„Helmut Can Be a Worker, Not a Lover“: Relationships Between Germans POWs and French Women in Postwar France (1944–1948)
Edition: Palgrace Macmillan
Collectiion: Prisoners of War and Local Women in Europe and the United States, 1914-1956. Genders and Sexualities in History
ISBN: 978-3-030-83829-4
Veröffentlicht am: 25.04.2022
Weiteres:
Théofilakis, F. (2022). “Helmut Can Be a Worker, Not a Lover”: Relationships Between Germans POWs and French Women in Postwar France (1944–1948). In: Reiss, M., Feltman, B.K. (eds) Prisoners of War and Local Women in Europe and the United States, 1914-1956. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83830-0_9, p. 169-198.
Abtract of the book:
This book brings together historians from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Canada, Austria, and Latvia who have worked and published on fraternisation between Prisoners of War and local women during either the First or Second World War, providing the first comparative study of this multi-faceted phenomenon in different belligerent countries. By focusing on prisoners as wartime migrants and studying the nature and impact of their interactions with the local female population, this book expands the existing framework on prisoner of war studies. Its substantial scope and comparative approach make it an important point of reference in the growing research field of POW studies.
Abtract of the article:
The chapter „‚Helmut Can Be a Worker, Not a Lover‘: Relationships Between Germans POWs and French Women in Postwar France (1944–1948)“examines the relationship between French women and German prisoners of war (POWs) in France within the broader context of a society focused on the economic, moral, and political reconstruction of the Republic after the German occupation of the Second World War. Some 600,000 German prisoners of war lived and worked in France from mid-1944 to December 1948 and became an essential source of manpower, especially in the countryside. By focusing on the politics of gender and sexuality, the chapter shows how the Liberation press reflected and influenced public opinion on the relationships between German prisoners and French women. It analyzes the role of the French state in the restoration and creation of norms in postwar France and uses the German prisoners to discuss the country’s difficult transition from war to peace after liberation