Germany in World War Two was hit by major manpower shortages, so much so that by 1939 nearly half of Germany's workforce was comprised of Women, and over 6 million women worked on farms. So German women had it especially hard with regards to husbands/boyfriends leaving. The Nazis invested heavily in propaganda stating that wives of German soldiers at the front should be chaste and focus on raising children, and not on fulfilling their "sexual needs". But the Nazis contradicted themselves (its possible that the Nazis felt that they should publicly encourage chastity,lest German soldiers hear stories of their wives cheating on them), since they had also encouraged people to have as many pure Aryan children as possible, even if the children were had out of wedlock. There was general "loosening of sexual morality" during the war years. Actives like prostitution became both a way for a woman to make money or acquire goods that she needed (intense rationing had made certain items very valuable) and to fulfill sexual needs. A social worker named Kathe Petersen commented on this phenomenon:

Many previously respectable wives have been alerted to the existence of other men through going out to work. In many firms- the tram company is a particularly good example- the male workers seem to have acquired the habit of going after the soldiers' wives. In many factories too, soldiers' wives have been led astray by the corrosive influences of some of their ruder female co-workers. Women who have previously devoted themselves to their household chores, and were good mothers, have been led by such influences to neglect their housework and children, and to interest themselves only in night time adventures and the quest for male company.

This became a serious problem, the SS reported that men on the front were getting angry at the stories of infidelity that would circulate. Also women began to strike up relationships with the many foreign workers in Germany. This became so widespread that Himmler ordered all women caught in a relationship with a foreign worker to be put in a concentration camp for a period of one year. Despite all this, divorce was still relatively unheard of and women generally tried to conceal such activities. As the war went on some women were pushed towards extramarital affairs because they began to figure that "since their husbands were getting a bit on the side at one of the many military brothels, they might as well get a bit extra too". There was also the idea that life was short and could easily be ended (no doubt influenced by the massive amount of life lost on the Eastern Front) they should have as much "fun" while they could. The SS actually wrote on this problem, which shows that they acknowledged it, but there was very little they could do to actually stop it.

These women do not have to find a job, since in many cases the level of family benefits even guarantees them a higher standard of living than that which they had before the war. The time and money at their disposal seduce them into spending their afternoons and evenings in coffee houses and bars, they need not give a second thought to treating themselves to expensive wines and spirits and above and beyond that they are in a position to treat men-mainly soldiers- to them as well.

My close companion while writing this was Richard J. Evans' the "Third Reich at War"