There are thousands joyful pictures of the liberation of France in 1944. But among the cheering images there are also shocking ones. These show the fate of women accused of "collaboration horizontale". It is impossible to forget Robert Capa's fallen-Madonna image of a shaven-headed young woman, cradling her baby, implicitly the result of a relationship with a German soldier. In 1942, Germany dominated most of Europe. Greater Germany had been enlarged at the expense of its neighbors. They were there, and, like soldiers of every army of every period of history, as soon as they got comfortable they started scouting around for women. And, as always in times of military occupation, there were women to be found. The punishment of shaving a woman's head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths. During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment for adultery. Shaving women's heads as a mark of retribution and humiliation was reintroduced in the 20th century. After French troops occupied the Rhineland in 1923, German women who had relations with them later suffered the same fate. And during the Second World War, the Nazi state issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should also be publicly punished in this way. Collaborator Another collaborator, somewhere in France. Found on a German POW. German soldiers exchanging their clothes with their girlfriends. Those uniforms really fit those Frenchwomen pretty well! Nobody seems to know where this photo came from. It shows a young lady in an officer's (Untersturmführer) uniform. Women could not join SS units except as auxiliaries, and certainly did not wear SS officer uniforms. Off-duty Wehrmacht soldier spending a day at the pool with his girlfriend. French girl engaged to German soldier follows him into prison compound after his capture near Orleans by U.S. forces. This would have been around August 1944. She undoubtedly was safer in there with him than on the streets, subject to abuse by the partisans. This Frenchwoman does not look like she is suffering, nor the ones in the background. A French woman cavorting with members of Hitler's SS in bars and cabarets. Members of the Norwegian collaborationist Special Squad Lola (Sonderabteilung Lola) whose mission was to infiltrate the Norwegian resistance, are being tried after the war. Spirits seem to be high - indicating the level of callousness of these hardened war criminals. Lola worked under the orders of the SS/SD; several hundred Norwegians were tortured, and it is believed that Lola killed more than 80 people. Ten defendants, all men, were found guilty and shot. The rest (the women) received long prison sentences. There are thousands upon thousands of joyful pictures of the liberation of France in 1944. But among the cheering images there are also shocking ones. These show the fate of women accused of “collaboration horizontale”. Belgian women who had collaborated with the Germans are shaved, tarred and feathered and forced to give a Nazi salute. A Nazi “collaborator” - a French woman having her head shaved following liberation, as punishment for an on-going sexual relationship with a Nazi soldier during the occupation of France. Female French collaborator having her head shaved during Liberation of Marseilles. Some of the onlookers appear quite amused. Women who consorted with the Germans during the occupation are driven through the streets of Cherbourg by members of the French resistance. Their head were shaved in order to humiliate them. The perks of sleeping with SS men were extra rations or quality food, access to forbidden luxury goods such as perfume and stockings and freedom from certain restrictions. The downside as seen by their contemporaries who later shot or ostracized and humiliated them was complicity in - or perhaps even knowledge of - the hell and slaughter of the concentration camps. Going strictly by their attire and their, shall we say, defiant postures, these may have been working girls. Parading them around like this may seem a bit much to today’s audience, but at the time, this image would have evoked feelings of victory and just retribution. Some probably wanted them shot out of hand. A French woman collaborator and her baby, whose father is German, returns to her home followed by a throng of taunting townspeople after having her head shaven following the capture of Chartres by the Allies, August 1944. It appears that she is passing some women who suffered a similar fate. Photo by Robert Capa. In the streets of Brignoles, angry French citizens publicly rebuke a woman who is suspected of having collaborated with the Germans. Women often were the most upset with other women who collaborated. Members of the French resistance in Cherbourg shear the hair of women who collaborated with the Germans during the occupation. A woman with a shaven head, accused of collaborating with the Germans during the German occupation of France, is marched away by a member of the French Resistance in a street at Chartres after the city's liberation. August 1944. Accused collaborators photographed after being punished by the French resistance. Funnily enough, the resistance punished collaborators in the same manner that only years early the Nazi party had used on perpetrators who had been perpetrators of “race crimes” (i.e., having sex with the wrong people) in Germany and Austria. Members of the French resistance lead two women accused of being German sympathizers to the local prison, where their heads will be shaved as punishment for collaboration. Notice how they are touching their soon-to-be-shorn locks. August 29, 1944. A French woman accused of sleeping with Germans has her head shaved by neighbors in a village near Marseilles. Note the large crowd of partisans. In the Normandy village of Liesville, angry French patriots take hold of Juliette Audieve, thought to have been a collaborator with the Germans. It appears the two ladies standing casually by are also partisans. Moments later, the two French patriots try to cut off the hair of Juliette Audieuve as punishment for collaborating with the German forces occupying France during World War II, Liesville, France, 1944. There she goes under the scissors. A collaborator being humiliated, with the usual crowd of people above suspicion. (via World War II in Pictures)