If This Is A Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

by Sarah Helm

The raids on Düsseldorf brothels were repeated across Germany throughout 1938, as the Nazi purge against its own unwanted underclasses entered a new stage. A programme called ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ (Action Against the Workshy) had been launched, targeting all those considered social outcasts. Largely unnoticed by the outside world, and unreported within Germany, more than 20,000 so-called ‘asocials’ – ‘vagabonds, prostitutes, work-shy, beggars and thieves’ – were rounded up and earmarked for concentration camps. In mid-1938 war was still a year away, but Germany’s war against its own unwanted had been launched. The Führer let it be known that the country must be ‘pure and strong’ as it prepared for war, so such ‘useless mouths’ were to be removed.