The Third Reich as the 'largest brothel operator in Europe' (Nazis even build brothels inside concentration camps specifically FOR male prisoners)
I found an interesting article about prostitution in the Third Reich. The article delves into the juxtaposition of "Madonna" and "whore" perpetuated by the Nazis. The notion that a specific class of women existed solely to sexually satisfy and pacify men was so deeply ingrained that the Nazis even constructed brothels inside concentration camps - specifically for male prisoners. I figured some might be history lovers and appreciate it.
The original article is written in German, but I translated it with ChatGPT:
Brothels in German Concentration Camps. Part 1: National Socialist Prostitution Policy
Think about the image of women in National Socialism, and usually, internal images of mothers come to mind: the Mother's Cross comes to mind, as well as stylized graphics of blonde, traditionally dressed young mothers with crowds of children hanging onto their apron strings. And it's true: as "guardians of German blood," German women had a special role during the Third Reich. They were expected to be mothers, servants of the "race" and the people. But this is only one side of the coin. Because, as in all deeply patriarchal systems, the image of women in the Third Reich was divided: women were divided into the "saint" (the mother) and the "whore." This text series will focus on the latter: women who were forced into prostitution by the Nazi state – for example, in the brothels of the concentration camps. These brothels in the concentration camps were not, as often believed, brothels for German soldiers. Instead, they were intended for male prisoners of the concentration camps. These men, although imprisoned, exploited, and tortured, were still expected to act as clients – with their female fellow prisoners who were sexually abused in the camp brothels. This series will focus on them – and report on the motives of the Nazi state to establish such brothels. It will report on which women were coerced into these brothels and how. It will delve into their experiences, how they managed to survive the ordeal. It will describe what a visit to a brothel looked like, but it will also ask who the clients were, how they talked about the women, whether they had a sense of wrongdoing. And the subject will also be how the affected women fared after 1945.
This is the first part of the series on concentration camp brothels, which aims to present the sexual and prostitution policies of National Socialism.
Although women in the Third Reich had opportunities for advancement in NS-owned organizations (Winter Relief, NS Women's League, BDM), they were heavily restricted in terms of employment and were to be pushed out of the labor market. Exceptions were considered for jobs perceived as "feminine," serving, educating, caring professions such as nursing, teaching, and childcare. The Nazi state implemented birth-oriented support measures such as destigmatization of illegitimate children, promotion of early marriages, introduction of child benefits, and interest-free marriage loans (which could be "paid off" with each child born in the marriage, reducing the repayment amount). All of these measures were linked to a racial, eugenic, and hereditary health component – only those deemed racially fit and "eugenically suitable" were to have children. "Degeneration" of the "German blood" was considered undesirable despite concerns about declining birth rates. Therefore, simultaneous restrictive measures in the vein of negative eugenics ("extermination") were enacted: the ban on abortions applied only to "Aryan" women – for "racially undesirable" individuals, "foreigners," "asocials," and "inferior" persons, abortions, as well as sterilizations, were sometimes performed forcibly. In the interest of "improving" the "German race," the prohibition of "racial defilement" was imposed to prevent the birth of "mixed-race children." Sexual intercourse was meant to serve the public good; it was not a private matter.
Consequently, there was an unprecedented state intervention in the bodies of men and women in the Third Reich. Denying women access to their bodies and their sexual autonomy is common in patriarchal systems. In the Third Reich, this sexist component merged with racist and classist elements. This was also evident in the prostitution policy of the Third Reich. The image of the "pure," desexualized German mother was juxtaposed with that of the "licentious, lustful, unstable, asocial woman." Their lifestyle was as undesirable as any children they might conceive.
The Nazi state pursued a restrictive prostitution policy. Hitler had already referred to prostitution as the "shame of humanity" in "Mein Kampf," attributing it to "moral decay" and all venereal diseases, emphasizing that it was primarily the man who needed to be given the opportunity to engage in sexual activity early on, for example, through marriage – "for the woman is only the passive part anyway."
The restrictive prostitution policy in National Socialism included several measures. Thousands of women were arrested for "harassing public solicitation" because the state saw their behavior as a nuisance to the public. Women had to register with the police. They had to undergo weekly compulsory medical examinations and were subject to special reporting requirements. Almost any woman could be accused of being a prostitute. Even women rumored to engage in "frequent changes of sexual partners" could be forcibly registered as prostitutes by the police. Women who were found in certain establishments without male companionship were also considered suspicious of prostitution, as were waitresses, barmaids, etc.
However, the goal was never the abolition of prostitution. The Nazi state pursued prostitutes, harassed them, controlled them, disenfranchised them, partly brought them to concentration camps, and killed many of them. But at no point did it aim to abolish prostitution – the motivation behind these actions was to control prostitution. It was to be entirely managed by the state – and be useful to it. Only prostitution that did not serve the state's interests, because it was beyond its control – the so-called "free," "secret" prostitution, which was not known to the authorities – was to be prevented. The Third Reich was indeed highly interested in prostitution. Until the end of the war in 1945, the Nazi state became the "largest brothel operator in Europe" and established and maintained an extensive network of brothels not only in the Reich itself but in almost all occupied countries.
This was done within the Reich through police means. State authorities directed the so-called "barracking" of prostitution, i.e., the forced concentration of prostituted women in places that should be accessible to clients but not to the general civilian population. In the Reich, there was a gradual relocation of women from prostitution to places approved by the police: brothels, brothel houses, brothel streets, brothel districts. Women suspected of prostitution had to live and work in these places – moving elsewhere was no longer allowed. Women who resisted barracks faced internment. Just like in the case of missing compulsory medical examinations or violating reporting requirements, they were threatened with relocation to concentration camps. Women engaged in prostitution were considered "asocial" and therefore already permanently at risk of being in a concentration camp. But this was not the only threat: German women, French women, Polish women, women from all occupied countries accused of prostitution were always at risk of being forcibly dragged or admitted to a state-owned Nazi brothel.
There were brothels in the Nazi state, and that means, also in all countries occupied by it, state-built, approved, and controlled brothels for all imaginable groups of men. There were brothels for the male prisoners of concentration camps, brothels for foreign forced laborers, brothels for the German Wehrmacht (organized according to units, but also according to rank: an enlisted soldier was not to enter an officer's brothel, and vice versa), for the SS, the Waffen-SS, for the Ukrainian guard units of the concentration camps, for the police, for railway workers, men of the Todt Organization, and so on.
The brothels for the Wehrmacht clearly show how prostitutes were used to direct the "male urge" to achieve imperialist and power-political goals. Because these facilities were created to prevent German soldiers from becoming incapacitated by contracting a venereal disease from the local population of the occupied country. (It did not occur to the Wehrmacht doctors that it was the German soldiers who infected the female part of the occupied population with venereal diseases, among other things through mass rapes.) Therefore, the soldiers were to be provided with medically controlled women by the state – and the provision of women into the military brothels was mainly done in the occupied Eastern European areas en masse through coercion, pressure, violence, and abduction. And this was also part of the warfare: women's bodies were used to destroy an indigenous population. The female body represented the "national body" of the occupied population – to rape it, to "defile" it, in the symbolic language in the nonverbal exchange between occupying men and occupied men, was equivalent to a rape and "soiling" of the invaded country and should also deeply offend all men of this country, as the "honor" of their women had been destroyed, and it had been clearly demonstrated that they had failed to protect their women.
But there were also brothels in the concentration camps where women were forced. There were brothels for the Ukrainian guard units of the concentration camps (the "Trawnikis"), mostly with Polish women. There were also brothels for the German guards of the camps, the "Death's Head Units." And there were brothels for the male prisoners of the concentration camps. To conceal from outsiders what was really happening in these brothel barracks on the camp grounds, they were given a name by the National Socialists that obscured the truth: since their establishment, they were only known as "the special buildings," and they existed in Mauthausen, Gusen, Flossenbürg, Buchenwald, Dachau, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, Mittelbau-Dora, and in Auschwitz.
