The West perceives Nazism or national-socialism as being the ultimate manifestation of barbarism: Millions died in the name of racial supremacism, through wars, concentration camps and so on.
The Weimar Republic, during the few years it lasted, remained in a constant cycle of economic crises. This degeneracy was so severe that many modern Western nations may even seem like puritans in comparison.
German nationalists mainly blamed foreigners, notably Americans, since the constant economic crises forced Germans to look for foreign capital and investors. Besides money, the Americans naturally also pushed in their cultural imperialism as well β primarily through Hollywood. Towards the end of the war, the German government had moved to legalize prostitution.
Once the war was over, huge numbers of young men moved back to the big cities. Many of them were frustrated and traumatized, and most no longer saw anything wrong with using the services of a prostitute. In Berlin, many prostitutes worked on the streets. What is almost certain is that the majority of them, and not just in Berlin, were women in their 20s or 30s who had been made widows as a result of the First World War and so were desperate to make some money any way they could.
However, these were by no means the only ladies on offer to men happy to pay for sex. Indeed, the history books show that, when it came to prostitution in Weimar Germany, almost anything went. According to one study, as many as 30 homosexual publications could be found on a typical Berlin kiosk at the height of the Weimar Republic.
