These women were called Trummerfrauen, or rubble women.
The task of removing the ruins were assigned to private enterprises, who in turn employed the women.
A chain of women would transfer the bricks to the street, where they were cleaned and stacked.
The remaining debris was then removed by barrows, wagons and lorries.
Many of debris these were used to fill up bomb craters and trenches.
Others were piled up to form hillocks known asschuttberge, or debris mountains.
Others were driven to the mountains of rubble byunemployment and hunger.
So while many women took part in rubble clearing they did not do it for altruistic reasons.
These images became ingrained in the collective German memory.
But most Germans in West Germany regarded clearing rubble a punishment.
Women did not play a major role in clearing German cities from the rubble, Treber says.
Much of the work was done by men and machines.
The picture was different in Berlin, where women greatly outnumbered menabout 60,000 women volunteered to clear war ruins.
But even that amounted to no more than 5 percent of the citys total female population.
