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Rhineland women also monitored female sexuality in the occupied territories. S. army already had a history of dealing with forbidden sex among its ranks before the occupation period began. 73 But as part of its missionary zeal the occupation troops believed themselves models of righteousness for Germans to emulate, and therefore their behavior should be better. ”74 German authorities had traditionally maintained a relatively lax attitude toward prostitution by isolating sex workers to a “red light” district within towns and by examining them for disease regularly.

So long as a state of war continues, Germany remains enemy territory and there must be no intimate personal associations with its inhabitants. 31 From the doughboy’s perspective, the ban on fraternization thwarted his ability to fulfill his perceived political mission to help democratize the Rhineland. However, for the most part, soldiers analyzed, criticized, and poked fun at the order in its romantic connotation: fraternizing became a euphemism for romancing German women, and, they lamented, the anti-fraternization order prevented them from doing it.

S. occupation, the overall humiliation of the treaty-imposed occupation produced a thorn in the side of nationalist Germans, and they fought to regain control of their society. German men’s efforts at reclaiming the morality of their nation included guaranteeing the protection of German women’s purity from armed African men. 2 Imperialism and Postwar Reconciliation The International and Transnational “Rhineland Horror” Campaign Beginning in April 1920, various German citizens’ organizations, encouraged by their government, launched a campaign against France’s stationing of colonial African soldiers in its zone of the German Rhineland.