Until , there were around military brothels of this kind in German-occupied Europe , [ 2 ] serving travelling soldiers and those withdrawn from the front. The Foreign Ministry of the Polish Government in Exile issued a document on May 3, , describing the mass kidnapping raids conducted in Polish cities with the aim of capturing young women, as young as 15, [ 5 ] for sexual slavery at brothels run by the German military.
One of the soldiers pulls out a pocket flashlight and shines it on one of the women, straight into her eyes. The two women turn their pale faces to us, expressing weariness and resignation. The first one is about 30 years old. Owner of the flashlight directs the light again on the faces and bodies of girls. The youngest is maybe 15 years old They open her coat and start groping her with their lustfull paws.
Conditions in brothels were brutal. The women were often raped by up to 32 men per day; the visiting soldiers were allocated 15 minutes each at a nominal cost of 3 Reichsmarks per "session" between the hours of 2 p. In the Soviet Union , women were kidnapped by German forces for prostitution as well; one report by International Military Tribunal writes: "in the city of Smolensk the German Command opened a brothel for officers in one of the hotels into which hundreds of women and girls were driven; they were mercilessly dragged down the street by their arms and hair.
Although it contradicted the ideals of Aryan "moral strength and purity", the brothels were justified as acceptable sexual outlets for Nazi soldiers. The Nazis believed that they were a better alternative than having sexual relations with local foreign women and forced laborers. They also believed that interacting with prostitutes was no different than interacting with naked female prisoners in Nazi camps. In one such instance, a group of Polish and Soviet women imprisoned at a German military brothel located in Norway escaped in They found refuge in the local Lutheran Church which offered them asylum.
The Wehrmacht was able to establish a thoroughly bureaucratic system of around new brothels already before , based on an existing system of government-controlled ones β wrote Inse Meinen.
