Women on the “Home Front”

While millions young men were sent to the front as soldiers, women on the “home front” took charge of providing for their families and organizing everyday life largely on their own. Women were compelled to do typical “men’s work”, for instance in the civil air defense. Gender boundaries became increasingly blurred.

The war also opened new opportunities for women in civil and military jobs. Young, unmarried women without children went to Poland and the Soviet Union as teachers, nursery school teachers, secretaries or workers in the economy. Women also worked in the Wehrmacht administration. They additionally provided “military support” after the attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.