WOMEN'S INGENUITY: Ways of Protecting Themselves from Sexual Violence During the Second World War

During the Second World War, young girls and women who faced the threat of sexual violence from soldiers developed a number of behavioral tactics to protect themselves from assault. They resorted to them especially often when the danger became immediate. Memoirs show that these tactics were almost identical among Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian women, as well as among Polish, Hungarian, and German women.

The most primitive methods, but ones that could be effective at certain stages of a sexual threat, involved attempts to avoid soldiers' attention. In such cases women tried to conceal their appearance so as not to arouse a man's sexual interest. Women and girls smeared soot on their faces, stooped or limped, wore torn clothes and boys' caps, and pretended to be much older than they were. In the Soviet Union, older women sometimes advised girls how to behave in such circumstances, probably drawing on experiences of sexual harassment during the First World War or the revolutionary events of 1917–1922. Ukrainian Antonina Demchyna recalled that when German soldiers arrived in the Sumy region, her mother constantly instructed her: “Tonya, when they come here (into the house — V. H.), I do not want you to look attractive. Do nothing that could draw their attention. You must look untidy and dirty. Do not comb your hair; let it be tousled like a mop. Put on worn and dirty clothes. Play the part of a simpleton and under no circumstances catch their eye.”

In Europe, German soldiers sometimes themselves advised women how to hide their appearance from Red Army men. One may assume that some of them had encountered this in the East and therefore had experience and knew different ways women could disguise themselves from potential rapists. SS man Manfred Diener recalled: “We always told women: put on men's clothes, smear your face with manure, blacken it, make yourselves as unattractive as possible so that the Russians become frightened and think you are men.”

Former prisoner of war Y. Vladimirov wrote in his memoirs that after being released from captivity he spoke with a Red Army sergeant major in the home of a German householder who complained about how difficult it was to find women for sexual pleasure. “The owners hide their wives and daughters or deliberately dress young women so that they look fat and unappetizing, and sometimes paint thin black lines on their faces to create wrinkles.”

Such measures did not always help. Drunken soldiers could stop any woman in the street without difficulty and, after taking a closer look, roughly determine her age and attractiveness.

Some women tried to provoke allergic reactions on their bodies and pass them off as infectious diseases. Both German and Soviet soldiers feared such illnesses. Soviet women smeared themselves with dirt and avoided washing in the hope of contracting scabies, or burned themselves with nettles so that blisters resembling a skin infection appeared. German women shouted to would-be rapists that they had typhus or cholera, which could make a man retreat immediately. Some learned how to write the Russian word for “typhus” and hung signs bearing the word near their homes. Soldiers usually did not risk entering such houses because there were plenty of others without signs. Others crudely painted red spots on their faces to simulate an infectious disease, covered themselves with animal or human excrement, or placed a bloodstained rag between their legs to imitate menstruation. A German woman named Margarete, for example, hid her hair under a cap, wore dark glasses, smeared iodine on her face, and stuck a large plaster on her cheek when soldiers were looking for sexual partners. In this way she deterred potential attackers and was never touched, unlike many others. Antonina Demchyna repelled German soldiers by pretending to be mentally ill and constantly blowing her nose in their presence. The soldiers grimaced and repeatedly said “Schweinerei” (“filth,” “pigsty”) in disgust.

Soviet soldiers soon learned about these various female tricks. Some preferred not to test fate and avoided such women, while others reacted with anger. “I'm walking past a crowd of Germans, looking at a pretty woman, and suddenly I see a Frau with a daughter of about fourteen. A pretty girl, but on her chest is a sign saying ‘Syphilis’—that's for us, so we won't touch her. You little devil, I think. I grab the girl by the hands, point a submachine gun in the mother's face, and drag the girl into the bushes. Let's see what kind of syphilis you've got! The girl turned out to be appetizing,” a military mail carrier told Red Army soldier Nikolai Nikulin about his “sexual exploits” with German women.

When a victim found herself in a hopeless situation under threat of rape, she sometimes tried to talk to the attacker, arouse pity through tears, suffering, or pleading, or distract him from his intention. Sometimes this worked. Before a sexual encounter with a German officer in a brothel, Ukrainian girl Nina Taran tried in every possible way to divert his attention and find a way out of the difficult situation with dignity. “The major quickly got drunk and began grabbing me around the waist and touching my breasts. I didn't know what to do or where to go. I tried to break free from his iron grip, but forced myself to smile so that the scoundrel would be less angry,” she later told partisan commander Hryhorii Balytskyi.

Nina managed to persuade the drunken officer to go outside for a walk. Once they were near the brothel, she stabbed him with a knife and escaped from her “sexual captivity” into the forest, where she was picked up by partisans from Oleksii Fedorov's formation.

If those methods failed, women tried to defend themselves through forceful resistance or screaming. That was not always effective: an aroused attacker generally ignored it and might beat the victim unconscious or kill her. Oleksandr Dovzhenko recalled one case in which a German was trying to rape a Ukrainian girl. She resisted to the end and was already almost naked, but he could not overpower her. The officer then shot her.

During gang rape, some women resorted to a peculiar form of “sexual barter”: offering themselves to one soldier, preferably an officer, in exchange for protection from the others. It was much harder for an ordinary private to provide such protection. Some women submissively complied with soldiers' demands in the hope of staying alive or protecting relatives. German actress Magda Wieland encountered Soviet troops in her own home, which she described as the most terrifying moment of the entire war. Trying to save herself, she hid in a wardrobe but was quickly found by a young Red Army soldier. Seeing the attractive blonde, the soldier rejoiced at his “trophy.” Magda, understanding what awaited her, offered him sex, but only on condition that he protect her from being raped by others.

During the fighting for Berlin, a German girl who had been raped by Soviet soldiers offered herself to officer Vladimir Gelfand in exchange for his protection. “They poked here,” the girl complained to the soldier, pointing under her skirt, “all night, and there were so many of them. I was a Mädchen (girl — V. H.)... They ruined my life. There were old men among them, pimply and stinking, and they all climbed onto me, all poked me. There were no fewer than twenty... Stay here... sleep with me. You can do anything you want with me. Only you! I'm ready for ‘fick-fick’ with you, I agree to anything you want, just not them again!”

Women tried to avoid encounters with soldiers in the evening, when the men were usually already drinking. In German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union, for example, women and girls rarely went outside in the evening, especially if Hungarian soldiers were stationed in the settlement. If they did go out and saw soldiers, they ran into courtyards or dark corners to avoid attracting attention. Mothers hid sexually mature girls on stoves, under bedding, in attics, or in vegetable gardens.

A similar situation developed in Germany after the arrival of the Red Army. As historian Antony Beevor notes, German women quickly learned that during the so-called “hunting evenings”—their term for Red Army soldiers' searches for girls and young women—it was better not to appear in city streets. “Everywhere our troops appeared, young girls and women disappeared; only old people and children under twelve remained in the houses. Everyone hid carefully, and with good reason,” recalled mortar officer Pavel Zolotov.

When people are on the brink of death, most think primarily of themselves. Morality and dignity move into the background and the desire to survive, even at the expense of others, becomes dominant. Such motives were widespread at the time. Women faced with a choice between rape and death often chose the former. “The old Russian... pushes me onto the made-up bed. I fight with all my strength, trying to keep the man away from my body. Then he reaches for his pistol again and puts it to my temple. The courage with which I had faced this terrible weapon only a few hours earlier disappears. In its place comes fear—the fear of being killed,” German woman Gabi Köpp wrote in describing one of her rapes. During bombing raids, German women sheltering from Allied air attacks joked: “Better a Russian on your belly than an American on your head,” meaning that being raped was preferable to dying beneath American bombs.

Sometimes women helped soldiers find another suitable girl simply to divert the danger from themselves or their children, understanding that if the attackers could not find a victim, they themselves might become one. Gabi Köpp describes such scenes in her diary. Older women, trying to save themselves and their daughters, sent her and another girl to the “sexual scaffold” because they were alone and had no adult protectors. “We listen tensely and recognize the voices of two Russians who have already been here. As always, they are looking for ‘girls’—young women or girls. The interpreter repeats the old lie: two ‘girls’ must go to the officer... When none of the women agrees to go voluntarily, they begin threatening to shoot everyone. From our hiding place we hear that they have already grabbed Ruth by the collar. But who will be the second? The women are trembling with fear for themselves... Suddenly Mrs. V.'s voice is heard: Where is little Gabi? I hear the question several times. She does not stop until she drags me out from under the table. I was furious: They can do anything they like to me. I am alone and there is nobody to stand up for me.”

At such moments many women wondered why it had to be them rather than someone else. Psychologically it could be somewhat easier to know that they were not the only ones suffering violence. “Everyone means everyone. Gradually we began to look at rape with a certain amount of black humor,” one German woman wrote in her diary. Berliners noticed that Red Army soldiers liked to “hunt” heavier women. This gave some people a secret sense of satisfaction, because women who had managed not to lose excess weight during the recent months of hunger were often the wives of party functionaries.

The most radical form of self-protection against sexual violence was suicide. Some women resorted to it to avoid assault. In Germany before the arrival of Red Army troops, Australian war correspondent Osmar White wrote that “Goebbels propaganda” had instilled a paranoid fear of the “hordes from the East.” In May and June 1945, as Soviet forces reached Berlin, between 30,000 and 40,000 Berliners killed themselves. It would not be correct to claim that all of them committed suicide solely out of fear of Soviet “rapist soldiers.” Many were probably Nazi functionaries and their families who understood what might await them when the enemy arrived. In his memoir To Berlin, Yevgeny Bessonov noted that on German territory he had seen whole families who had committed suicide “out of fear of Russian revenge.”

Historian Cornelius Ryan described the hysteria in Berlin before the Red Army entered the city: “Terrible stories of dreadful atrocities spread through the city. Russians were portrayed as slant-eyed Mongols who mercilessly and thoughtlessly killed women and children. People said priests were burned alive with flamethrowers, nuns were raped and then driven naked through the streets. Women, it was said, would be turned into prostitutes following military units, while men would be sent to hard labor in Siberia. Someone even broadcast on the radio that the Russians nailed their victims' tongues to tables.”

Of course, such propaganda would have been ineffective if Soviet soldiers had given it no basis in reality. A report addressed to the head of the political department of the 71st Army on April 23, 1945 stated that five women and girls from the German village of Mühlenbeck had killed themselves after Soviet soldiers raped two young German women.

The civilian population's fear of the advancing “eastern hordes” was so great that, according to Soviet veterans, it sometimes reached comic proportions. “They—the residents—were terribly afraid of us,” reconnaissance veteran Vladimir Bukhanenko recalled. “I remember that in one German town the woman who owned the apartment where we were staying suddenly began feeling my head and then asked:

“‘Where are your horns?’ Later we laughed, but imagine what kind of propaganda they had if educated people believed Russians were not human beings but savages and beasts with horns... There was another funny case. In one town we were looking for hay for our horses. The boys went into a house and tried to explain to the woman what we needed, but she did not understand and was literally trembling with fear. Then they led her to the hay stacked in the yard and showed by gestures: ‘We'll take a little hay.’ The poor woman misunderstood completely: she lay down on the hay and lifted her skirt.”

At the end of the war, Germans came to prisoners of war in large numbers and asked them to write notes certifying that they had “treated Soviet people well.” The certificates were written in pencil on scraps of paper the Germans brought with them. They often asked for such notes for their wives or daughters, hoping in this way to protect them from violence.

As we can see, the war forced women of many nationalities to develop a wide variety of tactics and patterns of behavior in an effort to avoid sexual violence by soldiers.

Volodymyr HINDA, for Ukrainian Line