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

One feature that struck the army superiors was that the GIs raped German women not only more often but also more brutally than they had, earlier, the women of their Allies in Britain and France. The German women were more frequently injured, beaten unconscious with fists or weapons, abused more frequently in the presence of their husbands or relatives, and more frequently penetrated orally or anally, according to the Military Prosecutor General. [11] Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 120.

According to military statistics, around half of the rapists in the first months after the war were charged and brought to trial for assaults involving teenagers. [12] This does not mean that GIs raped women of this age with greater frequency but rather that the perpetrators in these cases were more often brought to trial. A quarter of the victims were unmarried, a quarter married, and 4 per cent widowed. The marital status of the remaining 45 per cent is not known. [13] Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 144. The youngest reported victim was seven years old and was infected with gonorrhoea; the oldest, sixtynine. The class distribution was even – middle-class women were just as likely to suffer as peasants. The Alpine herdswomen and dairymaids were particularly vulnerable to attacks by soldiers.

The reports from the Upper Bavarian archbishopric Munich-Freising give a useful insight into the events at the end of the war and their immediate effect. Every ministry in the bishopric was to report to Cardinal Michael Faulhaber by 1 August 1945 on the events in the respective parishes in the last days of the war and the first days of occupation. The aim of these reports was primarily to list the material and immaterial losses by the church. Even at the time, however, the 540 reports were soon recognized as historical documents. The authors were aware that German society was at a crossroads, and they therefore attempted to record events, often in the form of chronicles and not without making their own political views known.

Although these observations cover only the first three months after the arrival of the Americans in Munich and Upper Bavaria, and although the ministers were almost certainly not informed of all the cases of rape (but probably in the first instance those affecting Catholics), the number of attacks listed is staggering. The archbishopric covered approximately the same area as the government district of Upper Bavaria. Over 2 million people, 90 per cent Catholic, lived in a thinly populated area of 12,000 square kilometres. Twenty-one communities reported ‘several’ rapes, without indicating precisely how many, and there was explicit mention of 131 cases (with names and often addresses). If we assume an average of three cases in the twenty-one communities that did not provide precise figures, the total number of rapes in the first three months of occupation, initially by the French and then by the Americans, runs to just under 200.

This number is only an approximation. It can be inferred from the reports that, in the eyes of the authors, the sexual aggressions in the communities were by no means the worst crimes. They wrote in greater detail and often with greater indignation about the looting by the soldiers, former prisoners of war, slave labourers and concentration camp inmates and the indigenous population. In view of the many detailed reports of property crimes and the often laconic list of sexual offences, it would appear on occasion that the churchmen were more interested in the intactness of their church spires and holy wine than that of the female members of their congregations. At all events, Georg Wall from Ebersberg did not sound too perturbed when he wrote on 21 July 1945: ‘The arrival of the Americans was without incident; no shots were fired. There were a few reports of women and girls being raped.’ [14] Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 571. The use of words like ‘a few’ or ‘isolated’ in this and other reports would appear to indicate that in the eyes of the churchmen the female victims did not count for much.

Consensual sexual contact between German women and the occupiers seems to have given rise to greater indignation among clerics than violent aggression. For some it was already enough that women waved to the occupiers and rejoiced. ‘Women in particular forgot themselves, threw themselves into the arms of the Americans and showered them with flowers’, complained Joseph Mock from the Church of the Holy Cross in the Giesing district of Munich. [15] Ibid., p. 323. In fact, the same could be said of the attitude of women to Adolf Hitler, but we know today that in neither case was the euphoria confined to women.

The cleric Stephan from Oberhummel parish was particularly unpitying. He wrote that there had unfortunately been serious looting and rape. The ‘greatest nuisance’, however, came from the former concentration camp inmates, who ‘ate themselves sick’ from the good food offered to them. He also complained about the brothel established by the American soldiers opposite his parish house, where German women and girls (mostly speaking the Berlin dialect) were available, being paid with valuables, particularly ‘beds and clothes looted from us. Evacuated women made themselves available in the most shameless manner day and night, especially to the passing negroes, in return for coffee, chocolate, etc., women whose husbands were in captivity or had recently been killed or here. The latest craze: dancing with negroes! It will be very difficult for the inhabitants to show compassion!’ [16] Ibid., pp. 1386–7.

The average age of the priests was fifty-three years; they were mostly from modest backgrounds, and had been ordained on average twenty-seven years earlier. They were therefore experienced pastors who had known their congregations for many years: traditional and religiously conservative rural communities. The clerics played a key role in these rural environments, being involved in the rituals of birth, marriage, sickness and death; they were important points of reference and authority and for that reason were often involved in the decisions of villages to surrender or not, in some cases taking the initiative and coming out to meet the tanks themselves.

Before we reject the churchmen’s reports as being overly biased, however, we should bear in mind that their judgements were by no means untypical for the time. We shall see that the tone adopted by the Upper Bavarian clergy was to predominate for a long time after the war. They thought no differently, if a little less flexibly, from the rest of the population about the events, which they believed they could divide neatly into consensual intercourse and non-consensual rape. The majority of reporters felt capable of making moral judgements about the women and assessing the attacks accordingly. A typical statement of this type: ‘Three cases of aggression against girls and women are unfortunately to be reported. In two cases the women were quite obviously at fault themselves, but in one case the victim was a very virtuous girl from a good peasant family.’ [17] Ibid., p. 1130.

Refugees were basically deemed immoral (‘the Banat Swabian girls are said to be particularly passionate dancers’), [18] Ibid., p. 1167. as were evacuees, town women and women who, as camp followers, did not conform to the usual picture of moral rectitude. The rape of such women was evidently regarded as a minor sin and in some cases not even worth recording. Some reporters even turned the incidents round and accused the women of leading the men astray. Forty women and their illegitimate children were housed in Griesstätt in the deanery of Wasserburg, a fate of countless women who were labelled ‘asocial’ or ‘degenerate’. The minister Jakob Christaller wrote that ‘their impertinent and forward nature presented a great moral danger for the American soldiers’. [19] Ibid., p. 1317.