| Original caption: “This girl pays the penalty for having had personal relations with the Germans. Here, in the Montelimar area, France, French civilians shave her head as punishment.” Head shaving was often an expression of anger against people who were powerless to resist, to humiliate them, and often to take attention away from other collaborators. They were not always carried out in an official capacity. Collaboration could mean many things; in this specific case, whether or not this woman was just a prostitute, and not an active collaborator, continues to be the subject of some debate. Women who had sexual relationships with German soldiers were said to be guilty of “horizontal collaboration,” regardless of whether or not it was consensual. The Nazis punished rape harshly in the West, in contrast to the Eastern Front, where it was tacitly encouraged. Some 200,000 French-German children were born during the occupation, and their mothers hid their German heritage whenever possible to prevent their children from being shunned or ostracized. Pierre Boyer (October 22, 1920 – March 16, 2001) a member of the Saint-Affrique resistance, recalled in 1991: “At the liberation of Montpellier [a town ninety miles (150 kilometers) Montelimar] south of I was in a special maquis unit – a sort of maquis police. So I was in the town for several days. I was shocked to see the Tribunal Militaire try young collaborators in groups of ten, and sentence them all to death. And it wasn’t the Resistance or the maquis who shaved women’s heads and paraded them around naked in a cart. It was people who had done nothing in the Resistance.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii2227.jpg |
| Image Size | 760.70 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2346 x 2892 |
| Photographer | Smith |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | August 29, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | Montelimar |
| State or Province | Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes |
| Country | France |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-193785 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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