student in the subject of history, DAAD scholarship holder, carried out a research project under the direction of Prof. Dr Werner Boldt and Prof. Dr Ahlrich Meyer on the subject of "Wehrmacht and prostitution during the Second World War in occupied France", which was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation from 1996 to 1998. Long-standing employee of the National Socialism Research Centre at the Institute for Political Science II, co-editor of "Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik". Main research interests: Women's history and gender politics during the National Socialist era.