Group 3 is smaller than the other group so there is no designated blogger for this week. I have added this space for anyone to add their thoughts and reflections in the comments below.
Any comments will contribute to your engagement grade, but I will not penalise anyone for not contributing this week.
What do you make of these readings? Were they all very different? Were there common ideas/themes?
One common aspect in these readings is the place of women in the liberation/ immediate postwar period (although Deak only briefly mentions it).
Regarding headshaving in France, I think Duchen goes too far into conjectures when stating that women were necessarily associated with collaboration, or at least she does not really prove it. That retribution was gendered is convincing, but this may go too far into an apology of feminism.
Also, on a more personal note, I wonder what was retribution like in Alsace (where I come from), for it was a French territory whose population spoke German, and where the culture was more “Germanic” than French at the time. Did women also experience headshaving? I will ask my grandma about this!
Gebhards article provides a detailed account of events in Germany in the months prior to the end of the war. The Sheer desperation of the German women to escape the wrath of the soviet soldiers is disturbing. Suggestions that women were “systematically” raped by soviet soldiers show the violence that occurred was not limited to the concentration camps. Women were committing suicide over the fear of being raped highlighting their absolute desperation. It is perhaps ironic that Hitler and the Nazis foretold this and through propaganda were able to in still this fear in women. Ironic, in the sense that German soldiers were committing these same attacks throughout eastern Europe. So as Stalin indoctrinated his army to seek revenge against the “hated German people” as retribution for acts committed by the Nazis. The judicial retribution discussed by Istvan show that that the end of the War there was an appetite to hold prominent figures accountable. The assassination of Mussolini and the display of his body in Milan however shows that people were prepared to take matters into their own hands. In a sense revolutionary, as was the case in Hungary were the courts felt the need to purge and renew society. Both these articles highlight the prevalent need for revenge and Justice for lives lost or destroyed by the Axes.
Claire Duchen article discusses crime and punishment in the Liberation period post -war in France. With the case of les femmes tondues Duchen describes that like men women were also shot, imprisoned and suffered national degradation. She explains that women were accused of denouncing resisters, communists and Jews and were denounced as guilty by association. Women who were accused of collaborating with Germans were punished public by having their heads shaved – as if sexual involvement with a German meant loss of French identity; Duchen argues that the shorn women, les femmes tondues, had forfeited their right to be called French by French townspeople and were discursively from the nation. She goes on to explain that the punishment of deviant female sexuality safeguarded the integrity of the new post-war Republic. Stating that sexuality is political; control of women sexuality during the Liberation was, and is, integral part of patriarchal societies.
Miriam Gebhards article gives a detail description of the events that took place in Germany in the first months after the war ended; she splits her article into different chapters: Escape through suicide, Nemmersdorf, Hope and fear, The red army comes, Trapped, In the Jaws of hell, Behaviours of the victims, Alone in a crowd, Berlin, One year on and a different perspective. Throughout the article she describes life in Germany; for example, German women were terrified of soviet soldiers and Gebhards describes how women were committing suicide over the fear of being raped and shear desperation to save themselves. Gebhards tells of how the massacre Nemmersdorf was exploited for propaganda to illustrate the threat that was to come when the Red Army arrived. With Stalin instructing his army to seek revenge against the Germans for the heinous acts committed by the Nazis during the war, fear was therefore prevailing sentiment in the last few months of the war.
Both articles highlight the revenge and hatred for Germans and German sympathisers post-war. Public humiliation and need for revenge was widespread over Germany and France during the months after the war; after being shaken during the war the common place of women in the liberation of France and the post-war period for Germany is a common theme in both articles
In Duchen’s article, she discusses how liberation of France was a key moment of transition as it represented a time where tensions between a fresh start and for a return to normality were played out. Duchen highlights that like men, women were also shot, imprisoned and suffered national degradation which deprived them of their recently conferred civil rights (I believe she is referring to French women gaining the right to vote in 1944). Women who were considered guilty of Nazi collaboration also had their heads shaved, which was a very publicly humiliating event. Duchen touches on a class aspect of head shaving as she mentions that it was often young, single and poorly educated girls who were found guilty. Perhaps the French population found it easy to scapegoat women who were marginalised in society.
Deák talks about the Nuremberg trials which was one of the most famous international military trials which took place in late 1945. However, there were many other trials which occured throughout Europe. For example, in Norway all 55,000 Pro-Nazis were put on trial and also in Belgium by 1946, over 400,000 individuals had been investigated for collaboration with 57,000 of them being prosecuted. While it is still important to focus on Nuremberg, there was a lot more reconstruction and justice that took place throughout Europe than just Nuremberg itself.
I think both articles show how important it was for Europe to rebuild and essentially purge the nation in order to receive justice.
Foucault in Duchen notes that the events of les femmes tondues and public executions were less about the re-establishment of justice than the reactivation of power, it’s apparent that this was also the case across many post-war European countries. Reading all three articles brings to light the similarities across Europe that are shared as each nation attempts to come to terms with reshaping power structures and attempting to achieve enough justice to feel in a position to return to civil life. All three touched on in some way the idea of this through gendered violence and each from the perspective of a different nation, Duchen of les femmes tondues, Gebhardt of the Red Army’s r ape of German women, though Istvan only lightly touches on this while describing Norway’s refusal to grant citizenship to the offspring of German soldier/Norwegian relationships.
Duchen discussed that the head shaving has been tiptoed around by historians, in which they have tried to avoid appearing as siding with the nazi collaborators while not condoning the events. In their struggles to find a way to appropriately write of the events historians appear to have left themselves only a narrow window of analyses for many years after the war.
Also, something Istvan highlights is that Nuremberg was not a particularly distinctive or spectacular trial of its own. To me it shows that how things are popularly portrayed or remembered is not always reliable in itself and always worth researching.
On a slightly unrelated note, the other half of my joint degree is film and one way that justice and liberation found itself expressed was through new-wave film culture, using the ruined cities to film in and portray the rawness of emotion that were common at the time. For me it’s really interesting to see these parallels.
I think Duchens reading is particularly interesting and they touch on interesting matters of ‘revenge’ and ‘liberation’ and how they can so easily go hand-in-hand. Duchen brings to light the gendered element of the crimes in France and gives background on traditional roles of women in France and what was to be expected of them. Women were deemed to be symbolic of the nation and they were what held families and communities together during war and a nation and community could be destroyed if women were attacked. Therefore, many felt the nation had been weakened due to the action of some women who were involved with the enemy. It is also interesting how this may not only be a gendered issue but also a class issue. The women who are outed in society and arguably scapegoated to compensate for the humiliation French males endured at the hands of the Germans are pin-pointed as young, single – unmarried/divorced/widowed and usually poorly educated. These particular women were deemed a threat to social and moral order and undermined core values of the nation such as marriage and family. It is also touched upon about the repercussions of the head shavings which were so often accompanied by other forms of physical abuse with some women having to flee, some took their own lives, whilst others endured facing their abusers everyday. Duchen puts forward a very thought-provoking chapter and draws upon methods that seemed to be popular throughout the war and even in its aftermath with the use of public humiliation and degradation and a somewhat communal event.