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

Merridale, Ivan’s War , p. 263.

See Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (London 2009), pp. 148–68.

Stephan Hebel (ed.), Alltag in Trümmern: Zeitzeugen berichten über das Kriegsende 1945 (Berlin 2005), p. 137.

Günter Sagan, Kriegsende 1945: Die dramatischen Wochen vor und nach der Kapitulation (Petersberg 2008).

Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , pp. 844–5.

Ibid., pp. 842–53.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 994.

Ibid., p. 1326.

Ibid., p. 1010.

Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 120.

Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 835.

Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 120.

This does not mean that GIs raped women of this age with greater frequency but rather that the perpetrators in these cases were more often brought to trial.

Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 144.

Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 571.

Ibid., p. 323.

Ibid., pp. 1386–7.

Ibid., p. 1130.

Ibid., p. 1167.

Ibid., p. 1317.

See Anthony D. Kauders, Democratisation and the Jews: Munich 1945–1965 (Lincoln, NE 2004).

Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 626.

Ibid., p. 502.

Ibid., p. 563.

Ibid., p. 489.

Ibid., p. 491.

Ibid., p. 437.

Ibid., p. 556.

Ibid., p. 568.

Ibid., p. 585.

Ibid., p. 328.

We have precise figures for victims from the following places: one from Helfendorf, four from Haag an der Amper (including ‘an unblemished girl of sixteen, one married and one single woman’), six in the parish of Litzdorf (four peasant girls, one evacuee and one army helper), three in Tuntenhausen, five to ten in Dorfen, eight in the parish of Ramsau, ten in Schwindkirchen (‘virtuous women and girls’), eight ‘serious cases’ in Taufkirchen an der Vils, one in Trudering, two married women in Hörgersdorf, one 63-year-old woman in Kirchasch, one in Alling, three in Gerlinden bei Maisach, one in Inkofen, one 17-year-old in Ensdorf, one married woman and three girls in Grossholzhausen, one in Mailling, three in Pfarrenhofen am Inn, one near-rape in Böbing (‘a 15-year-old had a narrow escape’), one in Obermarbach, one 7-year-old girl in Scheyern, who was infected with gonorrhoea, one in Frasdorf, two in Zaisering, one in Osterwarngau, one mother of four children in Steingau/Otterfing, one married woman and two girls in Petting, two in Teisendorf, two in Otting, six to eight in Siegsdorf, two in Vachendorf, two in Lohkirchen, one in Niedertaufkirchen, eight in Oberbergkirchen, one in Oberwarngau, six or seven in Ranoldsberg, two in Schönberg, four in Stefanskirchen (including a 69-year-old woman), two in Baierbach, five in Hohenpolding, one in Pauluszell, one in Babensham, one in Fürholzen, one in Langenbach, and three in Lengries.

Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 1087.

Ibid., pp. 1193–4.

Ibid., p. 1252.

Ibid., p. 1260.

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.

Pfister, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs , p. 1352.

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).

Ibid.

Ibid.

Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 149.

Erika Hoerning, ‘Frauen als Kriegsbeute: Der Zwei-Fronten-Krieg, Beispiele aus Berlin’, in: Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Plato (eds.), ‘Wir kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten’: Auf der Suche nach der Erfahrung des Volkes in nachfaschistischen Ländern (Bonn 1985), pp. 327–44, here p. 334.

Lilly, Taken by Force , p. 146.

Ibid., pp. 151–2.

Andreas Reckwitz, ‘Umkämpfte Maskulinität: Zur historischen Kultursoziologie männlicher Subjektformen und ihrer Affektivitäten vom Zeitalter der Empfindsamkeit bis zur Postmoderne’, in: Borutta and Verheyen (eds.), Die Präsenz der Gefühle , pp. 57–80, here p. 67.

Meyers Grosses Konversationslexikon of 1905 states: ‘The nervous system in general is more irritable in the female sex… There are also mental gender differences; in women feelings and emotions have the upper hand, in men intelligence and reason; women have a more lively imagination than men but it rarely achieves the same heights and boldness as in men.’ Quoted in Angelika Schaser, Frauenbewegung in Deutschland: 1848 bis 1933 (Dortmund 2006), p. 69.

Women were enlisted into fighting units in the Red Army and fought alongside their male colleagues. After the invasion by Nazi Germany, it was the patriotic duty of both men and women to defend their homeland. Some 800,000 women served in the army, navy and air force or on the home front, and from 1942 they were trained in special facilities as snipers, pilots or military officers. The ideal, as in Germany, was nevertheless a strong and independent woman on the home front to take the place of the men and at the same time to keep the home fires burning for the returning troops.

Reckwitz, ‘Umkämpfte Maskulinität’.

Frank Werner, ‘“Noch härter, noch kälter, noch mitleidloser”: Soldatische Männlichkeit im deutschen Vernichtungskrieg 1941–1944’, in: Anette Dietrich and Ljiljana Heise (eds.), Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt 2003), pp. 45–63, 51.

See Sonya O. Rose, ‘Temperate Heroes: Concepts of Masculinity in Second World War Britain’, in: Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh, Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester 2004), pp. 177–95.

Thomas Kühne, ‘Zärtlichkeit und Zynismus: Militärische Vergemeinschaftung 1918–1945’, in: Borutta and Verheyen (eds.), Die Präsenz der Gefühle , pp. 179–202, here p. 183.

Ibid., p. 191.