Miriam Gebhardt - Crimes Unspoken - The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War

Was it this senseless but stubborn fighting by the Germans that galled the American military so much, or was it the 40,000 prisoners of war, including many of their fellow countrymen? At all events, the Americans began to loot the town with particular ruthlessness. If doors weren’t opened quickly enough, they were blown open. Then the houses were pillaged from the cellar to the attic, not just for food but everything that would fit into the sheets, transformed into sacks for the purpose. Objects changed hands by the cartload: cartons of eggs, cheese wheels from the dairy, beds, mattresses, quilts, preserving jars, cookware and much more. The American soldiers strained as they dragged their heavy loads, dead poultry hanging from their belts. [4] Ibid., pp. 842–53. In one cellar they discovered 80,000 litres of wine. They carried it off in bathtubs, washtubs, milk cans and buckets. The looting went on for eight days. But that was not all.

On Monday, the first day after the town had been taken, Moosburg’s parish priest Alois Schiml received first word of rapes. If there were men in the houses the GIs entered, they were forced out at gun- or knife-point. One or two accomplices would stand guard. Several girls jumped out of first-floor windows and lay injured on the ground; others sought refuge in the parish house, where a room had been transformed into a shelter.

The military authorities ordered a list to be posted on the door of every building with the names and ages of all occupants. ‘The effect of this order is not difficult to imagine. Seventeen girls and women, abused once or several times by negroes, were admitted to the hospital; other women and girls attended doctors’ surgeries. Black Americans also raped a woman in the neighbouring village of Volkmannsdorf’, wrote the priest.

He was particularly shocked by the fate of one serving maid. She was raped by a white GI wearing a steel helmet. She already had a history of depression, and the following day she became paranoid, particularly whenever she saw a steel helmet. She was given asylum at the parish house. After her mood appeared to have improved, she expressed the wish to return home. A few days later she tried to jump out of a secondfloor window. She was admitted to the ‘insane cell’, as it was called, in the hospital. After around two weeks, she was allowed to leave this cell, but her fellow patients kept an eye on her. One afternoon, she saw three American soldiers with steel helmets entering the hospital. In her panic she ran up to the third floor, jumped out of the window and hit her head on the cobblestones, where she lay unconscious and covered in blood. An American doctor examined her and found that she had a skull fracture from the back of her head to her forehead, but she appeared not to have any internal injuries. On 1 August 1945, Schiml reported: ‘She is still alive, is on the road to recovery and feels normal.’ [5] Ibid.

The last phase of the war began for the inhabitants of west and south Germany in October 1944, when the Allied troops crossed the Reich border for the first time near Aachen, occupied the territory on the left bank of the Rhine and pressed onwards to the Bavarian Palatinate. By late March 1945, the end of the war was also in sight for Bavaria. The Rhine had been crossed, the first territories in Bavaria taken, the Palatinate and Lower Franconia, all occupied in just a few weeks. In some places, particularly in the Bavarian Oberland, the French arrived first, followed by the Americans. After the German soldiers had shed their uniforms and hidden their weapons, and the last local party officials had abandoned their fight for every church tower and disappeared, it was often hours or days until the new military powers arrived. This period was known as ‘no one’s time’, filled with fear and anxiety. The population formed reception committees, planned the official handover, sewed white flags and attempted to appear as ideologically inconspicuous as possible.

The Americans took over power in Munich on 30 April, occupying all of the towns and villages in Upper Bavaria on the days before and afterwards. The occupation was usually peaceful, and the population breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘It was as if we were celebrating a victory, so great was the joy at having been liberated from the jaws of a terrible monster that had almost swallowed us up’, wrote the priest Kaspar Waldherr in Jetzendorf in the district of Pfaffenhofen/Ilm, describing the mood on the evening of 28 April, when the guns were finally silent. He expressed the widely held conviction that the Americans would be on the whole ‘well behaved, considerate and helpful’ and that the population was therefore very lucky not to have fallen into the hands of the Russians. [6] Ibid., p. 994. His colleague Johann Huber from Rieden gave voice to his preference even more clearly: ‘The sooner they come the better. Just as long as it’s not Ivan who comes. Anything is better than the Russians.’ [7] Ibid., p. 1326.

The GIs were welcomed not only because America was seen far more positively within the German population than the Communist Soviet Union. The first impressions also made the American soldiers appear more sympathetic. The priest Alfons Veit from Steinkirchen an der Ilm was impressed by the manly martial air of the American troops:

The American military police vehicles paraded in a smart and orderly fashion past the mayor…. And then a fighting unit appeared, filing through the village and back again; small tanks, a couple of large armoured vehicles and other vehicles, well equipped, disciplined and smart, equidistant, armed and ready for action, everyone in vehicles. The Americans arrived equipped in a way that had never before been seen. The entire army motorized! No one had told us that. What a sight! On the day before on the same street the remnants of the German army, undisciplined, with requisitioned horse-drawn agricultural vehicles… poor driven German soldiers… what an unequal competition. [8] Ibid., p. 1010.

But the first impression quickly evaporated. Everywhere in Upper Bavaria, the arrival of the Americans was accompanied by looting, destruction, violence and rape. The soldiers of the richest nation in the world went from village to village and house to house, initially looking for enemy soldiers and weapons, taking watches and bicycles, radios, cameras, binoculars, jewellery, silver tableware, pocket knives and lighters as souvenirs, stocking up on spirits, food (especially eggs) and even live animals. Then the rape started, often in groups, once or several times in succession.

The American military tribunals, where a few of the crimes were later tried, discerned a clear pattern. Two soldiers would enter a house on the outskirts of a village at night. One of them would be armed with a pistol, and together they would go up to the first floor, where the women were sleeping. The armed soldier would take a woman downstairs and lock the front door. The women would then be raped one after another. The soldiers would leave the house, telling their comrades on the way where they could find women. [9] Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 120.

Sometimes the GIs were taken to their victims by liberated slave labourers – a particularly perfidious form of revenge on the former German slave holders. Under the occupying forces, it was now the Germans who became defenceless victims without rights. In places like the tranquil Hörgertshausen in the district of Freising, there were cases of sexual slavery, in which the GIs requisitioned rooms for ten to fifteen females, who were constantly rotated. [10] Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 835.