Rape during the occupation of Germany

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by YMB29 (talk | contribs) at 23:59, 30 January 2015 (→Criticism from Russian historians: rewording). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 23:59, 30 January 2015 by YMB29 (talk | contribs) (→Criticism from Russian historians: rewording)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II mass rapes took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation. Most Western scholars agree that the majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet servicemen, but estimates vary widely. Russian historians have criticized the estimates and argue that these crimes were not widespread.

It has been suggested that in postwar Germany, especially in West Germany, war-time rape stories were used in an attempt to situate the German population on the whole as victims,but that this was challenged in the late 1960s and the 1970s as German leftists conducted politics focused on critical investigation of the Nazi past.

A frequently iterated claim that the war time rapes had been surrounded by decades of silence has been contested.

Soviet Military

A wave of rapes and sexual violence occurred in Central Europe in 1944–45, as the Western Allies and the Red Army fought their way into the Third Reich. On the territory of the Nazi Germany, it began on 21 October 1944 when troops of the Red Army crossed the bridge over the Angerapp creek (marking the border) and committed the Nemmersdorf massacre before they were beaten back a few hours later.

The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers ranged up to 2 million. In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.

Natalya Gesse states that Russian soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old. Russian women were not spared either. In contrast, a Russian war veteran Vsevolod Olimpiev recalled, "The Soviet soldiers' relations with the German population where it had stayed may be called indifferent and neutral. Nobody, at least from our Regiment, harassed or touched them. Moreover, when we came across an obviously starving German family with kids we would share our food with them with no unnecessary words."

When Yugoslav politician Milovan Djilas complained about rapes in Yugoslavia, Stalin reportedly stated that he should "understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle." On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he reportedly said: "We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative."

However, an order issued on January 19, 1945 and signed by Stalin said,

Officers and men of the Red Army! We are entering the country of the enemy... the remaining population in the liberated areas, regardless of whether they're German, Czech, or Polish, should not be subjected to violence. The perpetrators will be punished according to the laws of war. In the liberated territories, sexual relations with females are not allowed. Perpetrators of violence and rape will be shot.

Historian Norman Naimark writes that after the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution. However, the rapes continued until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps, separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.

Criticism from Russian historians

There is dispute from Russia concerning these claims. Russian historians argue that the numbers given are based on faulty methodology and questionable sources. They argue that although there were cases of excesses and heavy-handed command, the Red Army as a whole treated the population of the former Reich with respect.

According to Oleg Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, 4,148 Red Army officers and many soldiers were convicted of atrocities. He explains that crimes such as acts of sexual assault are inevitable parts of war, and men of Soviet and other Allied armies committed them. However, in general, he says Soviet servicemen treated peaceful Germans with humanity.

Makhmut Gareev, a historian and President of the Academy of Military Sciences, who participated in the East Prussian campaign, states that he had not even heard about sexual violence. He explains that excesses as revenge for what the Nazis did in the USSR were likely to take place, but such cases were strongly suppressed and punished, and were not widespread. He notes that the Soviet military leadership signed an executive order on 19 January 1945 that demanded the prevention of cruel treatment of the local population.

Russian revisionist historian, Aleksandr Dyukov writes, "the Germans did not experience a fraction of the horror that their soldiers staged in the East" and that "despite some excesses, which were firmly suppressed by the Command, the Red Army as a whole behaved towards the people of the Reich with humanity." According to him, Russian soldiers are credited with feeding the German population, rescuing children, and helping to restore normal life in the country.

According to Doctor of Historical Sciences Yelena Senyavskaya, the subject of mass rape allegedly committed by the Red Army in 1945 is one of the most widespread anti-Russian myths. She traces it back to Goebbels' propaganda at the end of the war, and then to some publications in countries that were allied with the USSR, but soon turned into opponents in the Cold War.

Richard Overy, a historian from King's College London, has criticized the viewpoint held by the Russians, asserting that they refuse to acknowledge Soviet war crimes committed during the war, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."

Analysis

In his analysis of the motives behind the extensive Soviet rapes, Norman Naimark singles out "hate propaganda, personal experiences of suffering at home, and a fully demeaning picture of German women in the press, not to mention among the soldiers themselves" as a part reason for the widespread rapes. Naimark also noted the effect that the Russian tendency to binge-drink alcohol (of which much was available in Germany) had on the propensity of Russian soldiers to commit rape, especially rape-murder. Naimark also notes the patriarchal nature of Russian culture, and of the Asian societies comprising the Soviet Union, where dishonor was in the past repaid by raping the women of the enemy. The fact that the Germans had a much higher standard of living (with things such as indoor toilets), visible even when in ruins "may well have contributed to a national inferiority complex among Russians". Combining Russian feelings of inferiority and the resulting need to restore his honor and their desire for revenge may be the reason many women were raped in public as well as in front of husbands before both were killed.

According to Antony Beevor revenge played very little role in the frequent rapes; according to him the main reason for the rapes was the Soviet troops' feeling of entitlement to all types of booty, including women. Beevor exemplifies this with his discovery that Soviet troops also raped Russian and Polish girls and women that were liberated from Nazi concentration camps.

According to Alexander Statiev, while Soviet soldiers respected their own citizens and those of friendly countries, they perceived themselves to be conquerors rather than liberators in hostile regions. They viewed violence against civilians as a privilege of victors. Statiev cites the attitude of a Soviet soldier as exemplifying this phenomenon: "Avenge! You are a soldier-avenger! ... Kill the German, and then jump the German woman! This is how a soldier celebrates victory!"

With respect to the number of abortions reported in Berlin and the estimates of the number of rapes based on the abortions statistics, there are some alternative contentions which don't necessarily involve rapes by Soviet soldiers. Atina Grossmann explains that until early 1945 abortions in Germany were illegal (except for medical and eugenic reasons), and so when doctors opened up and started performing abortions to rape victims (for which only an affidavit was requested from a woman), many women would claim that they were raped, but their accounts were surprisingly uniform (describing rapists as having "mongoloid or Asiatic" features). It was also typical that women specified their reasons for abortions as being mostly socio-economic (inability to raise another child) rather than moral or ethical.

Criticism of statistics

Yelena Senyavskaya criticizes Beevor for using and popularizing the statistic that 2 million German women were raped by the Soviet Army. The calculation used to derive the statistic is based on the number of newborns in 1945 and 1946 whose fathers are listed as Russian in one Berlin clinic, the assumption that all of these births were the result of rape, and then the multiplication of this effect across the entire female population (ages 8 to 80) of the eastern part of Germany. According to Senyavskaya, this method of calculation cannot be considered valid.

Senyavskaya further argues that the fact that Beevor uses Soviet archival documents does not prove his analysis. There are large concentrations of reports and tribunal materials about crimes committed by army personnel, but that is because such documents were stored together thematically. She contends that occurrences of crimes by Soviet servicemen were considered extraordinary rather than the norm. Senyavskaya concludes that "those guilty of these crimes account for no more than two percent of the total number of servicemen," however, "authors like Beevor spread their accusations against the entire Soviet Army."

Nicky Bird also criticizes Beevor's statistics, stating that: "Statistics proliferate, and are unverifiable. Beevor tends to accept estimates from a single doctor — how can we possibly know that 90 percent of Berlin women were infected by VD, that 90 percent of rape victims had abortions, that 8.7 percent of children born in 1946 had Russian fathers?"

Social effects

A number of "Russian babies" were born during the occupation, many of them as the result of rape.

According to Norman Naimark we may never know how many German women and girls were raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as 2 million. As to the social effects of this sexual violence Naimark notes:

In any case, just as each rape survivor carried the effects of the crime with her till the end of her life, so was the collective anguish nearly unbearable. The social psychology of women and men in the soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until—one could argue—the present.

West Berliners and women of the wartime generation refer to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, Berlin, as the "tomb of the unknown rapist" in response to the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers in the years following 1945.

The wife of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Hannelore Kohl, had been gang raped at age 12 by Russian soldiers in May 1945, according to her biographer. As a consequence, she sustained a serious life long back injury after being thrown out of a first floor window. She had been suffering long and serious illnesses that experts thought of as the consequence of childhood trauma. Hannelore Kohl committed suicide in 2001.

Soviet literature

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took part in the invasion of Germany, and wrote a poem about it: Prussian Nights;

Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. It's not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother's wounded, half alive. The little daughter's on the mattress, dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl's been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse. . . . The mother begs, "Soldier, kill me!"

Svetlana Alexievich published a book, War's Unwomanly Face that includes memories by Soviet veterans about their experience in Germany. According to a former army officer,

We were young, strong, and four years without women. So we tried to catch German women and ... Ten men raped one girl. There were not enough women; the entire population run from the Soviet Army. So we had to take young, twelve or thirteen year-old. If she cried, we put something into her mouth. We thought it was fun. Now I can not understand how I did it. A boy from a good family... But that was me.

A woman telephone operator from the Soviet Army recalled that

When we occupied every town, we had first three days for looting and ... . That was unofficial of course. But after three days one could be court-martialed for doing this. ... I remember one raped German woman laying naked, with hand grenade between her legs. Now I feel shame, but I did not feel shame back then... Do you think it was easy to forgive ? We hated to see their clean undamaged white houses. With roses. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted to see their tears. ... Decades had to pass until I started feeling pity for them.

In popular culture

As most women recoiled from their experiences and had no desire to recount them, most biographies and depictions of the period, like the German film Downfall, alluded to mass rape by the Red Army but stopped shy of mentioning it explicitly. As time has progressed more works have been produced that have directly addressed the issue, such as the books The 158-Pound Marriage and My Story (1961) by Gemma LaGuardia Gluck , or the 2006 films Joy Division and The Good German.

The topic is the subject of much feminist discourse. The first autobiographical work depicting the events was the groundbreaking 1954 book A Woman in Berlin, which was made into a 2008 feature film. It was widely rejected in Germany after its initial publication but has seen a new acceptance and many women have found inspiration to come forward with their own stories.

US Military

In Taken by Force, J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040. As in the case of the American occupation of France after the D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint.

Although non-fraternization policies were instituted for the Americans in Germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternization" was used as a motto by United States Army troops. The journalist Osmar White, a war correspondent from Australia who served with the American troops during the war, wrote that

After the fighting moved on to German soil, there was a good deal of rape by combat troops and those immediately following them. The incidence varied between unit and unit according to the attitude of the commanding officer. In some cases offenders were identified, tried by court martial, and punished. The army legal branch was reticent, but admitted that for brutal or perverted sexual offences against German women, some soldiers had been shot – particularly if they happened to be Negroes. Yet I know for a fact that many women were raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the culprits. In one sector a report went round that a certain very distinguished army commander made the wisecrack, 'Copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternisation.'

A typical victimization with sexual assault by drunken American personnel marching through occupied territory involved threatening a German family with weapons, forcing one or more women to engage in sex, and putting the entire family out on the street afterward.

As in the eastern sector of the occupation, the number of rapes peaked in 1945, but a high rate of violence against the German and Austrian populations by the Americans lasted at least into the first half of 1946, with five cases of dead German women found in American barracks in May and June 1946 alone.

Carol Huntington writes that the American soldiers who raped German women and then left gifts of food for them may have permitted themselves to view the act as a prostitution rather than rape. Citing the work of a Japanese historian alongside this suggestion, Huntington writes that Japanese women who begged for food "were raped and soldiers sometimes left food for those they raped."

The black soldiers of America's segregated occupation force were both more likely to be charged with rape and severely punished. Heide Fehrenbach writes that, while the American black soldiers were in fact by no means free from indiscipline,

The point, rather, is that American officials exhibited an explicit interest in a soldier's race, and then only if he were black, when reporting behavior they feared would undermine either the status or the political aims of the U.S. Military Government in Germany.

British troops

Many rapes were committed under the effects of alcohol or post-traumatic stress, but some cases of premeditated attacks, like the attempted rape of two local girls at gunpoint by two soldiers in the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, which ended in the death of one of the women when, whether intentionally or not, one of the soldiers discharged his gun, hitting her in the neck, as well as the reported assault on three German women in the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge. On a single day in mid-April 1945, three women in Neustadt were raped by British soldiers. A senior British Army chaplain following the troops reported that there was a 'good deal of rape going on'. He then added that "those who suffer have probably deserved it.'

French Military

French troops took part in the invasion of Germany, and France was assigned an occupation zone in Germany. According to Perry Biddiscombe the French for instance committed "385 rapes in the Constance area; 600 in Bruchsal; and 500 in Freudenstadt." The soldiers of France indulged in an orgy of rape in the Höfingen District near Leonberg.

According to Norman Naimark, French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg.

Discourse

In postwar Germany, especially in West Germany, the war time rape stories became an essential part of political discourse. The rape of German women (along with the expulsion of Germans from the East and Allied occupation) had been universalized in an attempt to situate the German population on the whole as victims. This discourse became wholly discredited by the late 1960s; since the 1970s on German leftists conducted politics focused on critical investigation of the Nazi past, the older generations' unwillingness to face that past, and their tendency to portray themselves as victims rather than as perpetrators, particularly of the Holocaust. Therefore, the frequently reiterated claim that the war time rapes had been surrounded by decades of silence is probably not correct.

The way the rapes have been discussed by Sander and Johr in their "BeFreier und Befreite" has been criticized by several scholars. According to Grossmann, the problem is that this is not a "universal" story of women being raped by men, but of German women being abused and violated by an army that fought Nazi Germany and liberated death camps. Such attempts to de-emphasize the historical context of the rape of German women is a serious omission, according to Stuart Liebman and Annette Michelson, and, according to Pascale Bos, is an example of ahistorical, feminist and sexist approach to the wartime rape issue.

According to Pascale Bos, the feminist attempt to universalize the story of the rapes of German women came into a contradiction with Sander's and Johr's own description of the rapes as a form of genocidal rape: the rape of "racially superior" German women by "racially inferior" Soviet soldiers, implying that such a rape was especially harmful for the victims. In contrast, the issue of the rapes of Soviet women by Wehrmacht soldiers, that, according to some estimation amounted hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions is not treated by the authors as something deserving serious mention.

References

^ Heineman, Elizabeth (1996). "The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany's "Crisis Years" and West German National Identity". American Historical Review. 101 (2): 354–395. JSTOR 2170395.
^ Pascale R . Bos, Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin, 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993 Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2006, vol. 31, no. 4, p.996-1025
^ Helke Sander/Barbara Johr: BeFreier und Befreite, Fischer, Frankfurt 2005
Allan Hall in Berlin (24 October 2008). "German women break their silence on horrors of Red Army rapes". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
"Raped by the Red Army: Two million German women speak out". The Independent. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
Susanne Beyer. "Harrowing Memoir: German Woman Writes Ground-Breaking Account of WW2 Rape". Spiegel.de. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
Biddiscombe, Perry (2001). "Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945–1948". Journal of Social History. 34 (3): 611–647. doi:10.1353/jsh.2001.0002. JSTOR 3789820.
Kuwert, P.; Freyberger, H. (2007). "The unspoken secret: Sexual violence in World War II". International Psychogeriatrics. 19 (4): 782–784. doi:10.1017/S1041610207005376.
^ "BBC - History - World Wars: The Battle for Berlin in World War Two". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 10 December 2014. {{cite web}}: horizontal tab character in |title= at position 18 (help)
Hanna Schissler The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968
"Silence Broken On Red Army Rapes In Germany". NPR.org. 17 July 2009. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
William I. Hitchcock The Struggle for Europe The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945 to the Present ISBN 978-0-385-49799-2
^ Atina Grossmann. A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers October, Vol. 72, Berlin 1945: War and Rape "Liberators Take Liberties" (Spring, 1995), pp. 42–63 MIT Press
Seidler/Zayas: Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Mittler, Hamburg Berlin Bonn 2002
Sheehan, Paul (17 May 2003). "An orgy of denial in Hitler's bunker". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 December 2010.
Beevor, Antony (1 May 2002). "They raped every German female from eight to 80". The Guardian. London.
Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945.
Richard Bessel, Germany 1945.
On the Bloody Road to Berlin. Books.google.com. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
Roberts, Andrew (24 October 2008). "Stalin's army of rapists: The brutal war crime that Russia and Germany tried to ignore". Daily Mail. London.
"Миф о миллионах изнасилованных немок". Statehistory.ru. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
Naimark, p. 92.
Naimark, p. 79.
^ Summers, Chris (29 April 2002). "Red Army rapists exposed". BBC News Online. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
^ Gareev, Makhmut; Tretiak, Ivan; Rzheshevsky, Oleg (21 July 2005). Насилие над фактами. Trud (Interview) (in Russian). Interviewed by Sergey Turchenko. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Dyukov, Aleksandr (2007). За что сражались советские люди (in Russian). Moscow: Yauza. pp. 546–547. ISBN 978-5-699-22722-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
^ Senyavskaya, Yelena, "Красная Армия в Европе в 1945 году в контексте информационной войны", histrf.ru, Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, retrieved 1 June 2014 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Naimark, pp. 108–109
Naimark, p. 112
^ Naimark, pp. 114–115
Daniel Johnson (24 January 2002). "Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed them from camps". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
Statiev, Alexander (2010). The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands. Cambridge University Press. p. 277. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
Grossmann, Atina (Spring 1995). "A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers". October. 72. The MIT Press: 42–63. doi:10.2307/778926.
Bird, Nicky (October 2002). "Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Antony Beevor". International Affairs. 78 (4). Royal Institute of International Affairs: 914–916.
SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany (16 August 2007). "The Occupation and its Offspring: Lost Red Army Children Search for Fathers". SPIEGEL ONLINE. Retrieved 10 December 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Naimark, pp. 132–133
Johnson, Daniel (25 January 2002). "Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed them from camps". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 30 March 2009.
Antony Beevor, Berlin – The Downfall 1945
Ksenija Bilbija, Jo Ellen Fair, Cynthia E., The art of truth-telling about authoritarian rule, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2005, p70
Allan Cochrane, Making Up Meanings in a Capital City: Power, Memory and Monuments in Berlin, European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 5–24 (2006)
J.M. Dennis, Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945–1990, p.9, Longman, ISBN 0-582-24562-1
Jerry Kelly (2006). In the Grip of the Iron Curtain. p. 118. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
"Wife of ex-German chancellor Helmut Kohl 'raped at the age of 12 by Russian soldiers'". The Daily Mail. 19 June 2011. Retrieved 26 December 2014.
Schwan, Heribert (2011). The Woman at his Side: Life and Suffering of Hannelore Kohl. Heyne Verlag.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Prussian Nights: A Poem , Robert Conquest, trans. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
Alexievich, p. 33
Alexievich, p. 386
"Remember the Women Institute: Library - Book Reviews". Rememberwomen.org. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
Fiorello's Sister: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck's Story (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust). Syracuse University Press. 2007. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
"The rape of Berlin". Dir.salon.com. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
"German women break their silence on the rape of Berlin". The Age. Melbourne. 25 October 2008.
Hegi, Ursula (4 September 2005). "After the Fall". The Washington Post.
Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II. J Robert Lilly. ISBN 978-0-230-50647-3 p.12
^ Harrington, Carol (2010). Politicization of Sexual Violence: From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping. London: Ashgate. pp. 80–81. ISBN 0-7546-7458-4.
^ Schrijvers, Peter (1998). The Crash of Ruin: American Combat Soldiers in Europe During World War II. New York: New York University Press. p. 183. ISBN 0-8147-8089-X.
White, Osmar (1996). Conquerors' Road: An Eyewitness Report of Germany 1945. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 97–98. ISBN 0-521-83051-6.
Fehrenbach, Heide (2005). Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-691-11906-9.
Longden, Sean. To the victor the spoils: D-Day to VE Day, the reality behind the heroism. Arris Books. p. 276. ISBN 9781844370382.
Emsley, Clive (2013) Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services since 1914. Oxford University Press, USA, p. 128-129; ISBN 0199653712
Biddiscombe, Perry (2001). "Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945–1948". Journal of Social History. 34 (3): 635. doi:10.1353/jsh.2001.0002. JSTOR 3789820.
Stephenson, Jill (2006). Hitler's Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis London: Continuum. p. 289. ISBN 1-85285-442-1.
Naimark, pp. 106–107
Stuart Liebman and Annette Michelson. After the Fall: Women in the House of the Hangmen, October, Vol. 72, (Spring, 1995) pp. 4–14
Gertjejanssen, Wendy Jo. 2004. "Victims, Heroes, Survivors: Sexual Violence on the Eastern Front during World War II." PhD diss., University of Minnesota.
A 1942 Wehrmacht document suggested that the Nazi leadership considered implementing a special policy for the eastern front through which the estimated 750,000 babies born through sexual contact between the German soldiers and Russian women (an estimate deemed very conservative) could be identified and reclaimed as racially German. (The suggestion was made to add the middle names Friedrich and Luise to the birth certificates for boy and girl babies, respectively.) Although the plan was not implemented, such documents suggest that the births that resulted from rapes and other forms of sexual contact were deemed as beneficial, as increasing the "Aryan" race rather than as adding to the inferior Slavic race. The underlying ideology suggests that German rape and other forms of sexual contact may need to be seen as conforming to a larger military strategy of racial and territorial dominance. (Pascale R. Bos, Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin, 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993 Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2006, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 996–1025)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (January 2010) Click for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,145 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Verbrechen_der_Roten_Armee_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg#Vergewaltigungen}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.

World War II

General

Topics	Air warfare of World War II In Europe Blitzkrieg Comparative military ranks Cryptography Declarations of war Diplomacy Governments in exile Home front Australian United Kingdom United States Lend-Lease Manhattan Project British contribution Military awards Military equipment Military production Naval history Nazi plunder Opposition Technology Allied cooperation Mulberry harbour Total war Strategic bombing Puppet states Women Art and World War II Music in World War II Weather events during World War II
Theaters	Asia and Pacific China South-East Asia Pacific North and Central Pacific South-West Pacific Indian Ocean Europe Western Front Eastern Front Mediterranean and Middle East North Africa East Africa Italy West Africa Atlantic timeline Americas
Aftermath	Chinese Civil War Cold War Decolonization Division of Korea First Indochina War Expulsion of Germans Greek Civil War Indonesian National Revolution Keelhaul Marshall Plan Occupation of Germany Occupation of Japan Osoaviakhim Paperclip Soviet occupations Baltic Hungary Poland Romania Territorial changes of Germany Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany United Nations
War crimes	Allied war crimes Soviet war crimes British war crimes United States war crimes German war crimes forced labour Wehrmacht war crimes The Holocaust Aftermath Response Nuremberg trials Italian war crimes Japanese war crimes Nanjing Massacre Unit 731 Prosecution Croatian war crimes Genocide of Serbs Persecution of Jews Romanian war crimes Sexual violence German military brothels Camp brothels Rape during the occupation of Germany / Japan / Poland Rape during the liberation of France / Serbia Sook Ching Comfort women Rape of Manila Marocchinate

Participants

Allies	Algeria Australia Belgium Brazil Bulgaria (from September 1944) Canada China Cuba Czechoslovakia Denmark Ethiopia Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) Finland (from September 1944) France Free France Greece India Italy (from September 1943) Luxembourg Mexico Netherlands Newfoundland New Zealand Norway Philippines Poland Romania (from August 1944) Sierra Leone South Africa Southern Rhodesia Soviet Union Tuva United Kingdom British Empire United States Puerto Rico Yugoslavia
Axis	Albania protectorate Bulgaria (until September 1944) Wang Jingwei regime Independent State of Croatia Finland (until September 1944) German Reich Hungary Azad Hind French Indochina Iraq Italy (until September 1943) Italian Social Republic Empire of Japan Manchukuo Philippines Romania (until August 1944) Slovak Republic Thailand Vichy France Collaboration
Neutral	Afghanistan Andorra Bhutan Ireland Liechtenstein Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland Tibet Vatican City
Resistance	Albania Austria Belgium Bulgaria Czech lands Denmark Dutch East Indies Estonia Ethiopia France Germany Greece Hong Kong Italy Japan Jews Korea Korean Liberation Army Korean Volunteer Army Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malaya Netherlands Northeast China Norway Philippines Poland Romania Thailand Soviet Union Slovakia Western Ukraine Vietnam Quốc dân Đảng Viet Minh Yugoslavia
POWs	Finnish prisoners in the Soviet Union German prisoners Soviet Union Azerbaijan United States United Kingdom Italian prisoners in the Soviet Union Japanese prisoners Soviet Union German atrocities against Polish POWs Soviet prisoners Finland atrocities by Germans Polish prisoners in the Soviet Union Romanian prisoners in the Soviet Union

Timeline

Prelude	Africa Second Italo-Ethiopian War Asia Second Sino-Japanese War Battles of Khalkhin Gol Europe Anschluss Munich Agreement Occupation of Czechoslovakia Operation Himmler Italian invasion of Albania
1939	Invasion of Poland Battle of the Atlantic Phoney War First Battle of Changsha Battle of South Guangxi Winter War 1939–1940 Winter Offensive
1940	Norwegian campaign German invasion of Denmark Battle of Zaoyang–Yichang German invasion of Luxembourg German invasion of the Netherlands German invasion of Belgium Battle of France Dunkirk evacuation Battle of Britain Battle of the Mediterranean North Africa West Africa British Somaliland Hundred Regiments Offensive Baltic states Eastern Romania Japanese invasion of French Indochina Italian invasion of Greece Compass
1941	Battle of South Henan Battle of Shanggao Invasion of Yugoslavia German invasion of Greece Battle of Crete Anglo-Iraqi War Battle of South Shanxi Syria–Lebanon campaign East African campaign Invasion of the Soviet Union Summer War Finland (Silver Fox) Lithuania Battle of Kiev Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran Second Battle of Changsha Siege of Leningrad Battle of Moscow Bombing of Gorky Siege of Sevastopol Attack on Pearl Harbor Japanese invasion of Thailand Fall of Hong Kong Fall of the Philippines Battle of Guam Battle of Wake Island Malayan campaign Battle of Borneo Japanese invasion of Burma Third Battle of Changsha Greek famine of 1941–1944
1942	Fall of Singapore Battle of the Java Sea St Nazaire Raid Battle of Christmas Island Battle of the Coral Sea Battle of Madagascar Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign Battle of Gazala Battle of Dutch Harbor Battle of Midway Aleutian Islands campaign Kiska Attu Blue First Battle of El Alamein Battle of Stalingrad Kokoda Track campaign Rzhev Jubilee Second Battle of El Alamein Guadalcanal campaign Torch Chinese famine of 1942–1943
1943	Black May Tunisian campaign Battle of West Hubei Battle of Attu Bombing of Gorky Battle of Kursk Allied invasion of Sicily Smolensk Solomon Islands campaign Cottage Battle of the Dnieper Allied invasion of Italy Armistice of Cassibile Burma Northern Burma and Western Yunnan Changde Second Battle of Kiev Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign Tarawa Makin Bengal famine of 1943
1944	Tempest Monte Cassino / Anzio Korsun–Cherkassy Narva Ichi-Go Overlord Neptune Mariana and Palau Bagration Western Ukraine Second Battle of Guam Tannenberg Line Warsaw Uprising Eastern Romania Liberation of Paris Dragoon Gothic Line Belgrade offensive Lapland Market Garden Estonia Crossbow Pointblank Vietnamese famine of 1944–1945 Philippines (1944–1945) Leyte Syrmian Front Hungary Budapest Burma (1944–1945) Ardennes Bodenplatte Dutch famine of 1944–1945
1945	Vistula–Oder Battle of Manila Battle of Iwo Jima Indochina Vienna offensive Project Hula Western invasion of Germany Bratislava–Brno offensive Battle of Okinawa Second Guangxi campaign West Hunan Italy (Spring 1945) Battle of Berlin Prague offensive Surrender of Germany document Borneo Taipei Naval bombardment of Japan Manchuria Atomic bombings Debate South Sakhalin Kuril Islands Shumshu Surrender of Japan Potsdam Declaration document End of World War II in Asia

Categories:

Misplaced Pages