Crimes Unspoken
The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War
1. Edition January 2020
272 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Further versions
The soldiers who occupied Germany after the Second World War were not only liberators: they also brought with them a new threat, as women throughout the country became victims of sexual violence. In this disturbing and carefully researched book, the historian Miriam Gebhardt reveals for the first time the scale of this human tragedy, which continued long after the hostilities had ended.
Discussion in recent years of the rape of German women committed at the end of the war has focused almost exclusively on the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, but Gebhardt shows that this picture is misleading. Crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies - American, French and British - as by the members of the Red Army. Nor was the suffering limited to the immediate aftermath of the war. Gebhardt powerfully recounts how raped women continued to be the victims of doctors, who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions, welfare workers, who put pregnant women in homes, and wider society, which even today prefers to ignore these crimes.
Crimes Unspoken is the first historical account to expose the true extent of sexual violence in Germany at the end of the war, offering valuable new insight into a key period of 20th century history.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 Seventy years too late
Wrong victims?
How many were affected
Sexual aggression against men
A word about method
Chapter 2 Berlin and the East - chronicle of a calamity foretold
The great fear
The Red Army comes
Berlin
One year on
Extracts from police reports
A different perspective
Chapter 3 South Germany - who will protect us from the Americans?
No one's time
Moderate indignation
A 'feeling of great insecurity among our soldiers'
Discussion
A 'sexual conquest of Europe'?
Unbroken assertion of power by the occupiers
Parallels and differences
Chapter 4 Pregnant, sick, ostracized - approaches to the victims
Victims twice over
Fraternization
The abortion problem
No one's children
'The other victims are also taken care of'
First the French, then the public authorities
'I love this child as much as the others'
Chapter 5 The long shadow
The effects of the experience of violence
The myth of female invulnerability
'Anonymous' and the censorship of memory
Duties of loyalty
First feminist protests
Helke Sander's 'BeFreier' and the German victim debate
The past today
Notes
Sources and selected literature
Index
Karen Hagemann, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
'Miriam Gebhardt has uncovered swathes of new evidence relating to the rape of German women in the US Zone of Occupation. Her book adds a further dimension to our knowledge of life in Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war.'
Giles MacDonogh, historian and author
'A harrowing and highly recommended work of scholarship.'
Times Higher Education Supplement
