Les femmes de l’ennemi en Gironde pendant la Première Guerre mondiale: des femmes si ordinaires?

Abstract

The history of «foreign» women in France during the Great War is not yet been written. Long forgotten by historians, they are presented by the military and police authorities as dangerous and suspicious from the beginning of the conflict. As moral and family support for enemy combatants, they are monitored in camps or at home, and their daily lives are followed in order to detect a possible new Mata-Hari. Whether they are single or married to a German, young or old, these women are asked to leave the country at the beginning of the conflict, but those who remained by choice are subjected to police constraints, interrogations and the suspicious looks of the population. Considered as «internal enemies», they experience difficult and even precarious living conditions. The case of Marthe Gusdorf, living with her children in Bordeaux-Caudéran for the duration of the war, is one example among hundreds of these women who made history in spite of themselves.