Nurses / Blitzmädel and other female volunteers

HaEn · Post by **HaEn** » 25 Jan 2005 15:39

Baltasar wrote:HaEn, we're talking about more than 1 round to carry arround. Imagine an air raid of several hours.

Hi Balt. Yes I know; and I repeat: "hats off for the women of old"

HN

knieptang · Post by **knieptang** » 27 Jan 2005 02:22

@ HaEn

Show me just one, a single picture of a women-crew at an Acht-Acht, you decorate your postings as always, with a lot of needless so called smileys, and telling other "rumors of that time", please proof some of your statements, this would be more helpfull than another smiley-filled posting...

Regards Michael

BDMhistorian · Post by **BDMhistorian** » 27 Jan 2005 05:50

I don't see what the amount of emoticons (that's what they're called, not smileys) has to do with the quality of a post?

HaEn · Post by **HaEn** » 27 Jan 2005 06:03

Hello Knijptang.
Those were not "rumors of the time", those were either witnessed facts and/ or relatives , friends and/or acquaintances who were involved. Many of the women involved were the same who had been bailing hay, working the farm, etc.
My wife worked on a farm and unloaded the strawbales, each weighing ????, but quite heavy. She also had to perform other heavy labor. In normal times she might not have been able to, but during this time many "rose to the occassion"
If smileys irritate you I won't use them anymore. Happy ?
Granted, most of the Flak helferinnen, or as my brother a Flak helfer/richter at the ripe old age of 15, worked with the Zimmer Bofors 40 mm. (still heavy enough) But those capable were also assigned to the heavier geschützen as the 80 mm.
Would be nice if I had a 'single picture" to show you, but alas. "If wishes were fishes, we all would eat till we burst"
See ? Still no smileys !.
HN.

knieptang · Post by **knieptang** » 02 Feb 2005 02:27

Dear HaEn!

I am very well aware, these women without men had to work more than hard in the german war industry, there beloved men, friends in a place as Stalingrad at the battle of the bulge...

Strong working, suffering women, for a living, straight!

Back at home, in ammerland, my 10 year old mother watched an american Tiefflieger, just close before the end of the war 1945, shooting a full load at 3 farmers on a field, they were just farmers, only one of the 3 survived.

They were killed by a so called "Buffalo-Soldier", a man in a flying machine, she remembers well, and she told me very often about the "Neger", who stopped the tank, jumped down, and gave the little german girl a bar of chocolate, decades later she remembered this fine gesture, with tears, the african-american GI is unkwown.

Michael

After eating the chocolate bar, she smelled for many months after the aroma of this piece of chocolate on the thin-foil, there was no other one...

Michael

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 02 Feb 2005 05:27

knieptang, thanks for the photos! Got any more you'd like to post?

Baltasar wrote:knieptang, looking at the size and weight of 88mm rounds, I doubt women would've been ordered to operate them.

The weight of an 88 round is 9,4 kg, or just over twenty pounds---not that great a weight. As for the size of the shells, I have one of them, and there is nothing too cumbersome about that, either. Even the three-shell basket carrier wouldn't be impossible for a woman of average stature to manage, and certainly not for a couple of Helferinnen.

knieptang · Post by **knieptang** » 02 Feb 2005 23:30

knieptang, thanks for the photos! Got any more you'd like to post?

Valkyrie, I will search for some more pictures, they are very rare and hard to find, please be patient...

Regards Michael

BDMhistorian · Post by **BDMhistorian** » 03 Feb 2005 03:09

"They were killed by a so called "Buffalo-Soldier", a man in a flying machine"

Actually, the black pilots were called Tuskeege Airmen, not Buffalo Soldiers...

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 03 Feb 2005 04:55

knieptang wrote: Valkyrie, I will search for some more pictures, they are very rare and hard to find, please be patient...

Regards Michael

Michael (knieptang),

I am ever-patient on this subject! Actually, I have some personal photos I'd like to post, but I'm sadly "technologically illiterate"---I don't own or know how to use a scanner! So you're ahead of me!

After searching through both personal accounts and photos, I’ve also debated whether female Helferinnen worked on the Acht-Achts, and in what capacity. I’ve often thought that perhaps they worked mainly with the range-finding equipment, but not with the actual loading and firing of the guns. However, as the war progressed, and especially in the Flak batteries around cities on the homefront, I would not be surprised if they were also pushed into the actual firing of the guns, as happened in so many other roles that were initially considered “inappropriate” for women.

Here is a quote from Alison Owings’ Frauen, which I referred to earlier. Unfortunately, little of the section about Frau Tietz’ Flakwaffenhelferin service is a direct quote, but is interpreted by the compiler of the book. I would love to speak to Frau Tietz directly on this subject!

In 1943, when she was about twenty-two, Erna Tietz learned how to operate the searchlights that sought out Allied planes in the night skies. Following her training, she was sent to Berlin and assigned to a searchlight mission (Scheinwerfereinsatz). The searchlights could reach up to nine thousand meters, she said. But when die Englander und die Amerikaner flew at ten thousand meters to avoid them, “our searchlights were too small.”

So, in 1944, she was retrained, as a Flakwaffenhelferin. In a direct translation of the German euphemism, she was a female “flak weapons helper.” In more straightforward English, she was an antiaircraftgunner. Rather than aim a searchlight at Allied planes, she aimed a gun. She called it “a big gun,” an “eight-eight.” What was it? The first expert I asked knew right away. Ed Green of the Presidio Army Museum in San Francisco called the German eighty-eight-caliber [sic, 8,8 cm, (Fraulein Valkyrie's comment)] antiaircraft gun “a hundred times better than anything we had.” The famous, accurate, powerful, long-barreled gun was so big, he said, it required a team of at least three people to operate it: someone to focus, someone to load the shells, someone to fire……

And some further quotes not only confirm her role in actually firing the gun, but also reflect a little of the sadness about women’s positions that some have commented about here already. Official notices in female military Ausweise I’ve seen cite Helferinnen as non-combatants under the Geneva Convention. Quotes like this make me wonder about the nebulous position they may have been put in, and suggest why there are so few photos to be found of females manning guns:

....[Frau Tietz] did not like that the Nazis were hiding from the German public the fact that women were being used to shoot down planes. Frau Tietz’s identification “only says ZBV [zur besonderen Verwendung (for special use)]. That means they did not admit that I was with the eight-eight and schooled in how to use it.” ZBV could mean a lot of things, she said. “Maybe I could have been active in news gathering for the Wehrmacht, or in the secretarial pool, or distribution of clothing, or so. One wanted to avoid that the public learn that women were assigned to weapons. One wanted to veil....” (emphasis added)

....She added that she now very much opposes women being soldiers. “I would say, in secretarial assignments, information desk, ja, but not the way we were. And this concealment under ZBV, not to have the courage....These were young girls in a very dangerous situation. And if the Americans, English, French, or the Russians come and then surprise these girls at their weapons, we definitely would have been (treated) just like the soldiers, and rightly so, for we also shot.”

~FV

Annelie · Post by **Annelie** » 03 Feb 2005 14:51

Within the book

"Sound Locators, Fire Control Systems and Searchlights of the German Heavy Flak Units"

by Werner Muller

are interesting photographes of the Flakwaffenhelferinnen but none that I could
see of any manning an 88m guns.

Fraulein Valkyrie I enjoy your posts immensely.

Mfg
Annelie

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 03 Feb 2005 21:36

Thanks, Annelie! I appreciate it!

I have another of Müller's books, German Flak in World War II. It has pictures of Flakhelferinnen working on searchlights, Flak Aiming Devices (which transmitted visual target locations to the searchlights), and listening devices. It also shows young male Flak Helpers of the Hitler Youth working on similar equipment, as well as on Flak guns, as HaEn mentioned.

Luftwaffe Flakhelferinnen weren't the only females who worked in air defense. I have a photo album with pictures of RADwJ women working in a searchlight position near Frankfurt am Main. In the group of pictures is one of an 88. Although it doesn't show women actually working on the gun, since it's in the same group of photos, one would assume that it was in the same battery. Did women also crew the gun? Or was it a mixed battery, with women working the searchlights and other equipment and men working the 88? It's one of those tantalizing sets of photos, that makes me wish I had just one more page of pictures, that might tell....

Although the question of whether women actually manned the guns in Flak batteries is interesting, it's really a moot point. By working any of the equipment in these batteries, were they in combat? Yes. An enemy air attack to take out an anti-aircraft position wasn't likely to discriminate between the sexes in the battery, or to kill or maim only those who were manning the guns, but not those who were working the target-finding equipment.

~FV

knieptang · Post by **knieptang** » 03 Feb 2005 22:59

BDMhistorian wrote:"They were killed by a so called "Buffalo-Soldier", a man in a flying machine"
Actually, the black pilots were called Tuskeege Airmen, not Buffalo Soldiers...

BDM, You are absolutely right, please excuse my mistake!

I would like to find out, did members of the Tuskeege Airmen Air/Ground attacks over Northern Germany in 1945, any information about this is very welcome, thank you.

Regards Michael

Edit: Tuskegee Airmen

knieptang · Post by **knieptang** » 04 Feb 2005 17:22

Frauenfeuerwehr in Germany 1943/1945:

More: http://www.ffw-muennerstadt.de/feuerweh ... erwehr.htm

More: http://www.waurichen.de/Feuerwehr/Feuer ... mit02.html

And another link: http://www.11thpanzer.homestead.com/womenotr.html

Regards Michael

Eindecker · Post by **Eindecker** » 10 Feb 2005 20:26

Here is one of my more interesting dog tags - not a photo as everyone wants but another log on the fire - I think you can read the descrition below.

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 11 Feb 2005 05:12

Eindecker wrote:Here is one of my more interesting dog tags - not a photo as everyone wants but another log on the fire - I think you can read the descrition below.

Eindecker,

I'd be interested in any additional information you have on this tag.

Not to be insulting, but a pretty questionable example of a "woman's" Erkennungsmarke. First of all, what, aside from the label by the guy who sold it to you, makes you think it's a woman's dogtag?

As even the seller says, the title on the thing is pretty confusing as to why a woman's tag would be labeled as a Hauptmann. (Hauptmann = not any female rank. Women in service had different titles for equivalent ranks).

The common abbreviations for Luftwaffe Helferin are Lw.-Helferin or Ln.-Helferin.

How does one get “Women’s Working Group of the NS German Students’ League” from “Anst”??? And why would a member of the “Women’s Working Group of the NS German Students’ League” need an Erkennungsmarke?

And on and on.....

The only thing I would say about the tag is that from the corrosion pattern it does appear to be aluminum.

~FV