In the spring of 1944, during a heavy air raid, a searchlight installation stood next to Elizabeth Zimmer’s anti-aircraft battery. The girls serving that installation, terrified by the bombs crashing around them, abandoned their posts and fled to the shelter. For desertion in the face of the enemy, they were later shot. This was the fate of German women who served at the guns, and it was not an isolated incident.

It was one of the many unspoken realities of a war that history has long preferred to remember differently. The official narrative has diligently convinced us that German women and girls anxiously awaited their husbands from the front, raising children and maintaining order in their households. But this is not entirely true. Or rather, it is not true at all.

To be absolutely precise, this was true only at the initial stage of the Second World War, when Germany marched triumphantly across Europe. The longer the campaign dragged on, and even more so after crushing defeats, the war demanded more and more soldiers. Women began to replace conscripted men almost everywhere. In theory, the faithful wife and bride waited on her husband, took care of their children, farmed in the villages, and read reports from France.

At the same time, she supported those who had already lost their man, organized fundraisers to help widows, disabled war veterans, and orphaned children. Women helped deliver mail and held various charity and public events. But on the home front, the demands went far beyond knitting socks and writing letters. In Germany there was the Todt Organization and the women’s labor units, and enlistment in these was not voluntary at all.

To replace the men drafted to the front, civilian labor was needed, and for this purpose, labor conscription was introduced in Germany as early as 1941. According to some reports, there were at least eighty thousand girls and women in the so-called women’s labor units at any given time, not counting their supervisory staff. The situation in the Todt Organization was about the same. To this must be added the women’s labor camps, staffed not on a voluntary basis; German women and girls convicted of all sorts of offenses served their sentences there.

Even this was not enough, so the German government organized the so-called military auxiliary service. In this service, girl workers served for six months and then transferred for another six months to the detachment of the State Labor Duty. Women in the military auxiliary service were recruited for service in almost all branches of the military, the department, industry, transport, and so on. Many units were even sent to the active army for logistical support.

Walter Kampf wrote quite transparently about this application. It was not uncommon for entire squads of women and girls to be transferred entirely to the Air Force as auxiliary liaison squads. In the last phase of the war, many German air defense searchlight batteries were equipped with women from labor service units. By January 27, 1943, a government decree had announced the draft, and in fact the mobilization, of women aged seventeen to forty-five to work in various defense enterprises and to serve in auxiliary units, fire brigades, and air defense troops.

It is not common to remember this, but at least two hundred seventy thousand girls and women aged eighteen to forty served in the city fire brigades alone. On their shoulders rested the work of extinguishing incendiary bombs, eliminating fires, and rescuing residents. The shortage of specialists in air defense units soon led to the replacement of men by German girls and women. They became observers at air surveillance posts, warning and communication services, and aircraft tracking stations.

According to some reports, at least two hundred thousand girls and women also served in air defense. According to others, all told, between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand girls served in the fire department and air defense units as so-called conscripts. Moreover, discipline and order in these units were no different from those in the army. The story of Elizabeth Zimmer and the shot searchlight crew illustrates this.

During one strong air raid, there was a searchlight installation next to her battery. The girls whose service was there were frightened by so many exploding bombs and fled to the shelter. They were later shot because of their cowardice. The topic of women in the military is virtually not covered, but the fact remains that girls and women often found themselves even closer to the front than their men.

In order to supply the troops, the German armed forces freed men wherever possible. Thus, the positions of clerks, signalers, telephone operators, and the like began to be filled almost exclusively by women. However, this was only enough to provide reserves for 1942. Going back to 1941, women’s auxiliary units were created for the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy.

In 1942, the same fleet added an auxiliary air surveillance service, and in 1943, again, a women’s anti-aircraft service. In total, about fifty thousand women fought directly at the front. There is evidence that women even served as wardens. In addition to the rather famous female guards of the concentration camps, there were other women and girls who were less famous for their deeds.

Candidates were attracted to the camps by high wages, security, career opportunities, and to some extent, options for fairly quick enrichment by robbing prisoners and appropriating valuable things. According to various sources, about four thousand women served in the SS structures as overseers. Beyond the camps, there were two categories of women whose roles the public narrative rarely mentions. The first was tied to the Aryan birthing program and the officially legalized polygamy of the Reich.

These women and girls took part in so-called deliveries of the request. Having become pregnant from the appointed father, the girls ended up in special maternity institutions where they were provided with fairly good care, maintenance, and medical care. Oddly enough, within the framework of the propaganda ideology, many looked at this rather calmly. The second category of women was much lower in status but was no less popular.

Many ladies went to work in brothels, and some of them were in the front lines. The most interesting thing is that, contrary to popular belief, it was not the endangered servants from the occupied districts who most often worked in the official front houses, but pure German women. When historians talk about the guards, who numbered about four thousand, some forget to tell that according to various estimates, around three hundred thousand to half a million girls and women aged twenty to thirty left to work voluntarily in the occupied Eastern regions. The duties they performed were very different.

Some worked in concentration camps where they had no restrictions at all, as in Europe. Others served in various Sonder Commandos engaged in the identification of persons of Jewish and Gypsy nationalities and were engaged in the control of order in various ghettos. Many women worked as so-called administrators of a particular area, where they became full rulers of the souls and bodies of the local population. In their free time from so-called work, such ladies tried to entertain themselves in various ways.

For example, in the Lida regions of Belarus, the ladies loved to hunt rabbits. If the hunt turned out to be unsuccessful, they would start shooting at the working Jews. Historian Wendy Lower gave a brief and succinct description of such overseers. Hitler’s female helpers were not marginal status or psychopaths.

On the contrary, they represent an entire generation of German women who grew up under the Nazis in the 1930s. They were all young, zombified, ruthless, and very ambitious.