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

In many cases the German courts were unable even to ascertain whether a summons or order to pay had been served at all. Or they received a curt reply that, in spite of the precise details of his identity, the accused soldier had not been found by the headquarters. Or the cases were terminated summarily because the soldier concerned had been posted. Once he had departed to the USA, for example, it was impossible to follow up maintenance claims. Legal assistance, even between states within the USA, was unusual. There was no compulsory registration or poor people’s courts that might have paid for an insolvent father.

The US occupying forces tried all kinds of obfuscating ruses. In one case the headquarters in Heidelberg informed the local court in Munich that in its opinion the accused did not have to appear for the paternity hearing because he thought that the child’s mother was a prostitute. When it was pointed out that prostitutes also had legal rights, the accused appeared but denied having had any intercourse and claimed that the mother had many sexual partners. A blood test was ordered, upon which the accused was posted back to the USA. The pretext that the women had slept with several men was a popular excuse. If necessary the GIs were even willing to produce witnesses. If an enforcement writ was issued, the bailiff was simply denied admission to the barracks. And if everything else failed, the soldier was hastily posted back to the USA. [72] Bavarian State Ministry of Justice on 23 April 1956 to the Federal Minister of Justice, BayHStA MInn 81087.

The USA was not the only country to refuse to pay for the consequences of the rapes committed by its soldiers. In a High Court decision of 24 July 1950, the British also confirmed that maintenance claims against the father of an illegitimate child born to a German mother in Germany could not be asserted in England. A maintenance decision by a German court was enforceable in England only if the accused had been in Germany at the time the proceedings were instituted or voluntarily recognized German jurisdiction. Members of the occupying forces were excluded in principle, even if they acknowledged paternity.

As stated, France promised to care for the children of French soldiers, but the mothers had to cede all rights to their children, and the promise that the child would be with its biological father was not kept. Instead, the French Red Cross put the children up for adoption. In 1955, maintenance claims against fathers were allowed, and German mothers could have a German custody decision checked by a civil court at the place of abode of the father, but this was usually a protracted and most often fruitless endeavour. [73] Satjukow, ‘Besatzungskinder’, p. 11.

Like the American and British, the Soviet military administration also refused to care for occupation children. It had enough of its own war orphans and did not want ‘children of the enemy’ in its own country. In any case, the acknowledgement of paternity and payment of maintenance did not exist in the Soviet Union. Although the Civil Code, according to which the father was liable for maintenance, applied to the Soviet occupied zone, the Soviet military administration attempted to obstruct the assertion of this right. Later regulations in connection with the troop stationing agreements and the sovereignty agreement after 1955 did not cover maintenance claims for children resulting from rape at the end of the war at all. [74] Ibid., p. 14.

Raped women who had a child did not at first receive any support from the German state either beyond the normal social security that depended on the mother’s income. But was it fair that women victims of war-related rape should suffer not only mentally but also financially? Were the women not in this situation as proxy for the defeated nation? Was their sacrifice so much less significant than the sacrifices made by the soldiers and war invalids, the displaced persons and refugees? Were they not just as entitled to an allowance for their child as the fighting men? These questions were discussed for a decade after the war.

It is often claimed in the literature that after 1949 the question of the mass rape of German women was barely discussed – not at all in the Soviet occupied zone / East Germany, and less and less in West Germany as well. [75] See Naimark, The Russians and Germans , p. 205. The documentation on flight and expulsion by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims has already been mentioned as a refutation of this assertion. A much more important aspect of public discussion in the West of the rape of German women by Allied soldiers is the treatment by society of these questions and of its consequences, namely the children. Discussion was conducted not behind closed doors but also in parliament and the media. The question of justice for rape victims who had been made pregnant bothered post-war society increasingly, not because the public had particular sympathy for them but because it touched on the important topic of bourgeois family morality. The husband of one of the victims made this clear in an appeal to the federal authority responsible: ‘If they are not to question the principle of justice, mothers who are left to their own devices and have borne the sacrifice without being able to get rid of the burden like others should not be deprived of a modicum of gratitude and assistance. The victims and casualties of the fighting in the East are also taken care of by the government.’ [76] G. and E. v. H. in a letter to the Petition Committee of the German Bundestag on 24 February 1958, BA Koblenz B/126/5548.

Basically it is a question of the acknowledgement by society of the decision against abortion and in favour of the child conceived as a result of the war and through violence. Against this, however, was the fear that the state could be burdened financially by more and more groups of victims of the war. It couldn’t or didn’t want to pay even more reparations. For that reason, it was decided early on that rape victims were not in the same category as invalid soldiers and were not therefore entitled to a pension or compensation for pain and suffering, even if the act had been committed during the fighting or as a result of the war. For war victims to receive financial recognition there needed to be physical or mental injury, and rape was not considered as such.

Motherhood of an illegitimate child or the obligation to look after the child could not be regarded as personal injury. This option was not open to the women victims. But there was still some doubt as to whether the discussion would end there.

A particular hardship for rape victims was that there were children resulting from rapes whose mothers were legally married but whose husbands were missing or in captivity. Although these children were legitimate under the law, they were not entitled to an orphan allowance, with the result that public welfare was available to the mothers only in the case of demonstrated hardship. Legitimate children received both war pensions and invalid pensions because of the legal relationship with the deceased father. This also meant that a returning soldier whose wife had been raped had to provide for the child that was not his own as long as his income was above the level making him eligible for welfare.

This injustice towards German men ultimately stimulated discussion after 1950 of possible compensation for rape children. Added to this was the growing pressure from the victims and the war victim organizations. The associations lobbying for those who had suffered from the war emphasized in particular the military and patriotic sacrifice by raped women as a way of pushing their claims. They were, of course, most interested in cases from the former German east. Thus, the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, Reichsbund der Kriegs- und Zivilbeschädigten, Sozialrentner und Hinterbliebenen, und Verband der Kriegsbeschädigten (VdK) appealed to representatives of the state to do something about rape victims with children. Many of these women had been army, staff, intelligence, navy, anti-aircraft, air raid protection and SS auxiliaries and Red Cross nurses who had found themselves in Soviet captivity, where they had been raped and made pregnant. These cases, they argued, were clearly a result of the war and eligible for compensation in the form of pensions or therapeutic care. Otherwise they were reliant on welfare, as they were frequently unemployed. If they worked, however, the support was withdrawn. This treatment was unfair and unworthy of a ‘civilized state’. Also, claimed the VdK, there was the danger that maternal feelings would suffer.