The scale of the crimes that the Germans committed in occupied Poland is unimaginable. They murdered, robbed, starved and imprisoned the inhabitants of the conquered country. One must not forget about another act of their bestiality:aimed strictly at Polish women.
The authorities of the Third Reich did everything to disgust the soldiers with the image of conquered Slavic nations. They did not always succeed. Young members of the Wehrmacht, who found themselves alone, very far from home, began to gaze lustfully at the beautiful Polish women who were passed by on the streets every day. The situation was not saved (from the occupier's perspective) even by the so-called racial laws, prohibiting social, especially intimate contacts with "lower racially" people.
In December 1939, small pieces of paper began to appear on the streets of Warsaw, which were put on by an underground organization called PLAN. According to prof. Szarota, author of the book "Occupied Warsaw Weekday", their content read:
Women who socialize with Germans are advised that there are still vacancies in brothels.
This condemnation of fraternization with the enemy seems to be an ordinary, malicious comment on deviations from the patriotic code of morality. Its authors could not even imagine how prophetic their words would be ...
Satisfied with chutiness as a guarantor of German power?
The horde of single men clad in feldgrau had their loathsome needs. Sexual relations with Polish women became commonplace. Both voluntary and those involving violence or body trafficking for money and food. In a sense, wanting to take control of the sexual activity of their soldiers, the German authorities decided to introduce a system of controlled prostitution.
As Maren Roger writes in his book “War relationships. Polish women and Germans during the occupation ”:
Drive was to be met regularly to maintain combat strength. There was an image of a specifically soldierly masculinity behind it.
In order not to harm the "combat strength" of the German soldier, and thus the military might of the Reich, the highest command decided to create a whole network of brothels. The trafficking of women was to take place under the auspices of the SS. The elite formation, apart from war crimes, fanatical adoration for Hitler and guarding concentration camps, added pimping to its dossier.
The whole procedure was to function in such a way that the families of soldiers remaining in the Reich would not find out about anything (it could undermine morale!). Therefore, premises were searched for brothels at a certain distance from the barracks, especially for officers, so that potential visiting family members would not find out what was happening in such a place. Within the network of organized brothels, members of individual formations had their own brothels, for example SS men and policemen went to one address, and Wehrmacht soldiers went to another. Using brothels was not a luxury for them - prostitution was subsidized from the German budget .
Although the SS was responsible for the "business" on behalf of the Third Reich, the members of the formation did not work as administrators of establishments of dubious reputation. Watching prostitutes was usually entrusted to so-called local personnel, obviously of “non-Jewish” origin. Both men and women were employed for this task. The latter were often recruited from old-fashioned sell-off women who were too old to earn money on street corners.
In the occupied brothel
How did the Germans circumvent the law forbidding intimate contacts with women by going to brothels? To somehow sanction this absurdity, it was argued that the interactions that take place behind the closed doors of the brothel are economic, not social.
Polish women locked up in brothels were not treated as human beings. They were just tools to satisfy the drive.
Therefore, the act itself was to be devoid of all privacy. Just the mere satisfaction of an animal drive. Himmler in 1942 stated:
Sexual intercourse of an SS or police member with a Polish woman is an act of military insubordination and will be punished by a court ... [however] ... official and medical supervision, because in these situations there can be no question of paternity or any bond (quoted after:Carol Harrington, "Politicization of Sexual Violence:From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping").
The soldier was not allowed to stay with the prostitute any longer. Consuming alcohol on site was forbidden. There was no permission to spend the night in the tabernacle, and there were warnings on the walls, quoted by Maren Roger:
"Use a condom as there is a risk of STD!", "Disinfect after intercourse" , "Remember your partner's control number."
This control number was designed to help record women and avoid sexual diseases. Troublesome gifts from Venus were something the Germans were extremely afraid of.
German soldier with an Italian.
Hence, girls employed in brothels had to undergo regular STI screening. In addition, customers of the establishments were required to thoroughly disinfect their organs. Yet venereal ailments were rampant among the soldiers on a massive scale.
Professionals only?
Naturally, brothels for the German "heroes" that were growing up in the conquered cities had to be filled. For this purpose, the occupiers used old censuses. Before the war, prostitution in Poland was legal, although condemned. According to the data quoted by Józef Macki in the book "Prostitution" (1926), there was one registered prostitute for about 280 inhabitants of the capital. If we take into account the body traffic in the so-called gray area, the numbers will be even less favorable.
After the occupation authorities decided to create a network of lupanars, the daughters of Corinth began to be forcibly confined to them. These places did not function like typical brothels - they were in a truly barracks order, and the residents could not decide about anything. They were to report to sanitary checks and provide services on the spot. An additional problem was the terrible hygiene conditions that even German doctors complained about.
A woman in a brothel for Germans could have been hit directly from a round-up like the one in the photo.
For all crimes against the rules of the tabernacle in which they worked, prostitutes risked being placed in a police prison. They were beaten, raped and doused in frost with icy water.
Apart from the ladies choosing the oldest profession in the world as their career path, ordinary Polish women could also find themselves in brothels. For example, those who hung out with the Germans.
A soldier of the Third Reich could be arrested for breaking the race purity law, while his companion was facing a brothel. This was the case, for example, with the Poznań saleswoman Maria K., who was placed as a punishment in the largest brothel in the city.
Any Polish woman could fall into the modes of a cruel machine
Any woman who, according to the Germans, was too easily aroused sexually, or who had an erotic 'aura' around her, could be registered as a prostitute. Anyway, it was enough to walk down the street! The Nazis organized round-ups in which they raided large groups of civilians from the streets. They picked up pretty young women from those arrested and made them an offer they couldn't refuse - a brothel or a concentration camp.
If they chose the former, could have as many as fifty customers a day. If they became pregnant, they were forced to have an abortion, since the representatives of the lower race did not have the right to bear the SS-man's child.
Adolf Hitler has become one of the greatest pimps in world history. For logistical reasons, the Nazis made Poland a huge live goods transfer hub for their huge army. Women in their prime, caught in various corners of the lands conquered by the Germans, were sent to the eastern front and to the territory of the old Reich.
Those sent to the west ended up in brothels for forced laborers. The ones going east were to satisfy the desires of soldiers advancing on Moscow, who were not satisfied with raping Russian women. Polish women were also sent in both directions.
Both sides of the conflict were terrified of STDs.
According to the data quoted by Maren Roger in the book “War relationships. Polish women and Germans during the occupation ”, thousands of Polish women fell victim to the Nazi pimping machine. Out of approximately 50,000 women detained in brothels in the areas occupied by Germany constituted a very large percentage.
In addition to experienced sex workers, young teenage girls were also sent to German brothels, who, having experienced an ordeal, carried trauma for the rest of their lives. During the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi criminals were not charged with this practice. In the press, we find articles about the sex slaves of the Japanese army during the Second World War, but the hell of Polish women is still quiet.