Love, Sex, and War: Changing Values, 1939-45

This volume is a social history of gender and sexual relations during the Second World War. In this book, the author covers an enormous amount of ground, using a broad range of data (including official statistics and declassified reports, interviews, and newspapers) from a number of different countries, principally the UK, US, Germany, Soviet Union, Canada, France, Italy and Australia. Chapters cover the mass mobilization of women into uniform, civil defense, factories and farms (and the tussles over morals, home life, child care, equal pay, movement away from home, unionization, etc), sexual liberalization, war brides, affairs, illegitimate births, divorce, prostitution, rates of venereal disease, sex crimes (all of which soared), patterns of socializing, fraternization with liberated/conquered populations, homosexuality in the armed forces, black propaganda, sexpionage, cinema and music, demobilization and women losing their jobs, and the moral backlash post war.