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

Roberts believes that the disproportionately large number of black GIs involved, according to official figures on rape in France in the summer of 1944, was due not only to the French women’s fear of ‘the black man’ but also to a structural factor: most of the complaints were about rape by members of the supply units, in which there was a higher proportion of blacks than in the fighting units. They were less mobile than the other units and it was thus easier to prosecute someone for an offence. At the time, however, people naturally sought a different explanation for the disproportionately large number of African American suspects: as mentioned earlier, black men were thought to have more powerful urges and weaker control. Some 77 per cent of all rapes for which convictions were obtained in France involved African Americans; later, in Germany, the proportion was to dwindle to less than a third. [61] This is still disproportionate to the percentage of African American soldiers in the military: ibid., p. 196.

Roberts’ study clearly shows that the behaviour of the American soldiers in France was already similar to what was to come later in Germany, albeit not with the same brutality. The tacit acceptance of sexual promiscuity, also as a hoped-for antidote to the homoerotic climate in the army (forced sexual restraint was seen as a cause of homosexuality), ultimately counted for more than the question of whether the sexual objects belonged to a friendly or enemy nation. Contemporary witnesses already noted the violent and intensive nature of the ‘fraternization’ of GIs in Europe. The obvious comparison between the conquest of sexual partners and the conquest of the enemy, whose human dignity and equality were denied, was also made at the time. [62] Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations 1945–1949 (New Haven and London 2003), p. 83. As Karen Hagemann puts it, erotic fraternization became a ‘myth rather than a stab in the back’. The fact that their honour had been wounded because they were unable to fulfil their male duty and protect ‘their’ women was used by German men to exonerate and dissociate themselves from any feelings of guilt and to direct their aggression instead against the ‘Yank lovers’. [63] Karen Hagemann, ‘Heimat-Front: Militär, Gewalt und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Zeitalter der Weltkriege’, in: Hageman et al. (eds.), Heimat-Front , pp. 13–52, here p. 40.

The American writer and journalist Meyer Levin, who worked as a war correspondent during the Second World War, admitted that, after what he had seen in Theresienstadt concentration camp, he felt a need in himself for revenge in the form of rape:

In war there is a reversal of the general code of the community of men. It is right to kill, and with this sanction comes a compulsion to reverse all other civilized injunctions: to steal, lie, blaspheme, and rape. … Thus theft is transformed into loot, rape in Germany was accomplished through the medium of a bar of chocolate and was known as fraternization. [64] Quoted in Goedde, GIs and Germans , p. 84.

In other words, the eyewitness was saying that, for the Americans, fraternization could be a euphemism for rape. This self-critical appraisal is striking and reveals how deceptive it is to regard the pictures of American soldiers in their tanks being enthusiastically welcomed as the reflection of a harmonious reality. Behind these images was far more than just the well-earned rest and relaxation of battle-tested soldiers.

It is quite possible that the sexual violence by the Americans was also the result of prejudices and mutual misunderstanding. Petra Goedde believes that contact between black Americans and German women escalated rapidly because of mutual prejudices – German women regarded black men as being driven by lust and reacted strongly when African Americans made advances, while the Americans acted under the false assumption that German women had fewer problems with ethnic barriers when it came to sex than white American women. The GIs had heard that European women in general were less sexually inhibited than the women back home. This alone provided enough material for misunderstandings. Moreover, the difference between a ‘respectable’ woman and a prostitute was not always evident to GIs, while German women failed to realize that certain behaviour on their part signalled consent to the GIs. [65] Ibid., pp. 220–1.

Undoubtedly, there were also many consensual relationships between German women and American occupying forces. Of the 70,000 or so mothers of occupation children, only around 5 per cent claimed that they had become pregnant through the use of force. German women were fascinated by the relative prosperity of the American soldiers and in the destruction of post-war Germany dreamed of starting afresh in the New World. They saw the good physical shape and optimism of the GIs in contrast to their own often burnt-out and disabled men, marked by the fighting and captivity. But above all it was extreme hardship that prompted women (just as much then as today in countries where sex tourism is rife) to become involved with foreign soldiers. One example illustrates the poverty and hardship in the German population at the end of the war. In a weekly report of July 1945, the mayor of Bad Wiessee, today a prosperous town in Upper Bavaria, wrote to the district council in Miesbach: ‘As indication of the continuing poor food and health situation of the population, not only general poor health but also fainting fits have been observed on occasion even with mild infectious diseases. Around one third of the population are visibly undernourished, and children have even been seen rummaging in dustbins for American food.’ [66] Staatsarchiv München, Zur Sicherheitslage, Wochenbericht Bürgermeister von Bad Wiessee an den Landrat Miesbach, Wochenbericht 23–29 July 1945, LRA 148574.

For that reason, the GIs and German women had certain mutual interests. For black soldiers in particular, who were not allowed to marry white women in the USA at that time and suffered from many other forms of discrimination and segregation, the prospect of a relationship with a white woman might well have been just as tempting as the prospect of a better life and even emigration for a German woman. The moral judgement, still to be found in present-day historiography, that German women were particularly uninhibited, sexually starved and morally destitute continues to be coloured by the negative interpretation of the events at the time.

The American occupation zone consisting of parts of south and central Germany, Bremen and Bremerhaven had an area of 116,000 square kilometres, approximately the same as the Soviet zone. The American military command in Frankfurt was responsible for 16.7 million Germans. The basic attitude of the Germans to the Americans was ambivalent. The victorious power was idealized as a stronghold of freedom and equality and as a protector but at the same time demonized for its lack of culture, materialism and aggressive hegemonial policies. [67] See Christian T. Müller, US-Truppen und Sowjetarmee in Deutschland: Erfahrungen, Beziehungen, Konflikte im Vergleich (Paderborn 2011). The GIs were seen as prosperous, relaxed and friendly towards children (the latter also applying to the Red Army), but also as boorish philistines, libidinous, childish and uncultured. [68] Ibid., pp. 220–1. As was the case in Berlin, the sexual and other violent aggressions by the Americans did not cease with the end of the war but continued to perturb the population for years, doing little to improve the ambivalent relationship of the Germans to the ‘occupiers’.