When France was liberated from Nazi occupation in the summer of 1944, jubilant scenes of celebration filled the streets. But amid the cheering and waving flags, a darker, more painful drama unfolded—one that is rarely discussed in history books: the brutal public shaming and punishment of French women accused of collaborating with the Germans.
These women, many of whom had relationships with German soldiers—some consensual, some coerced—became symbols of betrayal in the eyes of the French resistance and their neighbors. What happened to them in the chaotic days after liberation reveals a raw and complex side of war, gender, and vengeance.
"Collaboration Horizontale"
In occupied France, some women formed intimate relationships with German officers. While a few did so out of genuine affection, others were motivated by survival—access to food, protection, or to spare their families from persecution. This became known as “collaboration horizontale”—horizontal collaboration—a term used to shame women seen as having fraternized with the enemy.
Estimates suggest that 20,000 to 30,000 French women were punished for such behavior, though few had actually committed crimes beyond social association or romantic involvement.
The Liberation and the Shaming Rituals
When Allied forces and the Free French Army rolled into towns across France in 1944, a wave of extrajudicial justice erupted. In town squares and along cobbled streets, crowds gathered—not just to celebrate, but to exact punishment on perceived collaborators.
Young women were dragged from their homes, often beaten or stripped. The most common and symbolic act of retribution was head shaving. Publicly humiliated, these women were paraded through towns as their shorn heads marked them for scorn.
Many were daubed with swastikas in paint or had signs hung around their necks branding them as traitors. Some had children in their arms—infants born from their relationships with German soldiers—who were also subjected to ridicule.
Were They All Guilty?
Historians now argue that the post-liberation purges were often driven more by emotion than justice. In many cases, women were punished not for betraying the Resistance, but for perceived immorality or social resentment. Men who had collaborated economically or politically with the Nazis were often tried in courts—but women were punished on the spot, by the community, without legal proceedings.
This gendered approach to justice reflected deeper societal issues: women’s bodies became the battleground for national revenge.
A Forgotten Chapter
For decades, this chapter of history was largely ignored or sanitized in official narratives of liberation. Only in recent years have historians and filmmakers begun to explore these events with nuance—acknowledging the mix of collaboration, survival, coercion, and revenge.
Some of the women never recovered socially or emotionally. Others moved away, changed identities, or lived in silence for the rest of their lives.