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

The metre-thick stacks of files with lists, tables and implementation regulations in the federal archive in Berlin-Lichterfelde on this topic alone are indication of the way in which, after the war, the German administration under Soviet occupation moved from fighting the military enemy in the field to combating venereal disease. The authorities appeared more concerned about public health than about the circumstances under which the diseases had been contracted. The reason for the increase in venereal diseases is evident. Whereas two-thirds of those infected after the First World War were men, after the Second World War two-thirds were women. The registers at the treatment centres for venereal diseases regularly listed ‘Russ. soldier’ as the source, indicating that the sexual contact was rarely voluntary. [39] Bundesarchiv Lichterfeld DQ1 No. 1610, Bekämpfung von Geschlechtskrankheiten.

Despite this, women were the declared target of the counter-measures. They were regarded as ‘sources of infection’. Raids were directed against them, aiming in the first instance at enforcing examinations, hospital admission, official registration and sometimes even travel bans. In Hesse in early 1947, over half of all female patients in hospitals had been compulsorily admitted, as compared with only 6 per cent of the men. [40] Elizabeth D. Heineman, What Difference Does A Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley 1999), p. 102. This was due to the fact that the German authorities had no influence over the Allied soldiers and that Soviet soldiers in particular were reluctant to go to the doctor for fear of disciplinary consequences. In addition, the (morally degenerate) German women were seen unilaterally as the spreaders of diseases. At a conference of the state and provincial health departments in March 1946 in Berlin, doctors pointed out that not prostitution but ‘sexual intercourse with frequently changing partners on its own’ was of epidemiological relevance. Not even 10 per cent of the female ‘sources’ had been identified. [41] Bundesarchiv Lichterfeld DQ1 No. 1610.

Among the American soldiers, the infection rates also rose to such an extent that it was feared at the end of 1946 that a third of the GIs could be infected with a venereal disease. [42] Goedde, GIs and Germans , p. 92. For that reason, the military administrations decided to fight at least this battle together with their former enemies. The Americans and the Soviets began to examine and treat not only their own soldiers but also the German women. Everyone who spread diseases was to be forcibly treated in hospital, registered and re-examined at regular intervals. Those who refused treatment were to be admitted to welfare homes. Fines and compulsory labour for a month were ordered. The lifestyle of cured women was to be regularly checked. [43] Bundesarchiv Lichterfeld DQ1 No. 1610. Patrols and inspectors visited bars, clubs, suspicious boarding houses and other relevant venues. Certain groups were examined as a preventive measure, including the nursing staff in paediatric hospitals, women suspected of prostitution and refugees.

The battle cries of the German doctors recalled the pathos of the Crusades:

Mindful of its moral mission, the entire medical profession should get to work. When we consider how much unhappiness we cause to our people every day we delay combating this scourge, when we bear in mind the damage that an unchecked source of infection can cause, when we realize how relentlessly these plagues sap the life and working energy of our people and threaten the very foundations of society, no doctor with a sense of responsibility can stand idly by…. The demographic consequences of a poorly treated venereal disease are drastic…. Added to this is the serious loss of workers during this reconstruction period. [44] Bundesarchiv Lichterfeld DQ1 No. 16, Zur Mitarbeit der Ärzteschaft im Kampf gegen die Geschlechtskrankheiten by Dr. Teller, 7 September 1946.

The ‘fight against venereal diseases’ was not just about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases themselves but, above all, about the implied decline in morals and, in particular, the new grey zones between ‘sexual intercourse with frequently changing partners’ and ‘covert prostitution’. The discussion focused not on the individual situation of women but on the ‘purity’ of the ‘communal blood’ of the entire people and the wish of the occupying forces for their soldiers to be protected from infection. The German authorities did not recoil from targeted denunciation. In summer 1948, for example, the Landsberger Presse called on neighbours to keep an eye out and to report any suspicious occurrences to the housing department. The names of women suspected of prostitution were also made public, not to mention the usual reprisals like residency prohibition in certain places, or admission to a workhouse or reform school. Two weeks later the town council had to recant, as the accusations proved to be exaggerated or untenable. [45] Stefan Grüner, ‘Nachkriegszeit 1945–1957: Alltag, Besatzung, politischer und wirtschaftlicher Neuaufbau’, in: Volker Dotterweich and Karl Filser (eds.), Landsberg in der Zeitgeschichte, Zeitgeschichte in Landsberg (Munich 2010), pp. 351–400.

Post-war society was reluctant to differentiate between consensual and non-consensual sexual contacts, between women who prostituted themselves out of need and victims of rape. In cases of doubt, it was the woman who was blamed. Even if women had no reason to believe that they could have been infected, they were sometimes forced to undergo a medical examination. They only had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and to be caught by a patrol. In Landsberg am Lech between August 1948 and March 1949 alone, 128 women were picked up from the street and forcibly examined. Only half of them were infected. In Berlin on 23 November 1946, a special action to combat venereal diseases was instigated. Some 400 people were rounded up and taken to Friedrichshain hospital. Of them, 11 women and 4 men had gonorrhoea, and 4 women and 5 men syphilis. [46] Landesarchiv Berlin, Ministerium des Innern, Bestand Nr. 9, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin, Ereignismeldungen – Meldungen an die Präsidialabteilung über wichtige Ereignisse aus den Inspektionsbereichen, 9/0284 an den Polizeipräsidenten von Berlin. In Bamberg in 1946, no fewer than 3,300 persons were admitted to a specially established temporary hospital for examination on suspicion of venereal disease. Half of the patients were diagnosed with a disease and treated free of charge. The experience of being arrested at random by uniformed men, placed in vehicles and finally forced to undergo a gynaecological examination must have been traumatic for many women, all the more so if they had been victims of an earlier sexual assault.

Sixteen-year-old Else B. was arrested by a German policeman in Bremen in 1946 and handed over to the American military police. She was suspected of being infected with a venereal disease. At the police station, military policemen attempted to rape the young woman, but she managed to fend them off. In their disappointment, the military police put her in a bunker, which served as a police lock-up. The inmates had nothing to eat, no fresh air, no possibility for washing. Else was menstruating. She had to wait three days before seeing a doctor. He established that she did not have a venereal disease and that she was a virgin. [47] Else Baumann-Meyer, ‘Manches vergisst man eben nie’ – Aus dem Leben einer Arbeiterin (Oldenburg 2000), pp. 53–6.

The fear of getting pregnant was a particular torment for many of the raped women. They frequently discovered they were pregnant quite late on, because the physical and mental strain caused irregularities in their menstrual cycles and even the complete absence of periods. When a woman was certain that she was pregnant as a result of having been raped, whether she wanted to or was able to have an abortion depended not only on her own attitude but also on external factors. It was easier to obtain an abortion in the Soviet occupied zone than in Catholic Upper Bavaria or Baden, where, in spite of sympathy in some isolated cases, doctors and hospitals often refused to treat women. [48] 28 In the Soviet occupied zone, there were not only medical and ethical indications but also social ones. For the health authorities, the social situation of the pregnant woman was the determining factor in their decision whether to approve an abortion; see Silke Satjukov, ‘“Besatzungskinder”: Nachkommen deutscher Frauen und alliierter Soldaten seit 1945’, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 37 (2011), pp. 1–33, here p. 6. During flight, women looked in despair for possibilities of terminating pregnancies, as we know from Ruth Irmgard Frettlöh, whose mother ultimately gave birth to an unwanted child, who died after just four months. [49] Jacobs, Freiwild , pp. 72–4. Sources from Catholic Upper Bavaria describe failed selfinduced – and sometimes fatal – abortions.