Mark J. Crowley & Sandra Trudgen Dawson 
Women’s Experiences of the Second World War [PDF ebook] 
Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life

Many existing studies on the role of women in the Second World War concentrate on women’s increasing participation in the workplace and on their struggles to cope with rationing and shortages. This book goes further, exploring women’s wartime experiences much more fully. Drawing on a wide range of sources including oral interviews, scrapbooks, personal letters, diaries, newspaper articles, Mass Observation files and memoirs, the book illustrates some ofthe similarities and differences of women’s wartime experiences in different situations in different countries. Specific subjects covered include experiences of exile and living under occupation, of coping with proximity to fighting and to the frontline, and of dealing with everyday life in trying circumstances. The book draws out how factors such as political beliefs, nationalism, economics, religion, ability, geography and culture all had an impact. Overall, the book reveals a great deal about the complexities and nuances of women’s experiences in this period of enormous upheaval.


Mark J. Crowley is an Associate Professor at the David Eccles Business School, University of Utah.


Sandra Trudgen Dawson is the Executive Administrator of the Berkshire Conference of Women’s History.


Contributors: Patricia Chappine, Sylvie Crinquand, Beth Hessel, Sarah Hogenbirk, Regina Lark, Bernice Linder, Alexis Peri, Kelly Spring, Michael Timonin, Angela Wanhalla, Wai-Yin Christina Wong.

Tabela de Conteúdo

Introduction: Women’s Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life – Mark J. Crowley

Introduction: Women’s Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life – Sandra Trudgen Dawson

Part One: Living in Exile and under Wartime Occupation

Exiles Serving Exiles on the Homefront: Protestant Missionary Workers and Japanese Americans – Beth Hessel

Memories of Exile: An Alsatian Woman in German Occupied Alsace, 1939-1945 – Nupur Chaudhuri

Entertaining Exile: Norah O’Hagan and the Flying Herzogs at War, 1939-1945

The War Diaries of Hélène Berr and Etty Hillesum: Jewish Women in Occupied Paris and Amsterdam, 1941-1944 – Sylvie Crinquand

Part Two: Living with Wartime Occupiers

A Friendly Invasion? Maori Women, American Servicemen and the Legacies of Wartime Mobilisation in New Zealand

Interracial Marriage in Occupied Japan

A Moment of Refuge: Transnational Cooperation at Ming Sum School for the Blind in Occupied Canton in the Second World War

Contradictions and Conformity in a Wartime Boarding House: Gender Roles and British Food Rationing in the Second World War

Part Three: Everyday Life at Home and on the Battle Front

‘We Had All Tried to Act like Ladies, but We Weren’t Getting Anywhere.’ :The Bring Back Daddy Clubs and the Demobilization of 1945

Womanhood under Fire: Gender Practice and Identity in Soviet Accounts of the Frontlines

‘This Is a Woman’s War, Too’: Canadian Servicewomen’s Wartime Scrapbooks

US Military Nurses and the Liberation of Concentration Camps in the Second World War

Sobre o autor

Sandra Trudgen Dawson is the Executive Administrator of the Berkshire Conference of Women’s History.