Prostitution in Nazi Germany

In understanding how Nazi leaders arrived at the decision to establish brothels in concentration camps, the author considers prostitution policy in Germany during the preceding decades, from the early years of the German Empire to Nazi Germany, when prostitution throughout the Reich fell under state control. Nazi prostitution policy aimed primarily at the control of venereal disease, and to that end required prostitutes to register with the local police and submit to regular medical exams. A key development was the decision in the early 1940s to create brothels for the foreign workers who powered the German war economy. The purpose of the brothels was both to satisfy the “natural” male sex drive and to ensure that foreigners did not have sex with German women—a grave violation of Nazi race laws.