Blitz Mädchen?

German auxiliary organizations 1919-1945.
Post Reply
Boo
New Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:36 am

Blitz Mädchen?

Post by Boo »

Hello everyone,

A few years ago I heard the slang that is the topic, but I can not remember where. At the time I didn't think much about it, but recently I remembered it and decided to see if I could find out anything about the "Lightning Girls". The thing is, I looked around for a while now and can't find any references to the Blitz Mädchen. As such I remembered this site and thought to myself that if any information is to be found about these girls, then this is surely the place.

What I heard back in the days was that the Blitz Mädchen supposedly were volounteer women who would be radio operators in the German army. Since the communication troops insignia was a lightning bolt the front troops refered to them as the "Blitz Mädchen".
Could anyone confirm or deny this? Have I dreamt it all?

Thank you,
Mattias Liljeqvist
Nordwest

Post by Nordwest »

Mattias,

the term was Blitzmädel, not Blitz Mädchen.

Link: http://www.wdr.de/radio/wdr4/wort/in_un ... 0710.phtml

Photos: http://www.ullsteinbild.de/search.php?s ... 4del&date=


Michael

P.S. At ullsteinbild they also use the term Blitzmädel/Blitzmädchen.
Boo
New Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:36 am

Post by Boo »

Thank you for the reply. As I said, it was several years ago I read it so my memory probably warped it somewhere along the way. Thanks! :)
Fraulein Valkyrie
Member
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 6:21 pm

Post by Fraulein Valkyrie »

Boo,

The term Blitzmädchen was probably popularized by the re-printing of Franz Seidler's book in 1996:

http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/3763759 ... e&n=299956


For information on the topic in addition to Nordwest's suggestions, try searching the term Helferin here and on the Axis History Forum.

~FV
Boo
New Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:36 am

Post by Boo »

Thanks for the information. You've been a great help, cheers! :)
Paddy Keating

Post by Paddy Keating »

They were also known as offizierdecke, which translates loosely as "officers' mattresses".

PK
User avatar
Tom Houlihan
Patron
Posts: 4301
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:05 pm
Location: MI, USA
Contact:

Post by Tom Houlihan »

Okay, enough with the offizierdecke bit.

The 'Blitz' part came from the lightning bolt insignia indicating Nachrichten, or Signals as a trade. The Mädel part indicates young women.

While I have no doubt that many of them did find cause to warm the beds of officers, or even enlisted, I find it hard to believe that all of them did. Most of them served the cause, just as their male counterparts did.[/i]
TLH3
www.mapsatwar.us
Feldgrau für alle und alle für Feldgrau!
User avatar
Tom Houlihan
Patron
Posts: 4301
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:05 pm
Location: MI, USA
Contact:

Post by Tom Houlihan »

Okay, enough with the offizierdecke bit.

The Blitz part of that term comes from the lightning bolt insignia indicating Nachrichten, or Signals as a trade. The Mädel and Mädchen parts indicate young women.

While I'm sure quite a few of them found reason to warm the beds of officers or even <shudder> enlisted types, most of them were doing their part for the Fatherland just as their male counterparts. Free a man for the front, and all that.

Not all Helferinnen were in Signals, of course. For some reason, that and Flakhelferinnen seem to be the most well known. There were quite a few jobs that were filled by women that allowed men to go to the front.
TLH3
www.mapsatwar.us
Feldgrau für alle und alle für Feldgrau!
Fraulein Valkyrie
Member
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 6:21 pm

Post by Fraulein Valkyrie »

Paddy Keating wrote:They were also known as offizierdecke, which translates loosely as "officers' mattresses".

PK
Actually, the more common terms (since common terms are being used) were Felddecke (Field blanket) or Feldmatratze (Field mattress).

~FV
User avatar
tigre
Patron
Posts: 6944
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:42 pm
Location: Argentina

Re: Blitz Mädchen?

Post by tigre »

Hello to all :D; another story............................

Blitzmädel (1944-1945).

Report of a contemporary witness - Annemarie Zarnikow.

Meaning.

"Blitzmädel" or "Blitzmädchen" was a term derived from the language of soldiers. The designation was derived from the Blitz (lightning bolt) emblem, the insignia on the uniform sleeve or tie. The lightning bolt was an emblem of the communications / signal corps (Nachrichtentruppe) of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS.

Training in Hildesheim.

The district leader, Heilig, had been assigned the desired number of students from the Abitur classes at the Kleine Burg Girls' High School. When selecting high school graduates for the district command post, BannMädelführerin Jo Brandes determined which high school graduates were members of the Bann-Spielschar (orchestra), so that this group would remain in Braunschweig and be able to present their program in the military hospitals. The presentations were also repeated, because new soldiers always arrived at the hospitals. I belonged to this group. So, in addition to the service at the district command post, we also had the artistic service, so to speak.

If I remember correctly, we were 16 students, 16-18 years old. We were "recruited for emergency service" and transferred to a wooden barracks that had been built for us on the Thingplatz stand (*) and remained our "residence" until the end of the war.

But first they trained us. This was done by members of the Wehrmacht in the Hildesheim youth hostel. Training began in early October 1944. We learned how to use the radio (Morse code), the telephone (to set up calls), and how to process air situation reports.

During the big air raid on Braunschweig on October 14/15 we were in Hildesheim, and since our accommodation was slightly elevated on a hill, we had a wide view and could see Braunschweig in flames in the distance and hear the aircraft engines . Of course we were very worried. It was a time when you never knew if you would still have a family an hour later or not. "Good Bye!" it had a much deeper meaning in those days than it does today. On Sunday we were allowed to take the train to Braunschweig and see how our families and apartments were doing. The next day we went back to Hildesheim and the training continued.

Thingplatz Camp.

When it was over, we moved into the Thingplatz barracks. This consisted of a large dormitory with two-story bomb shelter beds, a shower area, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, two parlors, and a small anteroom. There were two ovens that were difficult to light. Our direct "supervisors" were two Hanover High School graduates, who had been doing this service for a long time at the district command post in Hanover, so they knew the way. They also did homework assignments with us.

In the showers, each of us had a narrow locker for personal belongings. We take care of our own food. You could prepare food in the small kitchen. However, lunch arrived in a large aluminum can from a dining room kitchen. It didn't taste particularly good and often wasn't clean either.

Our headquarters was on the right hand side of the Thingplatz grandstand; to the left was another barracks where French prisoners of war lived. We always gave them leftovers from lunch. They were very hungry and happily accepted the food. As a thank you, they fired up our stoves and pulled firewood from the benches at Thingplatz! There was a radio in the barracks. So much for our "life".

(*) A Thingplatz or Thingstätte was an outdoor amphitheater specially built for such performances.

Sources: http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/pd ... eitet2.pdf
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht ... m%C3%A4del

Cheers. Raúl M 8).
Serás lo que debas ser o no serás nada. General José de San Martín.
User avatar
tigre
Patron
Posts: 6944
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:42 pm
Location: Argentina

Re: Blitz Mädchen?

Post by tigre »

Hello to all :D; more............................

Blitzmädel (1944-1945).

Report of a contemporary witness - Annemarie Zarnikow.

The bunker on the Nussberg.

Our service looked like this: two students had the same task together for 24 hours, one from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and from 2:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., the other from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m and from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. You had two 24-hour shifts in a row, the third day was free and you could spend it at home. There were the following Services: evaluation, telephone exchange, telex, kitchen and cleaning service (cleaning in the house). To understand how the work was carried out, you also have to know the rooms of the bunker.

Immediately to the left, behind the concrete doorway, was a door that opened into the boiler room. The central heating stove was heated by a young man from the 21+ camp. The overseer of the entire bunker+++ complex was the so-called bunker warden, a party man who was seen only in uniform and who was a brutal superior to the young man in the heating.

After the boiler room, proceed further to the left in the hallway towards a storage room. This was taboo for us the whole time. Only at the end, when the "celebrities" had left, did we receive buckets of jam, cans of potatoes and meat, and cans of chocolate and cola. Indicative of the end time mood in the bunker and our mobility was such that we were so hungry that we carried this food home, along with our personal belongings, through the SA camp (Franzsches Feld) even though the city ​​was under artillery fire and shrapnel was flying.

I don't remember if there were other rooms behind these two rooms. In any case, we didn't care. The rooms we were working on were further back in the bunker, around a bend in the hallway to the right. First, another short corridor branched off to the right, which in turn led to several small rooms: the telephone switchboard, the telex room, the radio room, and the office of the NaFü (news leader -Nachrichten Führer), a man who was probably our current superior and whom I considered very kindly remembered. A few meters after the door of this side corridor with the mentioned rooms, there was another door to the right in the main corridor for the so-called evaluation (air situation room). The corridor then led to the neighboring Red Cross bunker, and a small spiral staircase led to the Observation Tower, the small concrete structure that is the last vestige of the district's command post.

Sources: http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/pd ... eitet2.pdf
http://bunker.amaot.info/bunker14l.htm

Cheers. Raúl M 8).
Attachments
The bunker on the Nussberg............................
The bunker on the Nussberg............................
image004.jpg (77.47 KiB) Viewed 5484 times
Serás lo que debas ser o no serás nada. General José de San Martín.
User avatar
tigre
Patron
Posts: 6944
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:42 pm
Location: Argentina

Re: Blitz Mädchen?

Post by tigre »

Hello to all :D; more............................

Blitzmädel (1944-1945).

Report of a contemporary witness - Annemarie Zarnikow.

Evaluation.

Returning to "Evaluation". This was a relatively large room. Just to the left of the front door were two phone booths (never used). In the middle was a large table with several chairs. The room also served as a meeting room. On the opposite side of the door was a large, full-length illuminated frosted glass panel depicting a map of northern Germany. It was divided into grids. These are arranged alphabetically from north to south and from east to west. The grids in turn were subdivided into nine smaller squares that had numbers on them. So, each location on the map had two letters and a number as its identifier. Braunschweig was in GB7 (pronounced "Gustav-Berta 7").

Behind this map was another very narrow room in which two students were on duty. It looked like this: Air situation reports came from two places, the Fluko (Flugwachkommando - aircraft surveillance command) and the Wako (Wachkommando - guard command). In these reports, the actual place names did not appear, but rather the names taken from the position on the grid square, for example: "Lightning from Gustav-Anton 4 to Gustav-Berta 7". The reports indicated where the respective enemy planes were and in which direction they were flying.

The planes were named by their type designations: Stirling, Fortress, Lancaster, Mosquito, Mustang, Lightning, Thunderbolt, I can't remember anymore. There were specific stamps for each type of aircraft (bomber or fighter): narrow arrows for fighters, rhomboids with the tip cut off on the long side for bomber formations. The remaining tip of the rhombic seal indicated the direction of flight. The two female students on duty stood in the narrow space behind the map, thus seeing Germany from the back. They had headphones on (one for Fluko and one for Wako) and now stamped the information they received through the headphones on the back of the map in the appropriate square grids.

Thus, those who were sitting in front of the map could see the aerial situation: where the planes were coming from, where and at what speed they were flying, what type they were, if they were concentrating on a certain airspace and carrying out an attack, etc. There was also a stamp for throwing bombs, but I don't remember exactly what it looked like. In the corner of the large evaluation room, to the right of the large map of Germany, was a small announcer's booth with all the technical equipment for cable radio talk. This was in case the air situation reports from the district command post in Hannover had failed. Then Braunschweig would have supplanted it. During our training we had also practiced speaking on the radio (wording, correct tone of voice, etc.). As far as I can remember, it didn't happen often, Hannover was almost always heard.

Sometimes as soon as the pre-alarm, sometimes only when the alarm was given, the gentlemen in charge of the district management appeared and made themselves available in the evaluation, where they were able to constantly monitor the air situation. The district leader, Heilig, was almost always there. From time to time they had requirements. For example, they often wanted to be connected to the district command post in Hannover. We usually don't bother with them anymore. When the go-ahead was given, they left again or stayed and drank alcohol, which the aforementioned bunker director brought with him.

Sources: http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/pd ... eitet2.pdf
http://bunker.amaot.info/bunker14l.htm

Cheers. Raúl M 8).
Serás lo que debas ser o no serás nada. General José de San Martín.
User avatar
tigre
Patron
Posts: 6944
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:42 pm
Location: Argentina

Re: Blitz Mädchen?

Post by tigre »

Hello to all :D; more............................

Blitzmädel (1944-1945).

Report of a contemporary witness - Annemarie Zarnikow.

Switchboard.

There was a telephone exchange with a cabinet with pins. Every room in the bunker and barracks had telephone connections. There were also some exchange lines through which calls from abroad could enter or through which calls from abroad could be switched. The desired calls were switched by plugging in and then the switching contact was closed with a lever, ie "switched off". If I had wanted to, I could have listened with the lever open, but that rarely happened. The switchboard was an important service to the extent that the Fluko and Wako lines had to be constantly monitored (24 hours a day). If things got serious here, you had to notify or wake up the people on duty (assessment, radio) in the barracks so they could start working.

telex.

There was a direct telex line to the district command post in Hanover. Already in October 1944, immediately after our training in Hildesheim, we learned telex (ten-finger blind typing) at the main post office in Friedrich-Wilhelm-Strasse. For several days, three of us would go to the post office at dawn, before the first streetcars left. There we practiced touch typing under the guidance of the older Post Telex operators. If I remember correctly, most of the reports from Hannover came by telex (not radio) and by telephone. It was always about organizational issues, but I no longer remember the content.

Radiocomunication.

In the event of an alarm, there were always two people on radio duty. Sitting in standby mode, the frequency was on and reports could come at any moment. It should also be said that, in addition to us schoolgirls, there were also two assistants from the Luftwaffe at the district command post, who above all had the necessary knowledge of radio equipment. There was radio contact with the district command post in Hannover. At certain intervals (I think it was four hours, but maybe less) you had to report to make sure contact was maintained and communication was guaranteed.

Radio wasn't always easy either, because you had to not only broadcast yourself, but also be able to hear the messages intended for the station from the huge salad of sounds in the air. The messages were transmitted encrypted; they had to be encrypted before being sent and decrypted after being received. The Code was changed every three days.

The purpose of this radio communication was to maintain the connection in case the telephone connection to the regional command post in Hanover was interrupted by bombing. During the bombing, care was always taken to ensure that those who had been bombed received hot and cold meals. These were prepared in other cities in the required quantities and then trucked to the affected city. Due to these “orders”, there always had to be a connection. Towards the end of the "Third Reich", it is said that the orders for the "liquidation" of the prisoners came by radio from Hannover, but the students simply did not transmit them. But I only know this from the stories, I myself was not on radio duty at the time.

Sources: http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/pd ... eitet2.pdf
http://bunker.amaot.info/bunker14l.htm

Cheers. Raúl M 8).
Serás lo que debas ser o no serás nada. General José de San Martín.
User avatar
tigre
Patron
Posts: 6944
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:42 pm
Location: Argentina

Re: Blitz Mädchen?

Post by tigre »

Hello to all :D; more............................

Blitzmädel (1944-1945).

Report of a contemporary witness - Annemarie Zarnikow.

Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods).

This end time, at the beginning of April 1945, was characterized by a peculiar atmosphere in the bunker, a twilight of the mood of the gods, as was later found in many reports about the end in the Führer's bunker in Berlin. You knew the end was near, but you didn't know what it would be like. Party members were distraught and sometimes aggressive. And although they had commanded the battle to the last drop of blood, they themselves prepared to flee. It was better to avoid closeness to them. Too much knowledge was dangerous back then.

I only listened (without observing) as the Kreisleiter Heilig and his companions discussed the route of their journey out of Braunschweig. To do this, the anti-tank obstacles that the Volkssturm had previously excavated in the traffic lanes had to be filled in again in places. I heard about this plan, but I don't know if it was.

Apart from that, I did not notice anything that was later learned about the activities of the last few days. As already mentioned, we also bring our personal belongings and groceries home. District leader Heilig, who always treated us schoolgirls kindly, bid us farewell on April 11 with the words, "Go home, girls!" That is what we did, and when I returned to the Thingplatz barracks two days later to collect the personal belongings left behind, they had been completely stolen and the barracks leveled.

Sources: http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/pd ... eitet2.pdf
http://bunker.amaot.info/bunker14l.htm

It's all. Cheers. Raúl M 8).
Serás lo que debas ser o no serás nada. General José de San Martín.
Post Reply