Prostitution Under Nazis

• Conflict between Care Officers and the Morals Police continued under the Nazis.
• The Reichstag Fire Decree, which effectively abolished civil rights, led to immediate action against women suspected of prostitution. Starting on the 1st March, the day after the Decree, the Morals Police began mass arrests of women suspected of sex work. In the first 2 months, more than 3200 women were arrested in Hamburg alone, in spire of the fact prostitution was no longer illegal. By December 1933, over 1500 women were serving prison sentences for prostitution in Hamburg.
• In June, the Morals Police reinstated official brothels and gated streets, banning women known as prostitutes from large areas of the town. Care Officers fought back by committing women working in the sex trade to hospitals or other caring institutions.
• Official campaigns against women suspected of prostitution continued into the 1930s.
• In 1937 and 1938 in Leipzig Nazi officials sent women believed to be prostitutes to workhouses, in order to be redeemed through labour.
• Increasing numbers of women were required to undertake re-education due to their 'sexual deviancy'. Women at risk of becoming prostitutes, so-called 'morally endangered girls', and women who had successive sexual partners could also be incarcerated by the Morals Police or Care Officers. Nazi officials, the Morals Police and Care Officers were often united in the view that women who rejected monogamy presented a danger to society, due to the moral corruption and disease they might be spreading.
• The number of women imprisoned for sexual offences in Hamburg rose to 2130 by 1937. Consequently, by the mid-1930s women could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives simply because a Care Officer or police officer believed they had the potential to act immorally.
• 'Sexually deviant' women could also be classified as:

  • morally delinquent
  • mentally weak
  • asocial
  • workshy
• Care Officers or Morals Police could deny them access to welfare and health services on the basis they should be prevented from living and breeding for the good of the race.
• Nazis carried out a campaign of sterilisation against women deemed unfit to breed. This sterilisation programme was dangerous and therefore death rates were high.
• Women could also be sent to SS camps and in 1939 the SS opened their first all female camp at Ravensbruck. By 1943 there were 1600 women in SS camps, all assigned to 'extermination through work'.
• The SS ran their own brothel, Salon Kitty, which was a high-class brothel in Berlin, taken over by Heydrich in 1939. It served 2 purposes:

  • provided sex for high-ranking Nazis - including Heydrich
  • Foreign diplomats were invited to visit - prostitutes were encouraged to talk to their clients, as all of the rooms were bugged - therefore, it provided secret information to the Nazi government