Fraternizing With The Enemy

After coming home defeated and changed by the trauma and horror of war, it seems German men could not even enjoy the simple solace of their woman's embrace. Instead, they saw many of their countrywomen fraternizing with occupation troops. Biddiscombe outlines reactions to this in Dangerous Liasons, which range from indifference to extremity. Anti-fraternization campaigns took off in Germany, targeted centrally against American troops, and leading also to the strange trend of German men cutting the hair of women who had liasons with occupying soldiers.

Biddiscomb's intentions here are important- "The fact that young men intimidated women in various countries is not an argument in favor of sociobiological determinism, as if bullying women is an act grounded in the natural order of things. Whether male aggressiveness is a universal attribute is an issue hotly debated, but even if it is, the counterclaim is that culture is predominant, in the sense that it liberates human behavior from biological determinants. In immediate post-Nazi Germany and Austria, however, cultural inhibitors were even more absent than in other societies, given the fact that young men had just been subjected to a steady propoganda diet glorifying violence, Aryanism, militarism, and a raw code of patriarchal 'manliness.'"

It does not take a leap of the imagination to understand some of these German soldiers. They had just lost a war, only to see the men who had been shooting at them enjoying their countrywomen. After being so subjected to ideas of Nazi militance and superiority, their shame must have been overwhelming. The only people they could exercise rage against, however, were their women. This is a great example of litost- that great Czech word with no English equivalent. It is a "state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery, a state of feeling miserable and humiliated. Litost awakens a desire for revenge, a desire to strike back at the cause of one’s misery and humiliation."

The idea of women as war spoils is such an anachronism it's hardly worth mentioning- Helen of Troy here takes the guise of Helga of Berlin. But for many of these women, there was economic impetus to fraternization. It was survival. The rage their brothers and fathers endured can be seen as some of the last vestiges in common, domestic Nazism, before the doctrine extended to fringe racist organizations.