battle tanks legend of world war 2 what is silver used for

Over in the United States, as factories ramped up production of armaments and other war material and the male labor force evaporated into the army, many middle- and upper-class American women entered the workforce for the first time. Although Hitler said that “Berlin women must become the best dressed in Europe,” he did not give them much encouragement or many tools with which to accomplish this goal, and as the war raged on, the production of cosmetics waned and then ceased completely, along with that of other non-essential goods. Similarly, German women were discouraged from using other modes of feminine adornment-such as perfume, fur, and the new fashion of trousers-that displeased the dictator.

Famously a vegetarian, part of Hitler’s antipathy towards lipstick was due to the fact that it was made from animal waste. In Germany, the anti-lipstick reign continued along with Hitler’s rule. According to the Nazis, the perfect German woman wouldn’t look a thing like the German women of that time. Also, deprivation and hunger were widespread.

That era in Berlin was a difficult time for the Germans, as the reparations that they were forced to pay from the First World War crippled their economy. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, his Nazi party decreed that the ideal German woman would be so wholesome, clean, and fresh-faced that she would eschew the lipstick favored by the women of Weimar Berlin. The story of the lipstick war begins, as does the wider war, in 1930s Germany. They know about the incredible speed with which Hitler’s armies conquered Belgium and France, about submarine and tank warfare, and about the atrocities of the Holocaust.īut even the most ardent of history buffs may not know that during the war there was a sub-war being waged over cosmetics-specifically over lipstick.

They know the major players on both sides of the conflict, and the outcome that ended in total defeat for Germany and the other major Axis powers, Italy and Japan. Most people with a passing knowledge of 20th-century history know the major contours of World War II, one of the most monumental historical occurrences.

Battle tanks legend of world war 2 what is silver used for