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

The image of the weak man is typical of the post-war period, occurring frequently in the years after 1945 as well. According to this theory, the defeat in war had ended the period of ‘male hegemony’ because the men had clearly failed as protectors of family, house and home. [24] Richard Bessel, ‘Was bleibt vom Krieg? Deutsche Nachkriegsgeschichte(n) aus geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive: Eine Einführung’, in: Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 60 (2001), pp. 297–305, here p. 298. The wave of rapes had contributed to this feeling, depriving the men of the last vestige of their legitimation. [25] Naimark, Die Russen in Deutschland , p. 300. Until then, masculinity had been linked with honour and hence with the ability to protect a woman. The huge rise in divorces, women with supposedly lax sexual morals and the sight of men physically damaged by war additionally got in the way of the public male image. The difference between the well-nourished soldiers of the occupying forces and the wretched returnees from the war was seen as dismal and humiliating. A new image of man in society had not yet been found and only took shape gradually in the 1950s in the form of the father and family patriarch. [26] Robert G. Moeller, ‘Heimkehr ins Vaterland: Die Remaskulinisierung Westdeutschlands in den fünfziger Jahren’, in: Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 60 (2001), pp. 403–36.

All this is true to a certain extent, but was the weakness of the men also the strength of the women? Here are some examples of eyewitness reports collected at Heimatmuseum Charlottenburg.

E. A. saw the relationship with her husband as one of shared suffering:

I think we were all in shock and were happy that we had it behind us and were no longer in danger. I never experienced it as a sexual act – I didn’t know anything about it; I saw it simply as an assault and that I had managed to escape alive. I met my husband later in the early 1950s. He had also been a soldier and had had a terrible time in captivity, and I told him – but only him – about my past, and he was very gentle.

C. S. also spoke principally with her husband and her family about her rape, not least because there were no experts like psychiatrists or psychotherapists at the time to whom she could have spoken about her experiences.

G. C. attempted first to talk with her father about what had happened to her: ‘I told him everything. He was extremely embarrassed and helpless and didn’t know what to do or say. I felt very sorry for him. Neither of us could find the right words. I still regret having tormented him so much.’ Then she turned to her teacher, whom she had admired as a child: ‘I found him in his unheated apartment, lying in bed in a coat, scarf and hat. I told him what had happened as well. He stroked my head and said I should try to believe that it had all happened not to me but to someone else. I felt a little better, but I couldn’t imagine that it hadn’t happened to me.’ She finally found a friendly ear in a married couple: ‘They had known me since childhood. I also told them, but this time it was completely different. They found some of it so ridiculous that they began to laugh. We couldn’t stop, and I kept thinking of other funny moments, until I was exhausted from laughing. That’s how I managed to get over it.’ [27] Heimatmuseum Charlottenburg, exhibition ‘Worüber kaum gesprochen wurde: Frauen und allierte Soldaten’, 3–15 October 1995.

Naturally, the rape of their wives was also a problem for the husbands, one of the many disappointments as couples reunited after the war. Both partners had ambitious expectations, which were almost impossible to fulfil. Women no longer wanted to return without further ado to their role as homemakers, and men could no longer take up their role as breadwinners again. In the years on their own, women had become more independent, but were also tired, overwhelmed and in need of affection, while the men were often merely a shadow of their former selves. Their emaciated and haggard external appearance did not fit in with the fantasies that the men had cherished about their wives for years. The years of separation had also destroyed the intimacy between couples. [28] Meyer and Schulze, ‘Als wir wieder zusammen waren’, p. 313. Men were unsure of their wives’ fidelity, and the women had good grounds for believing that their husbands had also abused women during the war.

Interviews with eyewitnesses reveal the existence of insurmountable conflicts on account of the rapes. ‘Some of our interviewees couldn’t come to terms with it and remained sexually frigid for years. Some men even demanded divorce’, recount Sibylle Meyer and Eva Schulze. [29] Ibid., p. 314. The news of sexual competition came upon the men at a time when they were in any case feeling particularly vulnerable after the defeat in war. Added to that was the absence of familiar orientations such as society, family and jobs. The men had lost their political ideals, a good deal of their authority over wives and children, their health was compromised, some of them needed nursing and were reliant on their wives. The women, on the other hand, had better contact with their children than their husbands and experienced their return as a disruption to this relationship and an additional chore. ‘There was an ambivalence between men’s dependence on the women’s strength and their need to adapt to this situation and the women’s awareness of their own strength and their disappointment at the lack of assistance provided by their husbands but also the need to act pragmatically.’ [30] Ibid., p. 316.

Gisela Koch, born 1920 and married in 1939 to Philipp Koch, experienced her husband’s return in 1946 as completely alienating.

We had barely seen each other for six years. When he returned, we of course tried at first to warm to one another. I told him everything that had happened to me while he had been away, including that fact that I had been raped several times in Pomerania at the end of the war. It was very difficult for me to speak about it again, but I thought that he needed to know. I asked him if he still wanted to live with me. He was so shocked about what I had told him that he asked for time to think about it. He didn’t know how he would decide. [31] Sibylle Meyer and Eva Schulze, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner: Familienalltag in der Nachkriegszeit (Munich 1985), p. 134.

Only after the men got back to work and could concentrate on their careers and on being the breadwinners did relationships ‘normalize’, at least to the extent of accepting with greater or lesser enthusiasm the constraints of the patriarchal single-breadwinner marriage.

Nevertheless, I don’t share the view that with the return of the prisoners of war and the ‘remasculinization’ of German society the subject of rape was taken over by men, with the recollection of the deeds being replaced by a metaphor of the raped nation, implying that the collapse should be understood as an attack on Western civilization by a brutal Soviet or Asiatic culture. [32] Heineman, The Hour of the Woman , p. 370. Read this way, German male society instructed women to keep quiet about their personal experience of rape or suggested that they should stylize themselves as the helpless victims of enemy soldiers and emphasize their vulnerability. [33] Mühlhäuser, ‘Vergewaltigungen in Deutschland’, pp. 390–1.

It is correct that, under the Nazis, women were assigned the role of reproducers and comrades and men the role of the hard fighters. This made it difficult for the two sides to become reconciled after the war. If the men nevertheless brought the subject of war-related rape out into the open and supported women as they attempted to obtain compensation, it was possibly less out of sympathy than as a form of dual calculation. On the one hand they wanted to restore the honour of their women (above all to distinguish them from the immoral ‘Veronika Dankeschöns’); on the other hand, they were certainly attracted by the prospect of maintenance payments and compensation for pain and suffering. The possibility of morally offsetting their own war crimes might also have played a role. The story of the brutal rape of German women by Allied soldiers was an ideal counterbalance to the crimes of the Wehrmacht. More than anything, however, the men were interested in regaining their old position as pater familias.