While rumors had long swirled about the persecution of Jews and other Nazi targets, their realities would not become widely known until the Allies reversed the tide of German expansion in Europe. The Soviets faced unimaginable losses - more than any other nation in the war - as they fought to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the Nazi invasion of their lands. Yet, it would be the combined efforts of the Soviets and the Western Allies that truly fractured the Nazi regime. This required the Allied invasion of France in June 1944, which forced the Nazis to try to hold off overwhelming forces on two separate fronts. 

While there were a number of places that were advantageous for this second front, France was the likely target where an eager civilian population, armed by people in the SOE, waited to join in the fight. Still, the task was daunting. The Allies were going to be forced to invade France by sea, while the formidable German Atlantic Wall and its defenders blocked their path to the land where those French collaborators waited. Casualties were expected to skyrocket, and there was doubt if the initial invasion would be successful at all. 

Among those to capture the Normandy Landings was journalist Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn already had a reputation as a war correspondent for conflicts around the world, as well as that of a political activist in the U.S., earning her a personal friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. When the war broke out, she reported on its events from around the world, using her notoriety to gain access to major decision-makers and events. When the invasion of France was looming, Gellhorn had tried to use that notoriety to be permitted to cover the D-Day invasion, but was denied, as no correspondents were going to be allowed to cover the initial waves of the landings, and no women were going to be permitted at all. Undeterred, Gellhorn pretended to be a nurse reporting for duty on a hospital ship, and hiding on the ship for two days, she went ashore at Omaha Beach – the only female correspondent to do so on D-Day – and helped to move wounded soldiers back to the hospital ship. She was sanctioned for this breach of conduct, but her fame allowed her to continue to cover the war through less-conventional means.

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Women had played roles in the development of the invasion’s strategy - which stretched from the Normandy Landings to the Liberation of France, two months later - the production and transport of supplies and food needed to make it possible, and then, French women witnessed the invasion first hand. One of the best eye witnesses was Marie Louise Osmont, who kept a diary throughout the war and the morning of the invasion. Her gorgeous home, sat moments from the beaches, and had been occupied by the Nazis since the fall of France. 

On June 6th, she wrote a much longer entry than normal, writing, “Landing! During the night [...] I am awakened by a considerable rumbling of airplanes and by cannon fire, prolonged but fairly far away. Then noises in the garden and in the house: talking, loading ammunition boxes, nailing [...] We’re deafened by the airplanes, which make never-ending round.” She goes on to explain how she still had to feed her farm animals during the earth-shattering invasion, that parts of her home were hit by shells, how her Nazi occupiers were “nuts,” and even how she had to keep cooking during the onslaught. At some point, one of the Nazis says, “the Tommies are here” and her occupiers finally flee. She doesn’t see English soldiers for several hours, but the next day she witnesses what she calls a “horrifying” airplane battle. Her windows were broken, and she said, “You have the feeling that a runaway train is passing over your body.”  

That day, Osmont notes that a French flag was rehung over the school by the Allied soldiers, and soldiers passed out chocolate, cigarettes, and other goods the French had not seen in years. Following the D-Day landings in June 1944, Allied troops and the resistance liberated towns in France, sparking collective euphoria. The Nazis had been occupying the country for several years at this point, and everyone had felt the weight and the fear that came along with that. To see their own flag and their World War I allies flooding onto their shores was cause for mass celebration. Parades, music, and women flocking to kiss Allied soldiers in thanks became emblematic of France’s liberation. 

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This Allied invasion of Continental Europe was captured by photographers, videographers, and war correspondents, like American model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Miller had been living in London when the war broke out, and joined the U.S. Army as a war correspondent in 1942. Her earliest work was reporting on the Allied nurses serving across the European Theater and the horrors that they faced. While female correspondents were expected to be kept far from the dangers of the battlefield, Miller snuck her way to the front lines to capture the visual realities of combat that the soldiers of the war faced, the testimony of soldiers, and the treatment of civilians. She is credited with photographing the first official use of napalm, the liberation of Paris, the inhumanity of the concentration camps, and the suffering of war-torn Europeans in the war’s aftermath. Her defiance of military regulations had her relegated to house arrest and admonished at times, but it didn’t seem to slow her down or get her to relent. Maybe her most rebellious moment – even beyond her elbowing her way to prohibited battlefields – was when Miller took a bath in Hitler’s bathtub at Dachau as an act of defiance and Allied victory over Nazism.

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However, this path toward victory was not without its own cruelties. While the abuses of women are commonly described as part of the Nazi invasions in Europe, we cannot ignore that this was also too commonly found in the Allied counter-invasions. On the Eastern and Western fronts between Germany and the Allies, the situation for civilian women was particularly vulnerable. As the Allies progressed toward Berlin, the call for avenging the deaths of those lost led to a belief by soldiers that almost any cruelty against Germany was permissible, including against women. Rape of girls in grade school up to elderly women was widespread and reported. 

While this was an undeniable part of each front, particular cruelty was noted as part of the Soviet advance, primarily as they reached German territories. Having faced losses in the tens of millions as part of the Nazi invasion, the Soviets were reported to have slaughtered not only German soldiers in their path, but civilians as well - as a part of indiscriminate revenge for their nation’s suffering that only amplified as they reached further and further into Germany. The soldiers' treatment of women was characterized by the desire for domination and humiliation. Rape was seen as a way to assert victory over the defeated German enemy, but they also targeted Polish and Eastern European women. 

Some Soviet women soldiers and medical staff did not object to their soldiers' behavior towards German women in the march through eastern Europe. There were instances where Soviet women even watched and were said to have laughed during rape incidents. More horrifically, Soviet soldiers sometimes resorted to using objects like bottles instead of their own genitalia, leading to mutilation of victims. One woman was raped by Soviet soldiers in front of her young son. When the 13-year-old tried to protect her, he was shot and killed in front of her. Witnesses still remember the screaming of women during the nights after the Soviets took Berlin, where hospital records estimate that there were between 95,000 and 130,000 rape victims. This was the impossibly vulnerable position of civilians on the losing side of war. Soviet officers rationalized the assaults, viewing the victims as accepting their fate or even finding it enjoyable due to the soldiers' extreme sexual frustration. This distorted perspective from leadership allowed soldiers to commit heinous acts.

Survival became a major concern for women, leading some to offer themselves as girlfriends in order to get protection, but this didn’t always work. Night hours were particularly dangerous, so women disappeared from public spaces, especially young girls who were hidden away. Refugees were also fleeing from the advancing Allied armies, but aerial bombing had destroyed much of the transportation networks, roads, and bridges throughout Germany, making this monumentally challenging. 

German historians estimate that close to 200,000 women were victims of rape at the end of the war, and five percent (around 2,000) of the post-war babies born to unmarried women were products of rape. Other historians suggest that the number was significantly higher, some believing it ranges into the millions when one looks at the whole of the Allied advances. Allied occupation following the war undoubtedly kept many women from being willing or having the ability to speak up, and not all those that did were granted the dignity of being believed or considered. Equally tragic is the knowledge that these numbers were even higher in the Pacific Theater.