As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II a number of rapes took place, both in connection to combat operations and during the subsequent occupation that was to last many year. Most published and most numerous are the rapes committed by Soviet servicemen.
Soviet
A wave of rapes and sexual violence occurred in Central Europe in 1944–45, as the Western Allies and the Red Army battered their way into the Third Reich.[1] The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of rapes committed by Soviet soldiers range from tens of thousands to 2 million.[2][3][4][5][6] Around 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports,[4] with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath.[7] Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000.[8][9] Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.[10] According to Natalya Gesse, "the Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty."[11]
After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution.[12] The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“[13] completely separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.
Controversy
There is dispute in Russia concerning these claims.[14] They have encountered vast criticism from historians in Russia and the Russian government.[15] Critics argue that the numbers are based on faulty methodology and questionable sources. It is argued that although there were cases of excesses and heavy-handed command, the Red Army as a whole treated the population of the former Reich with respect. In his review of Berlin: The Downfall 1945, O.A. Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of Neo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes." [16] In an interview with BBC News Online, Rzheshevsky admitted that he had only read excerpts and had not seen the book's source notes. He claimed that Beevor's use of phrases such as "Berliners remember" and "the experiences of the raped German women" were better suited "for pulp fiction, than scientific research." Rzheshevsky also defended Soviet reprisals against Germans, stating that the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of revenge".[14]
"For the Americans and British, open rape was not as common as among the Soviet troops. The Soviets simply raped any female from eight years up and if a German man or woman killed a Russian soldier for anything, including rape, 50 Germans were killed for each incident, "[17][verification needed]
"Many a sane American family would recoil in horror if they knew how 'Our Boys' conduct themselves, with such complete callousness in human relationships over here." An army sergeant wrote "Our own Army and the British Army ... have done their share of looting and raping ... This offensive attitude among our troops is not at all general, but the percentage is large enough to have given our Army a pretty black name, and we too are considered an army of rapists."[18][verification needed]
Richard Overy, a historian from King's College London, has criticized the viewpoint held by some Russians, asserting that they refuse to acknowledge Soviet war crimes committed during the war, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."[14]
US
In Taken by Force (book) J Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.[19]
France
French troops took part in the fighting in Germany, and France was assigned an occupation zone in Germany. According to Perry Biddiscombe the French for instance committed "385 rapes in the Constance area; 600 in Bruchsal; and 500 in Freudenstadt."[20]
According to Norman Naimark French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg.[21]
Polish
The half of Germany under Soviet Union occupation was split roughly in half and one part was allocated for temporary Polish administration, no definitive borders were agreed upon between the victor states. (see Former eastern territories of Germany). In order to ensure that the German territory under communist Polish administration would become permanently de-facto Polish territory, the Polish communists ordered that the German population be expelled "by whatever means necessary".[22] The communist Polish administrators of the occupied territories as a consequence did little to protect the German population from Polish and Russian rapists.[22] "Even the Soviets expressed shock at the Poles’ behavior. Polish soldiers, stated one report, 'relate to German women as to free booty'."[22]
Analysis
In his analysis of the motives behind the extensive Soviet rapes Norman Naimark singles out "hate propaganda, personal experiences of suffering at home, and a fully demeaning picture of German women in the press, not to mention among the soldiers themselves" as a part reason for the widespread rapes.[23] Naimark also noted the effect that the Russian tendency to binge-drink alcohol (of which much was available in Germany) had on the propensity of Russian soldiers to commit rape, especially rape-murder.[24] Naimark also notes the patriarchal nature of Russian culture, and of the Asian societies comprising the Soviet Union, where dishonor was in the past repaid by raping the women of the enemy.[25] The fact that the Germans had a much higher standard of living (with things such as indoors toilets), visible even when in ruins "may well have contributed to a national inferiority complex among Russians". Combining Russian feelings of inferiority and the resulting need to restore his honor and their desire for revenge may be the reason many women were raped in public as well as also in front of husbands before both were killed.[25]
According to Anthony Beevor revenge played very little role in the frequent rapes, according to him the main reason for the rapes was the Soviet troops feeling of entitlement to all types of booty, including women. Beevor exemplifies this with his discovery that Soviet troops raped also Russian and Polish girls and women that were liberated from Nazi concentration camps.[26]
War crime
At the Nuremberg trials, where only Axis defendants could be tried, no defendant was tried for rape as a "war crime under customary international law". Rape was however prosecuted as a war-crime in the trials against Japanese in Tokio, and General Yamashita was found guilty of permitting rape. In 1946 rape was made a "crime against humanity".
Discourse
In postwar Germany, especially in West Germany, the war time rape stories became an essential part of political discourse.[2] The rape of German woman (along with expulsion of Germans from the East and Allied occupation) had been universalized in an attempt to situate the German population on the whole as victims.[2] This discourse became wholly discredited by the late 1960s; since 1970s on German leftists conducted politics focused on critical investigation of the Nazi past, the older generations’ unwillingness to face that past, and their tendency to portray themselves as victims rather than as perpetrators, particularly of the Holocaust.[27] Therefore, the frequently reiterated claim that the war time rapes had been surrounded by decades of silence[8] is simply not correct.[27]
The way the rapes have been discussed by Sander and Johr in their "BeFreier und Befreite"[8] has been criticised by several scholars. According to Grossmann, the problem is that this is not a "universal" story of women being raped by men, but of German women being abused and violated by an army that fought Nazi Germany and liberated death camps.[7] Such attempts to deemphasize the historical context of the rape of German women is a serious omission, according to Stuart Liebman and Annette Michelson,[28] and, according to Pascale Bos, is an example of ahistorical, feminist and sexist approach to the wartime rape issue.[27]
According to Pascale Bos the feminist attempt to universalize the story of the rapes of German women came into a contradiction with Sander's and Johr's own description of the rapes as a form of genocidal rape: the rape of racially superior German women by racially inferior Russian soldiers, implying that such a rape was especially harmful for the victims.[27] By contrast, the issue of the rapes of Soviet woman by Wehrmacht soldiers, that, according to some estimation amounted hundreds of thousands, if not millions cases [29][30] is not treated by the authors as something deserving serious mention.[27]
In recent years some women have broken their silence about the rapes.[3][4][5]
Children
A number of "Russian babies" were born during the occupation, many of them as the result of rape.[6]
See also
- Rape during the occupation of Japan
- Marocchinate
- Soviet war crimes
- War rape
- War crimes of the Wehrmacht: Mass rapes
- Sexual enslavement by Nazi Germany in World War II
References
- ^ Perry Biddiscombe. Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945-1948. Journal of Social History, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Spring, 2001), pp. 611-647. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3789820
- ^ a b c Elizabeth Heineman. The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany's "Crisis Years" and West German National Identity. The American Historical Review, Vol. 101, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 354-395. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2170395
- ^ Kuwert, P., & Freyberger, H. (2007). The unspoken secret: Sexual violence in World War II. International Psychogeriatrics, 19(4), 782-784. doi:10.1017/S1041610207005376.
- ^ a b http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/berlin_01.shtml
- ^ Hanna Schissler The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968 [1]
- ^ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106687768
- ^ a b Atina Grossmann. A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers October, Vol. 72, Berlin 1945: War and Rape "Liberators Take Liberties" (Spring, 1995), pp. 42-63 MIT Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778926
- ^ a b c Helke Sander/Barbara Johr: BeFreier und Befreite, Fischer, Frankfurt 2005
- ^ Seidler/Zayas: Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Mittler, Hamburg Berlin Bonn 2002
- ^ "An orgy of denial in Hitler's bunker". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- ^ Beevor, Antony (1 May 2002). "They raped every German female from eight to 80". The Guardian. London.
- ^ Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Cambridge: Belknap, 1995 p. 92 ISBN 0-674-78405-7
- ^ Naimark. The Russians in Germany, p. 79
- ^ a b c Summers, Chris (29 April 2002). "Red Army rapists exposed". BBC News Online. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
- ^ telegraph.co.uk
- ^ Review of Berlin: 1945 Template:Ru icon)
- ^ Time magazine, June 11, 1945 (link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,775822,00.html, paragraph 9)
- ^ Time magazine for November 12, 1945
- ^ Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II. J Robert Lilly. ISBN 978-0-230-50647-3 p.12
- ^ Perry Biddiscombe, Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945-1948 Journal of Social History, Vol. 34, No. 3, (2001) p.635
- ^ Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7 pp. 106.
- ^ a b c Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7 pp. 74-75.
- ^ Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7 pp. 108-109.
- ^ Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7 pp. 112.
- ^ a b Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7 pp. 114-115.
- ^ [2] Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed them from camps, 24 Jan 2002, The Telegraph
- ^ a b c d e Pascale R . Bos, Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin, 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993 Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2006, vol. 31, no. 4, p.996-1025
- ^ Stuart Liebman and Annette Michelson. After the Fall: Women in the House of the Hangmen, October, Vol. 72, (Spring, 1995), pp. 4-14
- ^ Gertjejanssen, Wendy Jo. 2004. “Victims, Heroes, Survivors: Sexual Violence on the Eastern Front during World War II.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota.
- ^ A 1942 Wehrmacht document suggested that the Nazi leadership considered implementing a special policy for the eastern front through which the estimated 750,000 babies born through sexual contact between the German soldiers and Russian women (an estimate deemed very conservative) could be identified and reclaimed as racially German. (The suggestion was made to add the middle names Friedrich and Luise to the birth certificates for boy and girl babies, respectively.) Although the plan was not implemented, such documents suggest that the births that resulted from rapes and other forms of sexual contact were deemed as beneficial, as increasing the “Aryan” race rather than as adding to the inferior Slavic race. The underlying ideology suggests that German rape and other forms of sexual contact may need to be seen as conforming to a larger military strategy of racial and territorial dominance. (Pascale R . Bos, Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin, 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993 Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2006, vol. 31, no. 4, p.996-1025)