history of sexuality class. The research paper is focusing on the sexuality of women in Nazi-Occupied France during WW2. How they used sex as a means of survival (food, shelter, status), to gain information, and then also the mass rapes of French women by German soldiers.
Germany occupied France early in the Second World War in May 1940. While France was under German occupation, many of the women of France had sexual relationships with the occupying German soldiers. These relationships were often used as a means of survival. For a struggling mother, sleeping with a German soldier may have been the only way to get food for their starving children. However, not all these relationships were consensual, many women were raped or forced into prostitution. At the end of World War Two, around 20,000 women were accused of collaborating with Germany had their heads publicly shaved.
