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

Some of the parish reports were very vivid. In the idyllic village of Oberwarngau in the district of Miesbach, two sisters were mowing on the morning of 20 June 1945 when a GI emerged from the trees, shot one young woman and choked the other, dragged her into the shrubbery and abused her. Because he had no cartridges left, he tried to kill her by hitting her with a rock, but she managed to escape to the next village. The priest informed the American military police who ‘after brief questioning brought the woman, who had a head injury, to Tegernsee hospital, where she was discharged after six weeks’. [32] Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 1087.

In Lenggries, soldiers broke a window frame in a farmhouse with their rifle butts, forced their way into the bedroom of a couple, threatened the husband at gunpoint and raped the wife, who was four months pregnant. A similar case occurred at the end of July in a mountain hut near Lenggries, although on this occasion the herdswomen were able to fend off the attack. [33] Ibid., pp. 1193–4.

Many similar reports from Upper Bavaria change our picture of the mass rapes after the war. The victims were not only homeless women in flight or vulnerable bombed-out women in Berlin. In Upper Bavaria, for example, victims also included people living in relative safety in the supposed sanctity of their own homes, surrounded by their own people, and possibly hitherto largely unaffected by the war. Isolated houses were frequently targeted by soldiers. The occupants were often woken from sleep and abused within their own four walls.

Eight cases of rape were reported in Oberbergkirchen. In most cases the perpetrators forced their way into the houses at night and threatened the occupants at gunpoint. Panic spread, priests instructed daughters to sleep with their parents and several families to group together. The protests by the population finally reached the military authorities. The company had to fall in before the victim. The woman would walk up and down the rows, recognize her assailant but refrain from naming him for fear of reprisals. The pastor at least managed to arrange for the women and girls who had been attacked to be examined for venereal diseases by the American military doctor. ‘Worse damage was avoided in one case in this way’, he wrote to his cardinal. [34] Ibid., p. 1252.

Pastor Johann Schausbreitner from Stefanskirchen, one of the early churches to be founded in Bavaria near Mühldorf, which had a labour camp nearby as well as a satellite camp of Dachau concentration camp, kept a precise record of the rapes: two 18-year-olds, a 25-year-old farmer’s daughter and a 69-year-old unmarried peasant. Several other women managed to escape. [35] Ibid., p. 1260. This village today has just 500 souls, which means that even traditional and well-established communities were affected, and that the victims of violence could not escape the ensuing public disgrace.

These cases of sexual aggression towards German women, mostly by Americans, are richly documented in the files of the Bavarian police collected by the Ministry of the Interior. The scenarios are not dissimilar to the reports of rape by the Red Army in the East and in Berlin: the looting, the gang rapes, the brutality. The difference is that they are not the chronicle of a disaster that had been foreseen in advance. The population were completely unprepared for the aggression. The GIs appear to have been more bitter than the Red Army in the East at the deviousness and senseless resistance of the Germans fighting down to the last metre of territory. The local conditions, particularly in rural areas, where soldiers could break into houses at night with no danger to themselves, looting and raping the women, will have made it easier for them to commit these offences.

The frequent mention of the skin colour of the perpetrators in the source material, by contrast, is more a question of the prejudice at the time against other ‘races’. In his study of American military court files, the criminologist Robert Lilly notes that African American soldiers did not commit more rapes but that they were punished more frequently and more harshly by the military tribunals. He surmises that acts by black soldiers appear more frequently in the sources because of the attitude of the reporters, who had difficulty in imagining that a white woman would have consensual sex with dark-skinned men. [36] Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 163; see also Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France (Chicago 2013), pp. 222–4. Added to this were prejudices regarding the sexual and intellectual character of the black man, not only among white Americans but also within the German population.

Josef Koblechner from St Jakob parish in Wasserburg noted:

In the chapter ‘Americans and women’, the population was in for a great surprise. Before their arrival, many German women and girls were anxious about the American negroes. This anxiety was soon overcome. There were a few incidences of rape in the very first days, and in any case there is no convincing evidence that they were completely against the will of the women. In general, however, the negroes, when sober, proved to be harmless, good-willed, helpful and cheerful. They often played and joked like children. These observations were a veritable lesson for the German people as demonstration of the mendacious exaggeration of the Nazi race ideology. [37] Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 1352.

With the increasing reports of rapes during the first weeks of the American advance, some people claimed that it was a planned tactic by the Germans. In June 1945, the military police commandant, Infantry Lieutenant-General Edwin Lee Clarke, said, in response to the rumours, that ‘German women are creating a feeling of great insecurity among our soldiers by untrue charges of rape and that these tactics may be part of a German plan.’ [38] National Archives, Headquarters XX Corps Office of the Provost Marshal, Reply to questions on rape, file no. 70, 5 June 1945: Rape of German Women by American Soldiers (National Archives ID: 6081861).

Clarke went about investigating the incidents. He questioned witnesses, read reports and concluded there had been one or two cases of seduction but without any sabotage motive by the enemy. In most other cases, the victims had resisted as proof of rape. Some women had jumped out of windows and risked breaking a leg. Others had been badly beaten by their assailants. Two cases of younger victims, involving a 13-year-old and an 18-year-old girl, both virgins before the assault by ‘negro troops’ and both from well-off families, were clear, as was a case in Thuringia, in which the victim had been eight months pregnant. He concluded: ‘It is my opinion that the allegation of the creation of a feeling of ‘great insecurity’ among our soldiers by untrue charges of rape is FALSE. I am further of the opinion that these so-called tactics are not a plan of sabotage by the Germans, and that there has been no evidence to support this latter allegation in any of the areas occupied by the Corps.’ [39] Ibid.

All of the cases had taken place in the houses of the victims at a time when the GIs were forbidden from fraternizing, and contact by members of the military with the German civilian population was strictly controlled.

Most of the rapes had occurred, according to Clarke, during the rapid advance. This pattern had already been observed following the landing in France. As soon as the troops stopped, the rapes would decrease, he hoped. Nor did he find any confirmation of the rumour that women had been falsely accusing soldiers of rape in order to obtain a legal abortion.