Ukrainian

Romantic Relationships of Girls and Women with Soldiers of Enemy Armies during the German-Soviet War

Volodymyr Hinda, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Military-Historical Research, Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine)
ginda@ukr.net
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8373-148X

Pages of Military History of Ukraine. Kyiv, 2023. Issue 26. ISSN 2524-0366. pp. 74-90.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15407/sviu.2023.26.074
UDC [316.36+343.5]355.1"1941/1945"

Abstract

Purpose. In this scholarly article the author sets out to investigate romantic relationships between men and women belonging to enemy armies - in this case the Red Army and the Wehrmacht - during the German-Soviet war. The article also examines how society, relatives, military commanders and the state treated such romances and married couples. Those attitudes often led to condemnation and stigmatization in militarized society and to bans on such relationships and marriages at the level of state legislation.

Methodology. The study is based on the principles of objectivity, scholarly rigor, systematic analysis and historicism. Historical-comparative and historical-systemic methods are used. Their application makes it possible to compare attitudes toward romantic relationships between representatives of the belligerent states in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both at the state level and in society, and to show how military leadership addressed such situations through regulations and law.

Scientific novelty. On the basis of existing documentary material and, above all, memoir narratives, this study makes what the author describes as the first attempt in Ukrainian historical scholarship to illuminate the problems surrounding romantic relationships between men and women from opposing camps during the German-Soviet war. It identifies difficulties that couples encountered in society and within their families, analyzes likely reasons that led men and women to romantic relationships with members of an enemy society, examines how the belligerent states and their leaders reacted, and considers how such relationships among young people usually ended.

Conclusions. Romantic relationships between men and women from enemy camps were not isolated during the German-Soviet confrontation. Couples generally encountered numerous problems in everyday life and at the legislative, state and social levels. In the great majority of cases they became targets of prejudice in militarized society; relatives often rejected them or treated them with hostility; and states, following their ideological principles, prohibited such unions in law. Under the pressure of all these factors, couples usually separated over time because they could not live under such conditions. Only a few succeeded in building a family life together.

Keywords: German-Soviet war, love, woman, soldier, occupation, Nazis, sexuality, Soviet power, society, girl.

Introduction and historiography

Although more than seventy-eight years had passed since the end of the Second World War when this article was written, and professional historians had been studying it for roughly the same period, many subjects remained unexplored or only lightly researched. Romantic relationships between men and women and representatives of the enemy belong to this category.

The author notes that the subject is not a complete blank in foreign historiography. German and Austrian researchers have already produced scholarly studies on it. German historian Regina Muhlhauser, in particular, examines romantic relationships between German soldiers and Soviet women and also addresses relations between Soviet soldiers and German women.¹ Her Austrian colleague Barbara Stelzl-Marx considers the issue through the relationships of Austrian women with Soviet servicemen.²

Comparable studies were still absent from Ukrainian historical scholarship, although the topic periodically appeared in Ukrainian media in the form of stories and memories of eyewitnesses who encountered such situations during the turbulent wartime period.

The purpose of the article is therefore, through analysis of memoir literature and available archival sources, to investigate romantic relationships between men and women of the hostile states, show how society and the state treated such people, and analyze probable causes of the romances and their consequences for the couples.

Relationships with the enemy and public condemnation

Cases of romantic relationships with an enemy during armed conflicts have never been rare, and the German-Soviet war was no exception. Memoirs and interviews with people who survived the war show that loving an occupier was not easy.

Women and girls who had affairs with enemy soldiers had to choose between secret meetings and the danger of being accused of collaboration. In the eyes of many compatriots, both military and civilian, such women automatically became traitors because they had "given their bodies" to the enemy. Whenever possible they could be subjected to continual obstruction, contempt and even physical attacks.

The author also identifies ordinary male resentment and jealousy as a significant factor: the women had chosen enemy soldiers rather than local men.

Conflicts over such relationships arose not only with society at large but also with parents. Parents sometimes rejected their daughters' choices and feared condemnation from neighbors, especially in rural areas where public opinion carried great weight.

Not every family reacted negatively. Hostility was especially characteristic, according to the article, of that part of the population that regarded Soviet power as its own and therefore treated a daughter's relationship with a German as a betrayal of Soviet ideals and feared consequences after the Red Army returned.

Other sections of society did not regard the Communist regime as their own. For them, Wehrmacht soldiers could be seen as "liberators from the Bolsheviks." Such attitudes were especially common, the author writes, among families in regions incorporated into the Soviet Union shortly before or at the beginning of the German-Soviet war, including families affected by repression, dekulakization and similar Soviet policies. Some of these families treated their daughters' or sisters' relationships with German soldiers more tolerantly and in certain cases even encouraged them in hopes of gaining privileges or higher social standing.

Nazi Germany: race, marriage and discipline

The state leaderships were no more enthusiastic about such relationships than society and relatives were. In the Reich, Nazi racial doctrine treated such marriages as a threat of "contamination of Aryan blood." It was therefore extremely difficult for a German soldier to obtain permission to marry a local woman.

A possibility could arise if the intended bride had German ancestry or had obtained Volksdeutsche status. In that case the serviceman could petition his superior command for permission to marry, supplying the woman's biographical details and photograph. The higher authorities then decided the case.

Adolf Hitler, however, received such soldiers' applications without enthusiasm and believed that most should be rejected. In an April 1942 conversation with subordinates he complained about the continual stream of marriage petitions. Comparing photographs of soldiers and their prospective brides, he expressed the view that a supposedly genuine German marriage with women whom he described in disparaging racial terms as mostly physically unattractive foreigners could not, from the perspective of the nation's interests, produce a satisfactory result.³

The German authorities also feared moral disintegration of the army. A soldier who had created a family in occupied territory might begin thinking about the welfare of his family rather than the ideological goals of the Reich.

In an attempt to prevent this, Wehrmacht command issued on 8 June 1942 a "Memorandum to the Soldier on Conduct in the Occupied Eastern Territories." It stated in substance that, in occupied regions, the soldier represented the German Reich and its power and had to behave accordingly. A prolonged war and garrison duty created the danger of close relationships with civilian women, which the command considered undesirable.

The memorandum said that the prestige of the armed forces and the perceived danger to racial purity required special attention. It ordered German soldiers no longer to live individually in the homes of local residents. Soldiers were to be quartered together; when housing was needed, civilians could be removed from houses for that purpose. Near active combat, where quarters were required only for a short period, evacuation of local residents was not considered necessary.⁴

Wehrmacht soldiers did not always obey these instructions. Orders from Berlin especially irritated commanders who had already established families in occupied territories. Such men believed that Reich leaders did not always understand the realities of military life in the East.

The Soviet prohibition on marriages with foreigners

The Kremlin leadership took a somewhat different but equally restrictive approach. Red Army personnel were categorically prohibited from marrying foreigners. German soldiers, by contrast, could under certain circumstances receive permission to marry a foreign woman, and if the woman belonged to a population defined as Germanic there might be no obstacle at all.

In 1944-1945, as the Red Army entered European countries, Soviet authorities encountered growing numbers of romantic relationships between Red Army servicemen and European women. By early 1945 officers were already submitting requests for permission to marry foreign women.

The Soviet leadership quickly made its position clear: such marriages were to be treated as illegal, and directives were sent to all fronts. One instruction stated that the Main Personnel Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense continued to receive applications from officers of the active army asking for marriages with women of foreign states to be sanctioned. Such applications were to be treated as evidence of weakened vigilance and patriotic feeling. Political-educational work therefore had to explain in depth that Red Army officers must not commit such acts and that officers who did not understand the lack of prospects in such marriages should be taught the inadvisability of marrying foreigners, up to and including a direct prohibition; no such case was to be allowed.⁵

A resolution of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian Front dated 12 April 1945 emphasized that all officers and personnel had to be told that marriage to foreign women was illegal and categorically prohibited. A Soviet citizen's marriage, it said, had to be registered with Soviet civil registry authorities; other registrations were invalid and were not recognized by Soviet law.

The same resolution went farther, describing marriage to a foreign woman and registration of that marriage in institutions of a foreign state as a serious offense by a serviceman. Such marriages, the document asserted, could place Soviet officers "in the enemy's hands" and lead them to crimes against the Soviet motherland. Every case of a serviceman marrying a foreign woman, and every connection between Soviet personnel and supposedly hostile foreign elements, was to be reported immediately through the chain of command so that those responsible could be punished for loss of vigilance and violation of Soviet law.⁶

Red Army personnel who violated the rules could face military tribunals, officers' courts of honor, demotion, imprisonment and expulsion from the Communist Party. SMERSH often dealt with these "unfortunate lovers," because foreign wives were liable to be treated as spies who had recruited Soviet men on behalf of enemy intelligence services.

At the legislative level, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR formally prohibited marriages with foreigners by decree of 18 March 1947. After that decree, couples could face imprisonment under Article 58, including accusations framed as "anti-Soviet agitation."⁷

The author interprets this as an attempt by the Soviet system to prevent the "capitalist" and "socialist" worlds from drawing together in ways that might undermine the building of a "communist paradise." He adds that living conditions and, above all, individual rights in Western countries were visibly different from those in the USSR, something the Kremlin understood, and therefore the authorities sought to shield Soviet citizens from close contact with Europeans that might alter servicemen's worldview.

If a foreign wife was "exposed" as an enemy spy, the husband could face a military tribunal followed by execution or imprisonment. In some cases, however, the punishment was only demotion, suggesting that rank and commanders' attitudes could matter.

Engineer-Captain Sakovich, who married a German woman, was sentenced to imprisonment by a military tribunal. By contrast, on 5 April 1945 the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front merely demoted Lieutenant Colonel Yu. Mazny, deputy commander of the 74th Division, for conduct described as becoming absorbed in women and "giving life to German women." He was reassigned as commander of a rifle battalion and ordered to face an officers' court of honor. The author notes the oddity that the punishment apparently did not take into account that Mazny's German wife had herself confessed to being a Wehrmacht spy.⁸

Love despite the prohibitions

Military measures cooled some Soviet officers' romantic ambitions but not everyone's. Veteran Leonid Rabichev wrote that he fell deeply in love with a German woman in East Prussia. After they became intimate, he decided to submit a report to his commander stating his intention to marry her. A colleague urgently talked him out of it by reminding him of the danger of falling into SMERSH's hands.⁹ Rabichev was unable to continue the relationship because the woman later left her home for an unknown destination.

Some servicemen who refused to accept the ban on marriage to German or Austrian women tried to flee into the American, British or French occupation zones and from there emigrate permanently to the United States or Western Europe, or simply disappear in West Germany.

NKVD officers reported that among troops stationed in Austria in the summer of 1945, desertions by Red Army soldiers had become more frequent because of unauthorized marriages to Austrian women and attempts to remain in Austria with them.¹⁰ Some deserters were found, returned, imprisoned or executed. Barbara Stelzl-Marx gives an example of a Red Army soldier in Austria who deserted and escaped to France with the Austrian woman he loved.¹¹

Soviet servicemen also tried to obtain military documents for their foreign wives or to secure marriage certificates from sympathetic commanders. Major Trofimov, a doctor at Hospital No. 415, married a Polish woman in Krosno, Poland, despite already having a wife and two daughters in Voronezh. Using his position, he tried to place his new wife on the hospital staff.

Lieutenant Ignatovich married the German woman Therese Zontek in March 1945 and, with a commander's assistance, obtained a marriage certificate and Soviet documents for her under the surname Ignatovich.¹²

Such measures did not always work. A foreign woman was difficult to conceal among Soviet military personnel. Her manners and upbringing often differed noticeably from those of Soviet women, and above all her weak Russian immediately attracted attention. Sooner or later, "well-wishers" might report such cases to the authorities.

Couples had another option: accept that official marriage was impossible and simply live together without publicizing the relationship. Many did exactly that. Soviet commanders often preferred not to notice such arrangements as long as they did not interfere with service and the men did not demand legal marriage.

Colonel Liparit Karapetyan lived for almost a year and a half in an unofficial marriage with a German ballerina named Hannelore. She even raised his two daughters as her own. Recognizing that the relationship had no future under the circumstances, Hannelore left for West Germany, while Karapetyan was transferred to Kyiv at the end of 1949.¹³

As soon as a serviceman raised the question of marriage with his command, he could quickly be transferred to another unit or sent back to the USSR "to avoid trouble." Soviet-German marriages became legally possible from 1953, but in practice they continued to be blocked in the armed forces, with only a few exceptions, until the end of the GDR.¹⁴ The author suggests that the Kremlin may have relaxed the law partly to demonstrate its supposed democratic character to the West.

Attempts to preserve relationships and family life

The most desperate men tried to bring the women they loved into the USSR. Ivan Byvshikh especially remembered one case in which an officer of a cavalry squadron, preparing to return home, hid his German girlfriend in hay intended for the horses. She travelled for several days in a freight car, but in Minsk she was taken off the train and accused of espionage.¹⁵

German officers, when retreating, likewise tried to take their wives with them or send them to Germany. Parents did not always welcome their sons' chosen partners: they could treat the women suspiciously, condescendingly and without understanding. The women themselves also found it difficult to adapt to a new society. Prisoner of war Yuri Vladimirov recalled meeting in Germany, near the end of the war, a Russian woman who had married a German officer in 1942. He had taken her to his parents in Silesia. As the Red Army advanced, she was evacuated farther into Germany and was desperate at finding herself alone in a foreign country. According to Vladimirov, she deeply regretted marrying a German; in tears she threw her arms around the Soviet prisoner and begged him to take her back to her homeland.¹⁶

German officers normally did not risk remaining in the USSR with their wives, since they would almost inevitably fall into the hands of Soviet security agencies and, even in the best case, receive years of imprisonment. Those who did take the risk tried to obtain Soviet documents, lived under assumed surnames, rarely appeared in public or hid altogether, and sometimes feared telling even their own children the truth.

One such case concerned German non-commissioned officer Wilhelm Dietz, who loved the Ukrainian woman Fenia Ostryk. After the Red Army returned, he managed to remain with his wife in Smila in the Cherkasy region and lived with her for the rest of his life under another name. During the first years, before he learned Ukrainian, he had to hide in an attic and came down only at night. Once he could speak to local people without an accent, Fenia's family created a story that the friendly young man was her fiance, who worked and lived in Kyiv. The couple later managed to register their marriage locally. They gave the groom's name as Vasyl Ditsenko, but the passport official altered the surname to Dotsenko. Thus a new Dotsenko family appeared in Smila.

Fenia and Wilhelm later had a son, Pavlo. He did not suspect that his father Vasyl had actually been a German serviceman. He learned the truth only in 1988, after his mother died. His father then told him that he was not Vasyl Dotsenko but Wilhelm Dietz. After this "terrible" truth was revealed, the son helped his father locate relatives in Germany who had believed him dead.¹⁷

International couples understood that sooner or later they would probably have to separate when the man returned to his own country, but this did not stop them. When Ivan Byvshikh departed for the Soviet Union, he saw that his beloved Elisabeth Waldhelm was not the only German girl on the platform: other young women also waved white handkerchiefs to departing men. Ivan believed inwardly that he would never see Liza again, just as many officers who had fallen in love with German women would never see their partners again, yet he still hoped for a miracle.

In his case the miracle eventually happened. Their unusual love story continued into the twenty-first century: already an elderly man, Byvshikh found Liza in distant Luxembourg and married her. Their wedding took place in Siberia in 2008, where he lived.¹⁸ The author stresses, however, that this wartime "international love" story with a happy ending was exceptional. Under pressure from the Soviet authorities, the great majority of couples separated. What remained were memories of youth, romance and drama. For many women, children born of relationships with enemy soldiers also preserved that memory: the women often had to raise them alone or conceal from later husbands the truth about the children's biological fathers.

Why did such relationships begin?

Despite the obstacles and the possible consequences, women and girls still entered into romantic relationships with enemy soldiers. The article therefore asks what motives guided them. German researcher Regina Muhlhauser notes that the motives that led women in occupied territories to relationships with military personnel can still be reconstructed only cautiously and often speculatively, because very few of the women themselves spoke publicly about the subject.¹⁹

The author agrees with this warning and offers several reflections based mainly on the male narratives available to him. He notes that women's accounts might reveal many other motivations and that the subject requires further research built on a broader and more varied body of sources.

Love and physical attraction

The first motive discussed is disinterested love, including relationships that led to marriage. In such cases women and girls saw their chosen partners not primarily as soldiers or enemies but as men, responded to their physical attractiveness, and intended to build a family.

A woman from Donetsk who survived the occupation recalled the attractiveness of Italian soldiers in very coarse language: "The Italians were very handsome. We were simply dying for them. Mother, of course, chased us for it. But they were so damn handsome. They grabbed wherever they wanted. They dropped their trousers and went ahead."²⁰ Belarusian Adelaide Narkevich likewise emphasized the appearance of Italian soldiers: "The Italians were so handsome... war was war, but... you know, there was still some kind of interest."²¹ When German woman Elisabeth Waldhelm first saw her future beloved Ivan Byvshikh, she quietly whispered to her sister: "Look what a handsome Russian."²²

Kyiv resident Valentyn Terno described another such romance in his memoirs. A beautiful young woman with a small boy lived in their building and had a relationship with a German captain. Terno remembered him as a tall, slim and handsome man of about thirty, very polite, who greeted the neighbors in Russian. His kind, somewhat sad eyes and attentive, benevolent manner seemed to express sympathy for the subjugated people. He arrived at the same time carrying a travelling bag and handed sweets to children he met. Most residents of the building regarded him sympathetically and saw the captain and the young woman as an ideal couple; Terno wrote that they were bound by sincere love.²³

German officer Hans Rapp met a woman named Khramtsova while staying in the apartment of one of her friends. Mutual sympathy arose immediately, helped by the fact that she spoke German very well and therefore removed many of the obstacles to communication. Rapp later wrote that it was "an extraordinarily pure, romantic love" unlike anything he experienced afterward, and that even fifty years later he remembered it as something almost unearthly.²⁴

Language barriers

Couples dealt with language barriers however they could. They sometimes spoke or corresponded through third parties who knew the language, or relied on gestures. During the occupation Adelaide Narkevich had a romance with an Italian soldier. They communicated and exchanged letters through one of the Italian's comrades, a Yugoslav serviceman who knew some Russian. Narkevich recalled that Yugoslav languages were somewhat similar to Russian and shared Slavic words; the Yugoslav wrote the letters on the Italian's behalf, while the Italian only signed them.²⁵

For veteran Nikolai Nikulin, not knowing German did not prevent a relationship with a German woman. He wrote that they understood each other through looks and gestures and experienced an "astonishing fullness of understanding."²⁶

Status, protection and material survival

For some women, a relationship with a serviceman who represented the occupying power also offered a way to obtain status or practical protection. Such relationships could address social problems created by hunger, cold and poverty, and in some cases could reduce the danger of forced labor in the Reich or imprisonment. A powerful protector might also help a woman's relatives.

General Commissioner Magas, who was in love with Halyna Yatseniuk, a ballerina at the Zhytomyr theater, rented an expensive apartment for her in the city. In November 1941 the Germans arrested her father and brother, but after Halyna appealed to the official, they were released within several days.²⁷ In Novohrad-Volynskyi, an official of the district labor department complained that military men were protecting their Ukrainian mistresses from deportation to forced labor in the Reich.²⁸

Red Army soldier Vladimir Gelfand recalled dating a beautiful German girl named Margot and regularly bringing food to her home, for which her relatives were extremely grateful. Although Margot did not like him, she tolerated his courtship. Gelfand wrote: "The girl's mother was pleased with me. Of course! On the altar of her relatives' trust I had placed sweets and butter, sausage and expensive German cigarettes. Half of these products alone is enough to give one the full right to do anything one wants with a girl before her mother's eyes, and she will say nothing against it. Food today is more precious than life."²⁹

Lieutenant Granchenko of the 730th Artillery Regiment tried by every available means to secure the release of a German woman with whom he lived. Captain Troshin, responsible for artillery supplies in another Red Army unit, tried to help release the arrested sister of his German mistress. He obtained permission from the prison administration to visit the woman and brought her a parcel.³⁰

Ordinary soldiers did not have the same ability as officers to protect their partners because of military hierarchy. Kharkiv resident Alexandra Galkina recalled a girl who had been with her in a camp in Germany. While living in Kharkiv, that girl had dated an Austrian soldier. When he later received leave, he found her in the camp and obtained permission from the camp authorities to take her to Austria for two weeks.³¹

Attraction to the unfamiliar

Another motive was fascination with what seemed unfamiliar and new, a factor the author regards as relevant to both female and male behavior. For some Soviet women and girls, Wehrmacht servicemen were attractive because of a cultural and aesthetic image that differed sharply from what they knew in Soviet life: the men were clean-shaven and neat, smelled of perfume, knew how to court women, brought gifts and chocolate, and paid compliments. For many women this was an unfamiliar side of life and therefore especially attractive.

Screenwriter Oleksandr Dovzhenko, reflecting on women's relationships with Germans, wrote that the Germans were attentive suitors and that very little was needed to win the heart of a woman raised amid roughness and indifference toward women. He described this as a heavy price for poor upbringing of the young, crude insults toward girls, disregard for women's nature, disrespect, roughness, the absence of fashion, elegance and good manners, and the many other deficiencies that, in his view, had made women's and girls' lives sad and colorless.³²

Russian researcher Elena Senyavskaya writes that German women were attracted not only by curiosity about Red Army men but also by what they perceived as the soldiers' generosity toward women they liked, in contrast with supposedly stingy and calculating Europeans.³³ Veterans likewise recalled that the interest between Red Army men and European women could be mutual.

Junior Lieutenant Daniil Zlatkin, who served on the Danish island of Bornholm near the end of the war, remembered that Soviet soldiers had gone a long time without women and felt a strong need for female company. In Denmark, he said, relations were freer. In his recollection, Danish women wanted to "try" and experience what a Russian man was like, and he believed the Russians sometimes compared favorably with Danes because they were disinterested and kind. He illustrated this by recalling that he might give a box of sweets large enough to cover half a table or a hundred roses to a woman he did not know for her birthday.³⁴

Loneliness, care and the desire for ordinary human feeling

Women who had lost husbands and means of support could find themselves alone with the task of saving themselves and their relatives from destitution. The psychological pressure could create a simple need for conversation with a man, understanding, protection and care. A diary kept by a girl from Znamianka, for example, shows her seeking what she regarded as pure love despite the war and repeatedly looking for such relationships with German soldiers.

At times, however, passion took over. The diary contains the following passage: "His kiss calms me. Harst's pure, tender kiss. But he started again. This time I went too far with him. I could no longer stop his passion, and I myself was ready to become his... It was so close! It could not have been closer... I was almost unconscious; I remember only repeating Harst's name and begging him to spare me, but his passionate 'no' deprived me of self-control."³⁵

Wartime narratives also show soldiers looking for romantic and, in their understanding, pure love at the front, rather than the vulgarity, casual sex and debauchery that were also common there. In his memoirs Lev Rabichev repeatedly describes situations in which he refused one-time sexual encounters with women at the front because he wanted a romantic relationship instead.³⁶

A young Belarusian underground worker named Halina recalled that her work often brought her into contact with young German soldiers at parties, where she could temporarily escape the daily reality of war by talking and dancing with them: "There was an opportunity to laugh, to rest a little. It was simply human."³⁷ The author argues that this "simply human" need — to love, to be loved and to feel safe — was precisely what some women lacked. When a man appeared who listened to them, allowed them to unburden themselves, or offered help without demanding payment, emotional closeness and love could develop quickly. Shared interests and tastes also mattered.

Men, especially Red Army soldiers who had sometimes spent years without female affection, attention or care, also lacked ordinary communication with the opposite sex. Soviet veterans' memoirs repeatedly describe fascination with German women who temporarily drew them out of military everyday life and returned them to what they experienced as normal human life with its emotions and spiritual values.

Nikolai Nikulin wrote of his relationship with the German woman Erika: "For me Erika was above all the embodiment of what lies beyond war, of what is far from its horrors, its dirt, its baseness, its vileness. She became for me the center of the spiritual values I had dreamed of and desired." He continued that the most terrible thing in war was to exist in a spiritual vacuum, amid baseness and vulgarity, where a person ceased to be human and became like a fish thrown onto sand. Erika, he wrote, returned him to an atmosphere of which he had long been deprived, and he answered her with the purest and brightest feelings of which he was capable. He described those hours as among the rarest in life: from "four paws," with one's nose pressed into gray everyday existence, he rose onto two feet, straightened himself, squared his shoulders and saw the stars. They were, he wrote, hours and days of the highest insight and purification.³⁸

Conclusion

The article concludes that during the German-Soviet war romantic relationships between men and women from opposing camps were a widespread phenomenon despite condemnation by militarized societies. The governments of the belligerent states prohibited such marriages through law and regulation. Servicemen could be demoted, transferred to another place of service or sentenced to imprisonment, yet those measures did not always stop couples.

The most desperate tried to escape to other countries, concealed their relationships, or lived together without marrying in an attempt to preserve a family life. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, pressure from society and legal prohibitions ultimately caused the relationships to break down.

References