WEAPONS OF WAR:

Josephine Ockrassa

Rape itself should not be regarded as a transhistorical mechanism of women’s oppression but as one that acquires specific political or economic meanings at different moments in history.1

-- Dr. Hazel Carby

The impact of rape reverberates through cultures big and small. Rape is not a singular occurrence that happens in opposition to the accepted conventions of society. It has occurred at all points throughout history, but it is especially pervasive at times of war and in places where mass violence has occurred. Rape has historically been viewed as a byproduct of war. However, rape and sexual assault are both weapons of war. They are utilized to assert dominance and humiliate populations through violence. The motives behind rape are deeply rooted in sociopolitical structures. Rape works to reestablish power and social hierarchy while actively destroying occupied populations. Those who actively support sexual violence and allow it to continue in times of war benefit from the weaponization of rape. Is rape an innate animalistic behavior that humans are especially susceptible to, or is rape a weapon, a tool utilized to enforce the patriarchal status quo?

Following the fall of the Third Reich, a mass series of rapes occurred in Germany. The Nazi regime in place before the fall prepared the general population for the onslaught of sexual violence that was to occur. Pro-natalist policies were rolled back and the mass dissemination of anti-Soviet propaganda was released. This propaganda stoked fear in German civilians and greatly influenced how the nation reacted to the arrival of the Red Army. The national narrative that came out of this event was one of Red Army soldiers preying on defenseless German women and children while they pushed through and destroyed German masculinity. Stalin’s Red Army continued to play the role of the rapist brute throughout the post-war and Cold War era.

Only in the past thirty to forty years have scholars begun to address the event as anything other than the rape of Germany committed by the Red Army. A closer look at the parties involved paints another picture of masculine violence that extends outside of Soviet ranks. Post-war sexual violence was committed by members of each of the allied armies that flooded into Germany during liberation. The victims were not only German women, they included men, children, French citizens, and those who had recently been liberated from Nazi concentration camps.

This essay will focus on the soldiers and female victims who were involved. I will be addressing rape during wartime through a variety of lenses. The rapes which occurred under allied occupation have been politicized, moralized, propagandized, and racialized. My analysis begins with the examination of the role rape plays during wartime violence. Rape is not a by-product of war; it is a weapon present in every military’s arsenal. Rape centers around masculinity. Its victims are diverse, but its perpetrators are disproportionately male. To follow, I will look at who the perpetrators were and the extent to which they were encouraged or punished for their actions. To understand rape as a weapon, it is important to look at the perpetrator’s motives and how they compare to other instances of wartime sexual violence. Next, I will address how government and military officials reacted and how the treatment of victims confirms the strategical nature of rape as a multi-faceted weapon. Lastly, I intend to illustrate the lasting impact post-war sexual violence has had on the populace and what Germany has done to remedy its effects. I’ve chosen to focus mainly on the German women involved to address the circumstances surrounding victimhood during wartime. What makes the rape of German women challenging to study is the hesitation to sympathize with victims in light of the atrocities committed and perpetrated by German citizens in the Holocaust and both world wars. Assigning victimhood to German women has proven to be a point of contention among historians on the topic.

Sexual violence is commonplace in war zones. Rape is a weapon that has appeared in countless wars from the Trojan armies to American soldiers in Vietnam. Its uses go beyond instilling fear and humiliation in conquered populations. In the case of occupied Germany, rape was also used as fodder for propaganda and eugenic racist ideals. In both situations, the victims and lasting trauma placed on the population are all but forgotten by history. Sexual violence has its roots in patriarchal power systems. Power structures based on gender imbalance and preserved by male violence appear outside of human society. In Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson’s book Demonic Males, the patriarchy is viewed as a tool used by humans and chimpanzees alike to maintain gendered hierarchies through violence. According to the text patriarchy “has its sources in the evolutionary interests of both sexes.”2 Men and women both experience the gains and pitfalls of masculinity. The initial assumption when looking at rape in animal species is that the main motivation behind rape is reproductive based. However, the reproduction theory lacks any data that can explain the widespread use of rape throughout species or show that rates of conception are increased by rape. Another theory accepted by feminist scholars and addressed by Wrangham and Peterson is that rape is performed with the intention of domination. Rape is not for short-term gratification but instead acts as a tool to instill long-term control. If we apply this theory to humans, it lines up with our understanding of the instances in which rape occurs. When we factor in cases of date rape and marital rape, our commonly held beliefs surrounding rape shift. Rape is more likely to occur between people who are already acquainted than strangers. This supports the theory that rape has a logical goal of enforcing power dynamics.3

Rape, like violence, is not a natural indisputable fact of human existence; it is a byproduct of patriarchal masculinity. In his book Honor and Violence, Anton Blok suggests that historians and anthropologists should look beyond our assumptions surrounding the belief that violence is a natural phenomenon. Instead they should decipher what violence represents in terms of our position in society. Blok writes, “Violence is interwoven with masculinity, and the human body often serves as a cultural medium, as a source of metaphorical material to symbolize power relations.”4 Raping members of an enemy society also rapes the physical body of the culture and acts as a symbol of victory and domination in warfare. The writer Susan Brownmiller states, “A simple rule of thumb in war is that the winning side is the side that does the raping.” She also credits man’s discovery of the weaponized possibility of his genitals as ranking alongside prehistoric greatest hits such as the discovery of fire and stone tools.5

Rape is intended to send a message of total domination to the enemy. The victims of rape aren’t the goal, they’re the prize for defeating the enemy. Soldiers are promised women alongside glory and honor in battle. In Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, rape and the helplessness of its victims are explained in detail. After throwing his prize over his shoulder Ovid’s character exclaims “Romulus, you knew how to pay your soldiers right; Pay me that way and I’ll enlist tonight!”6 The Iliad similarly portrays women as the helpless spoils of war. Achilles goes as far as to leave behind his fellow soldiers because Agamemnon dishonored him by stealing his prize.

Stalin’s Red Army has largely been blamed for the mass rapes that occurred following the end of World War II. This is due to Nazi propaganda which was released throughout the war. Fear-mongering tactics deployed through propagandic images encouraged German citizens to continue working. The rapes and atrocities committed by Nazi soldiers on the eastern front and against the Soviet Union were common knowledge throughout the war. By the end of 1941, the population of the Soviet Union reached 3.14 million casualties at the hands of German soldiers. Nazi officials tailored propaganda to warn against imminent sexual and physical violence from Red Army troops seeking retribution should Germany lose the war. As the Allies closed in on Nazi Germany, fear took hold of the population and suicide rates skyrocketed. Suicide, like the widespread destruction of infrastructure, was viewed as a last stand against invading forces. Women, in particular, committed suicide to escape being captured and raped by soldiers. The women who survived the end of the Third Reich expected to face the same fate of Soviet women who were raped and assaulted by Nazi soldiers.7 The Red Army weren’t the only offenders in the liberation of Germany, so why was Nazi propaganda so focused on the Soviets and not the American, French, or British troops that arrived at the western front? The Soviet Union never endorsed rape or sexual assault against Germans. In actuality, soldiers were forbidden from committing rape and faced execution or five years in a labor camp for being suspected of rape. Soviet regulations were more severe than any restrictions regarding rape committed by American or British troops. The Soviet Union emphasized the superiority of the Soviet structure as the liberators of Germany. Terror through sexual assault was never officially supported by the government.8

If the Soviet Union was so anti-sexual assault that they executed Red Army soldiers without trial, then why is the Red Army overwhelmingly credited with the raping of Germany? Historian Miriam Gebhardt refers to the relationship between Soviet perpetrators and German victims as “a preordained choreography, in which both sides knew their roles and played them out as if remotely controlled.” Soviet command repeatedly released requests to treat Germans humanely, but the rapes continued despite threats of punishment and the separation of soldier’s living quarters from the public. The war experiences of the Red Army soldiers leading up to their interactions with German civilians, and each culture’s respective attitudes towards each other only encouraged the outcome.9

Earlier I alluded to the involvement of British, American, and French troops in the rapes that occurred during the occupation. Soviet forces didn’t act alone; rape is a weapon in every military’s arsenal. According to complaints filed with French authorities, American soldiers committed widespread rape through France on their way to Germany. Once they arrived extensive church and hospital archives show that German women and girls were raped and assaulted by French and American soldiers. At the end of the war, there were an estimated three million American soldiers in Europe which reduced to 600,000 by 1946. The amount of documented assaults increased with each new wave of soldiers that came through Europe. British archives lack substantial evidence that points to instances of rape comparable to Soviet or American forces, but they are confirmed to have occurred on a smaller scale. Later I will elaborate on the problem’s victims faced in reporting rape and assault, but in the case of each of the allied forces, rapes occurred on a larger scale than documentation and archives support. Due to the nature of sexual assault, statistics and documents provide a skewed understanding of the topic. The motives behind rape also shifted, the initial onslaught was connected to the initial energy of conquest while later cases reflect power imbalances at play between soldiers and civilians.10

The narrative of Red Army soldiers raping German women and girls out of retribution would explain the situation easily if it were an isolated event between two groups. However, it doesn’t hold up when we factor in rapes committed by British, American, and French soldiers. It also fails to factor in the experiences of non-German rape victims. Soldiers raped indiscriminately as the marched through Europe. Among the victims were Jews, Poles, French women, and German Communist Party members. The perpetrators and victims vary widely due to the true nature of rape during wartime. The directive of an occupying force is to establish control and power over the population. By instilling fear through rape, individual soldiers claim their prize. Like Achilles in the Iliad, soldiers are motivated through the promise of future reward. Once the battle is finished, they see fit to take what they like, from looting to rape, with little to no fear of punishment from their commanding officers.11

If rape was purely a reflection of lust, then we could discount rape as a natural and uncontrollable urge that affects mainly men. However, the circumstances surrounding rape committed during wartime don’t line up with our understanding of a soldier’s uncontrollable lust for the women of conquered enemies. The motives behind rape are caused by tension in gender structures, politics, ethnic divides, and social power balances. To emphasize social power structures in post-war Germany, women and girls were often raped and assaulted in their own homes with their male relatives as a witness. The emasculation of German men was high on the list of motives for perpetrators.

The sexual assault of German men and boys is underrepresented in research. Later I will address the self-identifying process of victims. However, for male victims of sexual assault, it is often difficult to define the circumstances and it is rarely reported or documented. There do exist references and some vivid accounts of rape committed against German men and boys by foreign soldiers. By discussing the instance of male rape that occurs in wartime we can better understand the instances of female rape. When reading accounts from male rape victims there is no sense of misunderstanding or homoerotic subtext between perpetrator and victim. The male victims are assaulted in a way that suggests complete domination and the intent to humiliate and emasculate. For perpetrators, the motives behind raping female or male victims remain the same. The rape of women is less based on gender power structures or sexuality and more based on domination and humiliation.12

Racist propaganda and disinformation can be held responsible for the commonly held belief that the Red Army was at fault for any instances of sexual assault and rape. The historical narrative perpetuates the archetype of the white liberator versus the Asiatic Russian and Moroccan horde of rapists. The actions of American, British, and French soldiers have all but been forgotten due to anti-communist Cold War propaganda. The U.S. needed to turn the Soviet Union, their former ally, into an enemy, and Germany, their former enemy, into an ally. Red Army soldiers came to represent negative and aggressive masculinity while American soldiers promoted a protective and desirable type of masculinity. The Red Army’s actions were used to represent the communist anti-Christian values of the Soviet Union that the West was actively trying to distance itself from. While the rapes committed by Red Army soldiers were magnified, the atrocities and mass rapes committed by Germans soldiers in the East were forgotten. The rape of German women transformed into the rape and brutalization of Germany as a whole, and by extension western Christian culture. Propaganda from the Federal Republic of Germany portrayed the Soviet Union as a giant red man with Asian characteristics, reaching out over Europe.13 By turning the Soviet Union into the barbarian, Cold War propaganda could discredit the German Democratic Union and the East while preserving the Federal Republic as part of the western sphere of influence. Therefore, the Soviet Union became emblematic of the perils of communism.14

I have purposefully refrained from mentioning speculative estimations of the number of victims who were raped and sexually assaulted at the hands of soldiers. I’ve saved any mention of numbers until after I’ve had the opportunity to address possible motives behind the rape and the true nature of rape as a weapon of war. Accurate estimations of victims can’t be provided because no such numbers exist. Speculative data ranges around one to two million victims, which leaves an unfavorably large margin for error. When dealing with statistics in history, it’s important to understand how social and cultural systems influence data collection. Data regarding rapes committed by soldiers is largely missing from archives or is made inaccessible to researchers to preserve reputations. Primary sources in the forms of oral histories, official statements, and diaries are also scarce due to insufficient interest from government officials in collecting and preserving first-hand accounts from victims.15

To better understand the issues surrounding the accuracy of existing documentation regarding rape and sexual assault we need to look outside of our modern definitions. Our definition of rape has expanded to include instances that would not fit within the 1945-1955 legal definitions. According to Gebhardt:

In 1945 and the following years, rape was defined only as the direct physical overpowering of the woman’s resistance (in some cases at gunpoint) with vaginal penetration and credible opposition by the victim, to the exclusion of all other forms of sexual aggression. Women with even the slightest reputation for easy virtue were not generally recognized as rape victims.16

Women who couldn’t prove sufficient resistance were given gifts of items such as chocolate and cigarettes. Those suspected of seeking out soldiers were unable to seek legal retribution or recognition. At the time, resistance played into the belief that women wanted to be conquered which was viewed as a healthy and acceptable aspect of female sexuality.17 The legal system was complex. German authorities had little to no course of action for assisting victims. Because military police were responsible for crimes committed by soldiers, German police could not report or intervene in matters of rape and sexual assault. German citizens also faced legal restrictions that prohibited them from physically interacting with or attacking a member of the occupying forces. The frequency of police reports during occupation suggests that daily life for German women centered around rape and sexual assault. The reports illustrate daily instances of rape occurring not only in private residences but also openly in the streets. The fear that women lived under persisted throughout occupation with little or no change in frequency. After West Germany joined NATO in 1955, victims became citizens with a new path to legal recourse. Now, German authorities could investigate rapes that occurred after occupation ended. Perpetrators were then categorized as individuals acting outside of their military position, therefore relieving military powers of accountability.18

The duality of German women following the end of the war has made the research of victims of rape difficult. German women are both perpetrators and victims in this situation. German citizens were either complicit or actively supported and assisted the Nazi regime. For researchers, it’s difficult to sympathize with victims who also actively supported systems of oppression. Outside of Cold War discourse, the topic was largely ignored until feminist historians picked it up in the eighties and nineties. However, the cause and effect theory of early historians still precedes fact. As I’ve already addressed, the belief that German women were raped because of the atrocities committed by Germans during the war falls apart when we look at the frequency in which American soldiers raped French and German women. Not only are German women perpetrators and victims but they also face what Gebhardt refers to as “secondary victimization.” Victims of rape later became victims of social exclusion whose stories are only beginning to be represented at a time when few survivors exist.19

The trauma of rape still weighs on the German population. Trauma, especially in war, carries on through generations. The children and grandchildren of survivors still deal with a stifled history of trauma which has been silenced socially and politically. Many of the survivors of wartime sexual violence and their families never receive compensation. Without recourse, it’s difficult for populations to heal. As populations age, it becomes increasingly difficult to preserve first-hand accounts. New issues in dealing with trauma arise in elderly care. Survivors who were never able to process their trauma face new challenges living in vulnerable situations. The effects of trauma on the elderly have led to an increased misdiagnosed treatment for dementia in Germany. Because the narrative of the assault that occurred is so heavily influenced by political discourse, the current population is not fully equipped to address the trauma. The population continues to grapple with its treatment of sexual assault survivors.20

The rapes and assaults that occurred in Germany following the end of World War II are only one component of an extensive history of rape and its use as a multi-faceted weapon. The victims that I’ve spoken about are not members of a community, because they cannot be bound together by their cultural or social identities. As I have addressed, the motives behind rape are varied. The narrative behind the rape of German women is understandable in the historical context in which it was written. As modern historians have shown, it isn’t an accurate portrayal of why rape occurs. While we analyze the deeper meaning of words, we see that definitions shift, and as a result, our modern understanding of rape has widened. Quantifiable data cannot accurately represent the true nature of violence. It’s important that as historians we make attempts to understand history as it relates to a different point in time. Important work remains for historians attempting to reconstruct our understanding of rape and how it has affected the German population.

1. Atina Grossmann, “A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers,” October 72 (1995), 47.
2. Richard Wrangham, Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, (London: Bloomsbury, 1997) 125.
3. Wrangham, 141.
4. Anton Blok, Honour and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 113.
5. Miriam Gebhardt, Crimes Unspoken: The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War (Cambridge: Polity press, 2016), 194.
6. Publius Ovidius Naso, Len Krisak, and Sarah Ruden, Ovids Erotic Poems: Amores and Ars Amatoria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 117.
7. Gebhardt, Crimes Unspoken, 34, 65.
8. Ibid., 64-65.
9. Ibid., 75, 77.
10. Ibid., 14, 16, 91.
11. Ibid., 56, 77
12. Ibid., 25, 77.
13. Nein! Darum CDU, photograph (Germany, 1949), 1st parliamentary elections 1949, election poster of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
14. Júlia Garraio, “Hordes of Rapists: The Instrumentalization of Sexual Violence in German Cold War Anti-Communist Discourses*,” RCCS Annual Review, no. 5 (January 2013), 51-58.
15. Gebhardt Crimes Unspoken, 17.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 98.
18. Ibid., 15-16, 59.
19. Ibid., 4, 197.
20. Ibid., 202.