Manpower shortages later in the war made defensive operations increasingly more challenging. Although women were deliberately kept out of direct combat roles in the German military, these shortages created the conditions in which women were granted access to some military jobs. A key area in which women—particularly young, single women—took on greater responsibility was in anti-aircraft defense support. Deployed in German cities, these women—and the units to which they were assigned—were responsible for defending civilian populations from aerial bombardment during the extensive bombing campaigns in the final years of the conflict. This image portrays a young female member of an anti-aircraft unit at a rail station in North Berlin, 1945. As she is deployed, the apprehension on her face is evident, hinting at the general fear and anxiety among the German population in the last months of the war.