Blitzmädel

I´m a bookworm and busy reader, so Santa brought me some nice books about the 40s and old movies last year. A speciality is this book about the Blitzmädchen, printed in the 70s.Thank you Santa for knowing my taste so well. I wanna show you some pictures and share some facts out of it:

During the entire WW II, women were involved on all sides. In Hitler's Germany, a woman should be a mother at first, staying at home and backing up her husband. But when in 1940 the occupied areas needed more stuff to administrate, the so called "Blitzmädels" filled up the ranks. In the beginning, they came voluntary, but later young women were called up. All in all  half a million women worked as Blitzmädels in the army, the marine and the air force. They were called Blitzmädels because of the Blitz signs on their uniforms. In 1940 every Blitzmädel got a uniform, later with the deprivation they just wore uprons or a brassard with civil clothes.

The boards were the same rations as the soldiers got.

Army postal service brought news and presents from home.

Most of the younger girls were looking for an adventure. But it was forbidden to have any personal contact to soldiers or civilians from occupied countries. Every Blitzmädel had to move once a year to another station to prevent deeper relationships. Even though the rules and controls were strict, a lot of romances and even marriages started here.

Most of the Blitzmädels did telecommunication for the Wehrmacht with machines like this:

 

For propaganda reasons the Nazis showed a young mother who left her two children at home with her grandmother to help the boys in the war.

In the end of the war, fire protection became more and more important

 and the girls learned how to handle a gun.

 Finally some of them died, some of them came home again  soon,

but most of them landed in war captivity.

 

 Hopefully we will never have a war again.