Hannah Cogan
(KCL) -
2023-24 Students
hannah.cogan@kcl.ac.uk
Gender and Postwar Justice: The Denazification of Women in the British Occupation Zone of Postwar Germany, 1945-1955
In 1986, pioneering feminist historian Claudia Koonz claimed that “the women among Hitler’s followers have fallen through the historian’s sieve, unclaimed by feminists and unnoticed by men.” While we now have significantly improved knowledge about women’s support for the Nazi regime, and their participation in its crimes, our understanding of the extent to which women “fell through the sieve” of denazification remains incomplete.
This project examines women’s denazification in the British occupation zone of postwar Germany. It asks how assumptions about femininity (particularly regarding women’s roles in Nazi Germany) shaped British denazification policy, and how women’s personal narratives produced for denazification purposes contributed to popular myths of female wartime victimhood. It is methodologically grounded in the gendered analysis of primary sources, including British policy documents, women’s political screening questionnaires, and records from women’s trials. It makes an original contribution to scholarship by bridging the gap between research on denazification and a feminist historiography skeptical of sweeping narratives of female victimhood in Nazi society.
My research is driven by two primary questions:
- How did gendered stereotypes influence British denazification policy and practice?
- How did German women exploit gendered tropes (e.g. passivity, domesticity, naivety) in personal narratives produced for denazification purposes?
We do not yet fully understand the interplay between gendered stereotypes and postwar justice. In the case of postwar Germany, it is doubtless that prevailing gendered stereotypes all but guaranteed that denazification could never succeed in delivering a thorough ideological and cultural reckoning with National Socialism. The historical record of denazification will remain poorly understood until female subjects of inquiry and gendered perspectives are fully integrated.
Primary Supervisor: Dr Christopher Dillon
Secondary Supervisor: Dr David Brydan