WW2 and Gender Relations in Germany

What was the impact of World War Two on gender relations in Germany? To do so we must examine three substantial areas of importance: ideology, trauma, and egalitarianism. The question of ideology is, of course, most important when considering the Third Reich itself -- which had specific ideas about gender roles -- and ultimately the question of post-war de-Nazification. The subject of trauma is arguably unavoidable in considering gender relations at the war's immediate conclusion and afterward, when the subject of mass rape of the German female population must be considered in light of what it says about gender relations more generally. And the issue of egalitarianism may help to explain why, nearly seventy years after the conclusion of World War Two, the most powerful person in Germany (and arguably in Europe) is currently a woman, Angela Merkel. A focus on these three specific...
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