“Femmes à Boches”. Sexual encounters between occupiers and occupied (France and Belgium, 1914-1918)

Abstract

Between 1914 and 1918, in occupied territories of the Western Front, tens of thousands Belgian and French women experienced sexual intercourse with German occupiers. Misery and gender imbalance made the prostitution explode. The spreading of venereal diseases forced an uneasy cooperation between occupying and occupied authorities to counter them. Sentimental affairs also embodied the phenomenon, but in any case, women who dated Germans were rejected by their community, sometimes very violently