Sleeping With the Enemy

[Phlegethon]

03.05.2005

Sleeping With the Enemy

As US troops crossed into Germany, General Eisenhower gave his men strict orders to stay away from the locals. But thousands struck up relations with German women, and many of them fathered children they never knew.

The official reason for the fraternization ban introduced in September 1944 was to punish German civilians, while maintaining the authority of the occupying forces and protecting them from the insidious force of Nazi propaganda.

In fact, it served another, more delicate purpose. After landing in Italy in 1943, the Allied armies had been badly weakened by the rapid spread of venereal disease brought about by the soldiers' contact with prostitutes.

American GIs were warned against encounters with local women. But it was to no avail -- in the chaos of the postwar years, GIs and German girls both needed each other.

Corned beef and cigarettes

In 1945, Christa Ronke was 16 years old and working at an officers' mess hall in southwestern Berlin. "The GIs had an eye for the girls!" she said. "At first they saw us all as Nazis, but they soon relaxed. And they seemed so well-off, so good-looking and casual -- and they stood for the whole American way of life. They were hard to resist!"

After six years of a war which had left their own men either dead or physically and psychologically traumatized, the US servicemen were an irresistible draw for Germany's lonely, starving women.

The men could get them corned beef and cigarettes -- and show them a good time. "They had chocolate and silk stockings," said Ronke. "There were no German men left, but then suddenly there were all these young Americans to go out dancing with. They weren't like the Russians, who were so scrawny and poor -- compared, to them, even we Germans had a lot. It was the girls with American boyfriends who were envied."

Whores and traitors

"But the men coming back from the war hated it," explained Ronke. To them, the German women were fraternizing with the enemy -- exchanging sex for material gain. Punishments could be harsh -- some women were publicly denounced as whores and traitors, others had their heads shaved, while some were even set on fire. But it was a fact of life in the immediate aftermath of the war.

"American soldiers together with German women was a common sight," said Ronke. "They were crazy times."

Three out of four GIs had sexual encounters overseas, and by late 1945, one in five German babies was born out of wedlock. By 1955, up to 67,700 illegitimate children had been fathered by US soldiers -- some 5,000 of whom were Afro-American.

The "occupation children" were a thorn in the side of Adenauer's Germany -- especially the high percentage of mixed-race children, many of whom were sent to the US for adoption in the ensuing years. Not least, they were a huge financial burden on the country. US soldiers were exempt from having to pay child support unless they acknowledged paternity, and taxpayers had to bear the costs of the nation's illegitimate children of GI fathers.

Life was hard for both the children and their abandoned mothers. Their lovers had made promises -- marriage, a new life in the States -- that were cruelly broken. Many belatedly found out their boyfriends had wives back home. Ostracized by society, these women and their children became the pariahs of postwar Germany.







A happy end for some

Not all of the women who fell in love with GIs suffered an unhappy end. After the US Congress lifted the fraternization ban and passed the War Brides Act in December 1945, GIs were free to marry their German sweethearts. And they did so in droves.


In 1949, some 13,000 marriages between German women and US servicemen took place. Between 1946 and 1949, approximately 20,000 German women immigrated to the States. The first batch of European war brides set sail for America aboard the "Argentina," a steamship specially fitted out with nurseries. It marked the start of the largest single influx of mothers and infants into the US in two centuries.





But domestic bliss it wasn't. Maria M. was 16 when she met her GI husband in Munich. After a long courtship, she immigrated to the US in 1948, but she never felt at home in Ohio. Her husband had no family, and she was left to fend for herself while he went to work everyday. The locals were far from welcoming. “They considered me the devil, I was known as the 'Nazi girl'," she said. "I was isolated, nobody talked to me. It was like solitary confinement."

Gina R., felt equally lonely in the States. When she left Germany in 1950, she couldn’t believe how little her new American family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, talked to one another. "They just sat in front of the television all the time!" she said. "I was never happy in the States because I felt so homesick, so after two years my husband and I moved back here."



Author Jane Paulick, DW-WORLD.DE http://www.dw-world.de © Deutsche Welle

[Gil]

AH... the old adage "kill the men, rape the women" still at use but changed to "kill the men, get the women by giving them chocolate"....

[Phlegethon]

One more reason (if you ever needed one) why women should be controlled and better not trusted.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Wilhelm Landig, a German veteran, described a German woman in his second novel who waited, waited, waited for her German soldier to return from the war. In fact, he did return, minus a leg and an eye. In the meantime, this German woman abandoned him in the post-war German and began shaking up with a black American sargent. Believe me, I can not possibly do justice to Landig's description of the difference between people. On the one hand we have a soldier who fought for his country in the good times yet didn't abandon his country even in the darkest of hours, when all his friends were killed and he was blown apart. On the other hand we have a cheap slut whose only duty was to wait. One of Landig's characters said after hearing the story from the soldier sat back after some silence and said "some women can't wait". Of course, we all know what he was thinking.

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

On the one hand we have a soldier who fought for his country in the good times yet didn't abandon his country even in the darkest of hours, when all his friends were killed and he was blown apart. On the other hand we have a cheap slut whose only duty was to wait. One of Landig's characters said after hearing the story from the soldier sat back after some silence and said "some women can't wait". Of course, we all know what he was thinking.

Time after time, history and now genetic data testify that coalitions of men fight for hegemony, and women spread their legs for whoever wins. It's no different than when two teenagers fight over a girl, who waits on the sidelines to see who comes out on top.

Whether people like it or not, it's men that make history. For women, history is just pillow talk. And there are of course two sides to this coin: women hold humanity's number one most precious resource: motherhood.

[Helith]

Originally Posted by Scoob

Time after time, history and now genetic data testify that coalitions of men fight for hegemony, and women spread their legs for whoever wins. It's no different than when two teenagers fight over a girl, who waits on the sidelines to see who comes out on top.

Whether people like it or not, it's men that make history. For women, history is just pillow talk. And there are of course two sides to this coin: women hold humanity's number one most precious resource: motherhood.

Sweetie, then go make history and stop just talking about it!

Generalizing anything is usually relatively dangerous business, and this ' women spread their legs for whoever wins' is the most dangerous kind of generalizing. Do you put your mother, your sisters, your wife, in this category? And yet you talk about women holding the one precious resource humanity needs, what Europe needs to survive. Seeing as you are one of the glorious holders of the beacon of patriarchy you surely see that what you are saying is very much like the Islamic two-faced ' respect ' they claim to have for women. Is that Islamic type of respect for women your type of respect for women as well?

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by Helith

Generalizing anything is usually relatively dangerous business, and this ' women spread their legs for whoever wins' is the most dangerous kind of generalizing. Do you put your mother, your sisters, your wife, in this category? And yet you talk about women holding the one precious resource humanity needs, what Europe needs to survive. Seeing as you are one of the glorious holders of the beacon of patriarchy you surely see that what you are saying is very much like the Islamic two-faced ' respect ' they claim to have for women. Is that Islamic type of respect for women your type of respect for women as well?

I never said this was glorious or not. It simply is. Any ad hominem comments above are irrelevant, especially when discussing something as non-intellectual as sexual relations. When humans reproduce asexually and without uteri, then gender differences in priorities and life strategies might change. Until then: Vive le difference.

That's not to say that all women "must" do this. Simply that those who leave the most descendents (in other words, those who have the most Darwinian success), do. Feminists can mislabel traditional gender roles as "Islamic," but the fact remains that they were Greek and Roman long before the days of Mohammed, when the Arabs were unknown desert traders (and even matrilineal in some clans).

[Endovelicus]

Originally Posted by Scoob

I never said this was glorious or not. It simply is. Any ad hominem comments above are irrelevant, especially when discussing something as non-intellectual as sexual relations. When humans reproduce asexually and without uteri, then gender differences in priorities and life strategies might change. Until then: Vive le difference.

That's not to say that all women "must" do this. Simply that those who leave the most descendents (in other words, those who have the most Darwinian success), do. Feminists can mislabel traditional gender roles as "Islamic," but the fact remains that they were Greek and Roman long before the days of Mohammed, when the Arabs were unknown desert traders (and even matrilineal in some clans).

What about the Vestals and the Bacchanalia??? What about Athena Pallas??? What about the Walkyrias??

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by Endovelicus

What about the Vestals and the Bacchanalia??? What about Athena Pallas??? What about the Walkyrias??

The Vestals and Bacchantes were priestesses and housewives carrying out religious ceremonies. They were honored, but they didn't build societies. The Bacchantes might have mythologically killed male onlookers, but they never defended a city from attack.

Pallas Athena and the Walkyrias were goddeses, not real women. Just like the more modern female images of "Liberty," or even national "Germania," etc.: they all represented male ideals. This is not to say that women are powerless. They are immensely powerful in their own domain: the family. Think of Medea.

The point is that the world is built on often violent competition for resources by male coalitions. Women are: 1. physically weaker; 2. less able to organize on a "comradely basis" than men; 3. less tool (technologically) oriented. Just compare women's magazines with men's: men's are about sex, technology, politics, business, etc., while women's are about family, gossip, getting a boyfriend, looking good.

[Helith]

Originally Posted by Scoob

I never said this was glorious or not. It simply is. Any ad hominem comments above are irrelevant, especially when discussing something as non-intellectual as sexual relations. When humans reproduce asexually and without uteri, then gender differences in priorities and life strategies might change. Until then: Vive le difference.

That's not to say that all women "must" do this. Simply that those who leave the most descendents (in other words, those who have the most Darwinian success), do. Feminists can mislabel traditional gender roles as "Islamic," but the fact remains that they were Greek and Roman long before the days of Mohammed, when the Arabs were unknown desert traders (and even matrilineal in some clans).

Oh yes indeed. Vive la difference.

Again, traditional gender roles do NOT have to mean what you see as 'traditional' gender roles, be they islamic, greek or roman. Or maybe that is the case in your society, it certainly is not so in mine nor has it ever been the case in Scandinavian societies. If that makes us barbaric, I am sure we are proud to say that then we are indeed barbaric. Traditional gender roles mean very different things in different European societies as anybody who is, for example, familiar with both South European and Nordic societies can corroborate.

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by Helith

Oh yes indeed. Vive la difference.

Again, traditional gender roles do NOT have to mean what you see as 'traditional' gender roles, be they islamic, greek or roman. Or maybe that is the case in your society, it certainly is not so in mine nor has it ever been the case in Scandinavian societies. If that makes us barbaric, I am sure we are proud to say that then we are indeed barbaric. Traditional gender roles mean very different things in different European societies as anybody who is, for example, familiar with both South European and Nordic societies can corroborate.

I agree. Each society should have the right to establish its own norms of behavior. The task is to find ways to do this, especially in Europe, where powerful coalitions exist to destroy this organic cultural diversity in favor of a universalistic market-liberalism, where we are each "free" to work for international corporations and enjoy whatever products they choose to sell each season. And that is not real freedom for men or women.

[Strengthandhonour]

I agree with scoob with this one. Women don't discriminate as much as men when it comes to making friends,finding a lover,etc. That's why it's easier to see women with Africans than to see males with African women(not saying it dosn't happen, but it's more common to see that). That's probably also why the Blacks get the most women today, the fight like savages while the normal European male most of the time acts educated and refuses to fight a lot of times.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Originally Posted by Endovelicus

What about the Vestals and the Bacchanalia??? What about Athena Pallas??? What about the Walkyrias??

What about Margaret Thatcher?

[Gesta Bellica]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Wilhelm Landig, a German veteran, described a German woman in his second novel who waited, waited, waited for her German soldier to return from the war. In fact, he did return, minus a leg and an eye. In the meantime, this German woman abandoned him in the post-war German and began shaking up with a black American sargent. Believe me, I can not possibly do justice to Landig's description of the difference between people. On the one hand we have a soldier who fought for his country in the good times yet didn't abandon his country even in the darkest of hours, when all his friends were killed and he was blown apart. On the other hand we have a cheap slut whose only duty was to wait. One of Landig's characters said after hearing the story from the soldier sat back after some silence and said "some women can't wait". Of course, we all know what he was thinking.

One of the most famous Naples's traditional song is called "Tammuriata nera", and the lyrics tell us the story of one of the black children that were born in that city after the American soldiers occupied the city..

The story is the same, young teenagers attracted by cash, candies and other comfort goods that were impossible to find in a country that suffered from the war..

[Phlegethon]

Do you notice that nothing has changed since 1945?

"Candy Shop"
by 50 Cent (featuring Olivia)

[Intro: 50 Cent]
Yeah...
Uh huh
So seductive

[Chorus: 50 Cent & Olivia]
[50 Cent]
I take you to the candy shop
I'll let you lick the lollypop
Go 'head girl, don't you stop
Keep going 'til you hit the spot (woah)
[Olivia]
I'll take you to the candy shop
Boy one taste of what I got
I'll have you spending all you got
Keep going 'til you hit the spot (woah)

[Verse 1: 50 Cent]
You can have it your way, how do you want it
You gon' back that thing up or should i push up on it
Temperature rising, okay lets go to the next level
Dance floor jam packed, hot as a teakettle
I'll break it down for you now, baby it's simple
If you be a nympho, I'll be a nympho
In the hotel or in the back of the rental
On the beach or in the park, it's whatever you into
Got the magic stick, I'm the love doctor
Have your friends teasin you 'bout how sprung I gotcha
Wanna show me how you work it baby, no problem
Get on top then get to bouncing round like a low rider
I'm a seasons vet when it come to this shit
After you broke up a sweat you can play with the stick
I'm tryin to explain baby the best way I can
I melt in your mouth girl, not in your hands (ha ha)

[Chorus]

[Bridge: 50 Cent & Olivia]
Girl what we do (what we do)
And where we do (and where we do)
The things we do (things we do)
Are just between me and you (oh yeah)

[Verse 2: 50 Cent]
Give it to me baby, nice and slow
Climb on top, ride like you in the rodeo
You ain't never heard a sound like this before
Cause I ain't never put it down like this
Soon as I come through the door she get to pullin on my zipper
It's like it's a race who can get undressed quicker
Isn't it ironic how erotic it is to watch em in thongs
Had me thinking 'bout that ass after I'm gone
I touch the right spot at the right time
Lights on or lights off, she like it from behind
So seductive, you should see the way she wind
Her hips in slow-mo on the floor when we grind
As Long as she ain't stoppin, homie I aint stoppin
Drippin wet with sweat man its on and popping
All my champagne campaign, bottle after bottle its on
And we gon' sip til every bubble in the bottle is gone

[Chorus 2x]

Back to "Lyrics of the Week"

[Awar]

I fully agree with what Scoob said.