Women in Wehrmach or SS

[Daniel L]

Here's some interesting things I found:

Nazi Women

By 1944 the Nazis had almost a half million women in uniform serving as support troops. The Luftwaffe assigned 100,000 of these female troops (along with an estimated 900,000 men) to anti-aircraft batteries.

Hanna Reitsch was the only woman in World War II to be awarded the German Iron Cross First Class. Although technically a civilian she tested military aircraft, including the earliest versions of jet planes, and piloted members of the German high command throughout the war.

Uniformed Nazi women also served as concentration camp guards and managed slave laborers in factories. Maria Mandel, an SS Supervisor at Auschwitz, was noted for her personal brutality. In December 1947 she was condemned as a war criminal by the Supreme People's Court in Krakow and executed.

In a marked departure from the early days of the war when German leaders proclaimed that Russia's use of women soldiers demonstrated they were a weak enemy who would easily be defeated by 1945 Hitler approved the formation of coed guerrilla units and all female battalions in the Volkstrum, (the People's Army). Gertrud Scholz-Klink, a Nazi leader, formed battalions of women to carry on the final defense of Germany. There were several newspaper accounts, including one in the "Petersburg Dijen", of female German combat troops fighting near Warsaw.

As the Allies closed on Berlin boys in the Hitler Youth and its "sister" organization the Bund Deutscher Madel were reportedly ordered to fight armed with nothing more than rocks and sticks. Eyewitness accounts confirm that at least some boys and girls were combatants during the fall of the city.

http://www.gendergap.com/military/Warriors-2.htm

Hanna Reitsch and Beate Uhse- Koestlin seems to be the most famous female pilots of the war. Being a pilot isn't the only thing Beate got famous for...(I'm not going to tell- you have to find out for yourself )


Beate


Hanna

some links that might be interesting:

http://www.hh.dlr.de/frauen/frauen2.html

http://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/uhse.html

http://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/sum/76/sum76-3.html

http://www.ndepublishing.com/reviews_hist.html

regards

[Daniel L]

I thought this might be a more suitable picture of Hanna since she was the only female reciever of the Iron cross first class.

Read more about Hanna Reitsch at: http://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/reitsch.html

A link to a list of books about german women in uniform:
http://members.home.nl/hoevenberg.bosman/GERMANY.htm


regards

[Psycho Mike]

There was a fasinating documentary mini series on the History Channel, Hitler's Women - which despite its lurid title I can't recommend enough. Anyone see it?

[sylvieK4]

I found this photo at an online auction. It purports to show a female flak gunner.

Mike, I saw the show on the "History Channel". It was good. I'm not sure if it was that particular documentary, or another in the same Third Reich series of films (including similar documentaries about Youth, etc. of the period), but in one of them, the use of women as flak gunners was discussed.

From: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... =735598057
....

[Daniel L]

I found this:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/women.html

regards/ daniel

[Wolffen]

Wow nice pick I would not mind serving with them any day

[ISU-152]

Yah, Women fought in Berlin so they wouldn't be rapped by the soviets.

Ok, pop-quizz What the russian women were fighting for? Same reason?

[wenty]

Hi,
i was also watching a documentary here in Australia not so long ago. I am not sure about actual combat but i do know that SS women worked in concentration camps (auschwitz,dachau,buchenwald,etc) and that they interviewed one woman and she said that when she and other women got captured and POW'd by the allies in 1945 that the dead bodies that had been gassed and still in the camps-the women were made to (with their bare hands) had to load them on trucks and throw them into pits themselves. It was a series called " Hitlers holocaust" and there was 6 episodes. I forget the womans name but she got 10 years prison time. Hope i've been of help.
Adam went.

[sylvieK4]

German Anti-Aircraft Auxillery Woman:

http://pro.corbis.com/