Military mistresses

Discussion in 'The Women of WW2' started by Capt.Sensible, Dec 11, 2007.

  1. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Russians had a name for them, "Field Service Wives" or Pokhodno-Polevye Zheny or PPZh.
    I expect Alex to correct me now.

    Zhukov had a mistress , his personal Doctor, Lt Lidia Zakharova, they were together until after the war but relationship ended in early 1950s.
    Having his own mistress didn't stop him berating General Katukov for having one. He ordered the affair to end or he'd get the NKVD to remove the woman.
     
  2. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    Russians had a name for them, "Field Service Wives" or Pokhodno-Polevye Zheny or PPZh.
    I expect Alex to correct me now.

    Zhukov had a mistress , his personal Doctor, Lt Lidia Zakharova, they were together until after the war but relationship ended in early 1950s.
    Having his own mistress didn't stop him berating General Katukov for having one. He ordered the affair to end or he'd get the NKVD to remove the woman.

    It seems to have been a pretty common practise for middle and senior ranking Soviet officers to have maintained mistresses. Catherine Merridale covers this in some detail in Ivan's War. Makes you wonder if the same applied to Allied forces on the west front. Not just for the very senior officers like Ike or Patton but down to Colonels or Brigadiers etc. I am sure there must have been more than a few liason that lasted. Difficult to trace if both parties were in uniform as the relationship would not be recorded on paper as anything other than work-related, as it were. Diaries and biographies are the next obvious source, certainly you would not expect to find anything in the newspapers of the time, even if it were public knowledge.
     
  3. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I was an aquantance of a Newfoundler who served in the Canadian Army during the war and he told me of Patton's relationship with his niece long before it it appeared in Patton articles. I must say at the time I had some doubt about its authenticity.

    The facts are that power and money are an aphrodisiac just as equal to food, warmth and shelter, as any occupation troops might have experienced.I would endorse what has been said regarding the Red Army particularly when it overrun Germany.

    No occupied nation would be innocent of this behaviour.In occupied France,the phrase, "horizontal collaborators" was coined to describe these ladies who gave their all for the right to access privileged living.Some may have not endangered the being of their fellow citizens but there was always the danger that they could.

    A good illustration is the ugly 65 year old London nightclub owner who always commands young females to his side.

    Getting back to history, Himmler kept his secretary as a mistress who bore him two children.
     
  4. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    Yup, power and money seem to help!

    I was surprised to read that Goebbels was not as 'uptight' as I thought:
    'These events were well-timed from the point of view of Goebbels’s relations with Hitler. In 1937, he had begun an intense affair with the Czech actress Lída Baarová, causing the break-up of her marriage. When Magda Goebbels learned of this affair in October 1938, she complained to Hitler. Hitler was a conservative in sexual matters and was fond of Magda and the young Goebbels' children. He ordered Goebbels to break off his affair, whereupon Goebbels offered his resignation, which Hitler refused. On 15 October, Goebbels attempted suicide. A furious Hitler then ordered Himmler to remove Baarová from Germany, and she was deported to Czechoslovakia, from where she later left for Italy. These events damaged Goebbels’ standing with Hitler, and his zeal in furthering Hitler’s anti-Semitic agenda was in part an effort to restore his reputation.[48] The Baarová affair, however, did nothing to dampen Goebbels' enthusiasm for womanising. As late as 1943, the Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann was ingratiating himself with Goebbels by procuring young women for him.'

    Joseph Goebbels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
  5. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    While Goebbels was continually womanising, Magna Goebbels was drawn into a relationship with Karl Hanke who until 1941 was Goebbels's adjutant and personal assistant when Goebbels headed the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.Hanke went on to senior posts within the Nazi organisation such as Gauleiter of Lower Silesia.Hitler named Hanke to suceed Himmler when he heard of Himmler's overtures to the West.At the end of the war, Hanke was said to be Hitler's man organising the defence of Breslau but eventually fell into the hands of Czech partisans.During this period, apparently, there was relationship communication between the two but of course in the end Magna could not leave the side of Hitler who she adored possibily more than Joseph
     
  6. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Shouldn't she be Magda instead of Magna? :)
     
  7. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Lt Galina Talanova , a Regular Officer of the Medical Corps, was posted to 16th Army HQ in October 1941.
    She had been serving at Bialystock earlier in the year and luckily for her was on leave when the Germans attacked.
    She became Rokossovski's mistress and stayed with him all through the war.
    They had a child , Nadezhda, in January 1945.
    After the war Rokossovski went back to his wife but remained in contact with Galina & Nadezhda until he died.
     
  8. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    Makes you wonder what happened to the child....
     
  9. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Makes you wonder what happened to the child....
    Nadezhda Rokossovskaya
    She's the one that gave the interview to Rodric Braithwaite in 2004 for his book Moscow 1941.
     
  10. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    She's the one that gave the interview to Rodric Braithwaite in 2004 for his book Moscow 1941.
    Thanks Owen, I had better go out and find a copy of Braithwaite 2004! Casting the net further, if most of the Golden Pheasents were at it (as seems the case), then there might be some unacknowledged children still alive produced by various relationships.
     
  11. jacobtowne

    jacobtowne Senior Member

    So what was the name of Patton's niece? I'm currently reading Patton: A Genius for War by Carlo d'Este, a good look at this complex man, though a bit long-winded in places.

    JT
     
  12. 4th wilts

    4th wilts Discharged

    so why was paton not arrested for giving his neice one,surely that is incest,is it not. yours,lee.
     
  13. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    So what was the name of Patton's niece? I'm currently reading Patton: A Genius for War by Carlo d'Este, a good look at this complex man, though a bit long-winded in places.

    JT

    Jean Gordon was Patton's niece, I believe, but not a blood-relation 4th wilts.

    Letters - TIME
     
  14. jacobtowne

    jacobtowne Senior Member

    Thank you. Patton's wife was Beatrice Banning Ayer. Jean Gordon was the daughter of Beatrice's half sister, Louise Raynor Ayer. The affair might have started during Patton's second tour in Hawaii, ca. 1935. Jean actually fell for Patton and made a play for him, according to D'este. At the time she was 21 and Patton was balding and middle-aged.

    JT
     
  15. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    Thank you. Patton's wife was Beatrice Banning Ayer. Jean Gordon was the daughter of Beatrice's half sister, Louise Raynor Ayer. The affair might have started during Patton's second tour in Hawaii, ca. 1935. Jean actually fell for Patton and made a play for him, according to D'este. At the time she was 21 and Patton was balding and middle-aged.

    JT
    balding? middle-aged? There's hope for me yet!
     
  16. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    Yes, Sensible, there is hope for you. There are always people out there with odd ideas about sexual attractiveness.

    Take my wife, for instance, when she looks at me...
     
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  17. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    Yes, Sensible, there is. There are always people out there with odd ideas about sexual attractiveness.

    Take my wife, for instance....
    I couldn't possibly comment!
     
  18. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Christos -
    I do believe that you are quoting that awful film- the longest day - of the scene in which you quote Monty saying - ........"Go ' and then twirling his moustache - Monty was never a moustache twirler as it was the wrong shape and that terrible actor made him look like a first class idiot - or at least a third class idiot...
    Cheers
     
  19. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    'Evening all,
    Just did a bit of Googling and found this photo of Galina Talanova here:
    http://shkolazhizni.ru/archive/0/n-19156/ 4th image down from top. The photo above (No. 3) is of Rokossovsk's 'other' family.
    CS
     
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  20. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Just noticed my typo,honestly.I could never categorise Magda as "Great"

    As regards the Red Army. In the immediate post war occupation of Eastern Germany,it has been recorded that many senior officers took "military wives",ie female companions from the occupied as mistresses.It fulfilled the needs of the occupying and occupied individual

    .I would think a practice not confined to the Red Army.
     

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