“Gun women” was the contemptuous German term for Soviet women who carried or fired weapons. Many Soviet women were without uniforms and thus considered de facto partisans. The Germans looked upon armed Soviet women as “unnatural” and consequently had no compunction about shooting such “vermin” as soon as they were captured. The verbal degradation of enemy females made it easier for German soldiers to overcome any inhibitions about harming women. Nazi propaganda also mocked American Wacs as traitors to their sex because they performed functions in the army under the pretense of emancipation.
Nazis resisted weapons training for women auxiliaries serving with the army or Luftwaffe until the final stages of the war. As Reichsleiter Martin Bormann sputtered to Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels, as late as November 1944, “As long as there is still one single man employed at a work place in the Wehrmacht that could as well be occupied by a woman, the employment of armed women must be rejected.” But, more and more desperate every day, Hitler capitulated in February 1945 and created an experimental women’s infantry battalion. Ironically, this unit’s mission was in part to shame cowardly men who were evading their natural gender role of dying for their country—thousands of men were deserting in 1945. In any event, the war ended before the women’s battalion could be raised and trained.
More than 21,000 Army nurses work in military hospitals in the U.S. and abroad. The Army recruits more than 200 bilingual telephone operators to work switchboards near the front in France. These first American Soldiers of WWI are nicknamed "The Hello Girls." After training, the first operators, under the leadership of Chief Operator Grace Banker, depart for Europe in March 1918. Members of this unit were soon operating telephones in many exchanges of the American Expeditionary Forces in Paris, Chaumont, and seventy-five other French locations and British locations in London, Southampton, and Winchester. The Chief Operator of the Second American Unit of Telephone Operators was Inez Crittenden of California. In 2019, these women soldiers were recognized for their exceptional service and inducted into the U.S. Army Women's Hall of Fame.
Every year, millions of women around the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, fall victim to armed conflict. These violent conflicts, sometimes linked to extremism, do not spare women, young girls and even young children. The women we accompany are victims of arbitrary executions, arrests, rape, sexual assault and many other gender based violence. Others are caught up in sexual slavery, enrolled in forced displacement. Sexual violence against women, young girls and even children is widespread in conflict situations, and is used as a tactic of war. Globally sexual violence is used as a weapon of war and a political weapon.
Stop using women and girls as weapons of war says MMM member
