I am finishing up a project for a class on European relations after WWII, and was wondering if anyone could provide demographic details about German men and women after the war. I believe I read in a a book that after the war, German women outnumbered German men a ridiculous number, but was curious if someone could provide better details, and sources!
According to the official census of Nordrhein-Westfalen, taken on the 13th of November 1950, 6,93 Million(52,3%) of the approx. 13 Million counted inhabitants were women.
At the ages 31-40 the biggest difference(women were at 56,6%) can be seen, because the male population was part of both world wars.
Translation:
Weiblich: female
Männlich:male
Alter: age
However this is just a statistic for Nordrhein-Westfalen. The situation in the east was different.
I consulted the website of the Statistisches Bundesamt (federal office of statistics of Germany) which generally is quite awesome (and available in English) but unfortunately they don't seem to have numbers on the population by sex before 1970. After 1970 however there is a noticeable gap visible between the numbers of male and female Germans of roughly 3000 to 4000 individuals throughout all the years. I'm no demographer but I wouldn't be so quick to attribute this to the war as it is quite well known that women have a considerably higher life expectancy than men. If you look at the current population pyramid of Spain for example and compare it to Germany's you will notice the same surplus of women in the older age bracket.
