Illicit Encounters: Female Civilian Fraternization with Axis Prisoners of War in Second World War Britain

Abstract

The arrival of enemy prisoners of war in Britain from 1941 onwards and their use as a labour force in the hard-pressed British war economy meant that they came into increasing contact with civilians as the scope of their employment widened. Their deployment into labour battalions and billeting on farms meant that they had day-to-day contact with many women as well as men. This article charts the attempts by government agencies to limit civilian fraternization with both Italian and later German prisoners of war both during and after the war through the enforcement of defence regulations and other relevant legislation – showing how difficult this proved to be as circumstances changed and demonstrating that public perceptions of the prisoners changed after 1945 and how this was belatedly followed by relaxation of the relevant legislation. It also places government and public attitudes to fraternization within the contemporary debates on declining female morals and draws some comparisons with scholarship on women’s relations with foreign allied soldiers in the same period.