Fiona — “Wartime Rape Is a Crime against Life and the Person”

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Someone can enter only through the window... while someone else can leave only through the window.

“The most terrible thing about violence against women is that people, including women themselves, do not consider it violence when they see it, commit it, or participate in it—even as victims. The most painful thing for those who fight for women’s rights is that you can never take as self-evident and indisputable this simple idea: a woman is a real human being who suffers when she is hurt.”

Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone

Wartime Rape Is a Crime against Life and the Person

9 May 2016, 11:20 p.m.

The phenomenon of wartime rape has always been surrounded by distortions and silences, ranging from heroic myth-making (“liberating soldiers do not rape”) to politically motivated, one-sided exposés. But times change—or, more precisely, women change them by refusing to remain trapped in a cauldron of silence and self-blame—and what was hidden beneath mournful veils of shame and victim-blaming is gradually beginning to acquire a voice.

The treatment of women as objectified trophies over which one could claim ownership through a forced sexual act has its origins in deep antiquity.

“The history of mass rape is at the same time the history of mass murder and pogroms. Rape has occurred in every age and in every war. Men have always vented their hatred on the weakest members of human society in order to enjoy the easily attainable triumph of a sense of superiority.” [1]

According to E. Meshcherkina, the rape of women was recognized as a legitimate soldier’s right in the Roman wars of the sixth century, during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, and in the reigns of Edward II, Edward III and King George. The noted historian A. Toynbee collected detailed documentation on the rape of women during the First World War: “From Liège to Louvain the Germans cut a corridor of terror. Houses were burned to the ground, villages looted, civilians bayoneted, women raped.” [2] In the 1930s Japanese troops committed atrocities in China; in the 1940s first German and then Russian and American soldiers raped and killed women in occupied or liberated territories [3]. In Vietnam, the American command likewise turned a blind eye to “incidents involving Viet Cong women,” and the Soviet command in Afghanistan was no better. As a result of the military conflict in Congo, according to the UN, more than fourteen thousand cases of rape were registered in South Kivu Province alone between 2005 and 2007 [4], with knives and pistols often used as instruments of violence. Members of UN peacekeeping forces rape women and children in exchange for access to water and medicine [5], while the authorities of South Sudan have paid soldiers with permission to rape women instead of money [6]. The pandemic of sexual crimes during armed conflicts and natural disasters continues to this day: men feel that their hands are untied and that society will pay little attention to this supposedly “unconditional” male right—the right to violence against women. They have grounds for such cannibalistic optimism: as the practice of the courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia shows, conviction rates are lower when the charges include sexual violence [7].

Through sexual violence against women, men asserted their own power, intimidated and demoralized the enemy, or simply discharged excess nervous tension and psychological frustration. Age, nationality and whether a woman belonged to “our” side or the enemy did not matter. If accessible “war booty” was unavailable, any other woman could substitute for it, because the permissiveness and impunity of wartime made this possible with almost no fear of consequences.

It is telling that, with the passage of time, veterans themselves often remembered the sexual violence they had committed in an ordinary and calm manner, without shame or remorse, even though many expressed regret and reflection about having had to kill people. Even men who disapproved of the violence committed by their comrades reacted loyally and with considerable understanding when those comrades refused to stop.

One U.S. Marine, speaking about rape during the Vietnam War, recalled: “When we searched people, the women had to take off all their clothes, and under the pretext of making sure they had not hidden anything somewhere else, the men used their penises. It was rape.” [1]

Lance Corporal Hans Rittel wrote in his diary on 12 October 1941:

“The more you kill, the easier it becomes. Today I took part in clearing the camp of suspicious people. Eighty-two were shot. Among them was a beautiful woman. We—Karl and I—took her into the operating room; she bit and howled. Forty minutes later she was shot. A memory: a few minutes of pleasure.” [8]

From the recollections of veterans of the Great Patriotic War:

“When we enter a populated area where there are not only soldiers who must be shot but also women, a bacchanalia begins. I saw it as soon as we entered East Prussia. <...> The first thing that struck me there was the naked body of a girl lying on a rubbish heap. It was the first time I saw the abyss into which we could descend. But I thought it was an isolated case, perhaps some nurse. When we reached Berlin there was loot everywhere. Later, on German soil, I entered a house and found an elderly German woman lying in bed in broad daylight. I speak German, so I asked: ‘What is wrong with you?’ She said: ‘Seven of your soldiers were here, and before leaving they shoved a bottle inside me.’ Later they estimated that about 150,000 women had been raped.

“After my second wound I was again working on a newspaper and for some reason agreed to transfer to another division, because it was a tiny editorial office—four people, all with higher education. It really was a pleasant, educated group and everyone tried to do what they could. But what could they do? Almost nothing. Occasionally they could lecture someone. For example, the deputy editor went into a Berlin air-raid shelter to see how the women there were doing. A woman from Riga who spoke Russian approached him: ‘Protect a film actress who is being taken away for the third time.’ One lieutenant had found a beauty and took her away, but his own opportunities were limited and he had nothing else to do, so he decided to ‘treat’ his comrades. He treated one friend, then another, then a third. The deputy editor reprimanded him. The lieutenant listened politely, but you had the feeling it went in one ear and out the other.

“In general there was a feeling that now it was permitted and that everyone could do it. If you did not know how to explain yourself, you showed a pistol and pointed with your finger at what was to be done. I had one case. I went out for a walk and some woman ran up to me: ‘Lieutenant, help, my daughter is in there.’ I went inside and saw a comic scene: a huge fellow holding a pistol, his entire face scratched. The girl turned out to be spirited and had scratched his face. I told him, ‘Follow me.’ He stood there swearing. He was an ordinary, normal, fairly good-natured fellow. He simply believed that because he showed a pistol, she was obliged to obey. He was genuinely outraged. He went with me, still holding his pistol and swearing. I took him to counterintelligence. They locked him in a room where he slept it off, then returned his pistol and he went back to his unit. But that was a comic case.

“It was like an epidemic, a post-victory intoxication. It burned itself out in about two weeks. But the scale was such that we were all made to sign for having read something—it was not an order, more like a personal message from Stalin in which he asked soldiers not to commit violence because it was pushing the Germans to continue resisting. It made no impression. Even if God Himself had ordered them, the elemental frenzy had broken loose and calmed down only by itself. It was some kind of explosion. It completely destroyed the sense of unity with the army that I had developed. Later the legal apparatus began to work: five years for a German woman, ten for a Czech.” [9]

Thus men who had no “moral brakes” began robbing and raping German women. “We had a senior sergeant, Bogachev, commander of a communications squad, and in every town we captured he raped women. A political officer who saw the sergeant raping yet another German woman decided to intervene and told Bogachev, ‘Stop!’ But the battalion commander, Khlopov, stopped the political officer: ‘Captain, do not interfere in what is none of your business. It is his well-earned trophy!’...” [10]

Sexual violence during wars takes different forms, and prostitution or coerced sexual exchange is one of them. Vladimir Gelfand, for example, wrote without embarrassment in his diaries that food could give a man the power to rape any woman:

“I wanted to enjoy the caresses of pretty Margot to my heart’s content—kisses and embraces alone were not enough. I expected more but did not dare demand or insist. The girl’s mother was pleased with me. Of course she was! I had laid sweets and butter, sausage and expensive German cigarettes on the altar of trust and goodwill from her family. Half of these products alone would be enough to give me every reason and right to do whatever I wanted with the daughter in front of her mother, and the mother would say nothing against it. For food today is worth more even than life, even the life of such a young and lovely sensual creature as the gentle beauty Margot.” [11]

The sixteen-year-old girl would later scratch her own body in an effort to make herself repulsive to the man assaulting her.

Men regarded the purchase of rape as an equal and voluntary exchange of goods:

“Then one of the Russians turned toward me and said gently: ‘What difference does it make who sleeps with you? A penis is a penis.’” [12]

As can be seen, these explanations cannot be called exculpatory; “indifferently mocking” would be a more accurate description.

The issue of mass wartime rape committed by victors was first raised in what we call our enlightened and humane era by the German director Helke Sander, who in 1992 made the film Liberators Take Liberties, devoted to violence by Red Army soldiers against German women.

Mass wartime rape cannot be explained by the favourite formula of “just revenge,” because soldiers of the liberating armies behaved similarly not only in Germany but also in territories that had previously been occupied.

It is estimated that American troops raped approximately 14,000 women in Europe between 1942 and 1945. In France alone, 152 U.S. servicemen were convicted of rape; twenty-nine were hanged (for murders of prostituted women—my note). But official statistics are only the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of victims of the overseas liberators did not complain to the police, most often out of shame, because at the time rape marked a woman with disgrace. In an attempt to cool overheated soldiers, the command circulated leaflets among personnel entitled “Let Us Consider Rape.” Only those whom it was impossible not to prosecute were tried. Of the 152 soldiers and officers who came before tribunals, 139 were Black. [13] S. A. Lavrenov writes in The Collapse of the Third Reich that by April 1945, 259 American soldiers had been convicted of rape or rape accompanied by murder [14].

The historian Antony Beevor notes that Soviet soldiers raped not only German women but also Russian, Jewish and Polish women who had been liberated from captivity [15]:

“If the soldiers were drunk, the nationality of their prey made no difference. Lev Kopelev recalled that in Allenstein he suddenly heard a piercing scream. Then he saw a young girl running away from two drunken Soviet tankmen. She cried: ‘I am Polish! Holy Mary, I am Polish!’”

All sides in the Second World War used violence against women for political propaganda—from the fiery propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, who scarcely made a speech without some variation on revenge against the “blonde witch”* and later carefully disowned these formulations after the party line changed, to Goebbels, who used such stories in an attempt to prevent defeatism and attempts by Germans to reach some accommodation with the victors. Neither side cared about women’s fates. Some politicians spoke only of a “negative phenomenon” within the liberating army that damaged the country’s prestige and future international relations.

The reactions of men in defeated countries to violence against women ranged from accusation—“You have turned into shameless bitches!” he shouted. “Every one of you has. I am not going to listen to all these stories. You have lost your entire nature, your good name!”—to normalization of rape. A woman in a queue for water told how a neighbour in her cellar shouted at her when the “Ivans” were pulling her away: “Just go with them! You are putting all of us in danger!” [12]

Women in every war pay other people’s bills, to the satisfaction of victors and vanquished alike.

Rape of women in wartime acquires a ritualized and legitimate character which, sadly, is sometimes supported by women themselves. During the trial of Colonel Budanov, who in 2000 abducted, raped and killed an eighteen-year-old girl, many women demanded his acquittal and even wanted him awarded the title of Hero. One woman wrote: “My son was killed by a sniper in Chechnya. I do not thirst for revenge. But I consider it mockery to put on trial a man who was sent to war and then judge him by the standards of peacetime.” [16]

Women veterans of the Great Patriotic War recalled something similar: “One of our officers fell in love with a German girl... The command found out... He was reduced in rank and sent to the rear. If he had raped her... That... Of course it happened... We write little about it, but it is the law of war. Men had gone so many years without women, and of course there was hatred. We would enter a town or village—the first three days were for looting and... Well, unofficially, naturally... You understand... And after three days you could already end up before a tribunal. In the heat of the moment. For three days they drank and...” [17]

In other words, rape and murder are accepted as justified acts of male violence, revenge for other people’s crimes for which different women must pay, as some supposedly inevitable “law” of war that is exempt from condemnation and punishment.

Wartime rape fits completely into the phenomenon described by feminist Gayle Rubin as “the traffic in women”:

“If it is women who are being transacted, then it is the men who give and take them who are linked, the woman being a conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it.” [18]

In a situation with no escape, life and freedom are exchanged for an objectified female body. A woman is equated with the symbol of a nation over which masculine power can be established through rape, which can be impregnated with the “correct” seed or cleansed of the “wrong” one. Wartime rape is silenced because from the standpoint of male power it is treated merely as damage to property, a question of politics and tribute, rather than torture of a living being and violation of constitutional human rights. But that is not what it is.

Rape during military operations must not merely be declared a war crime; it must actually be perceived as a crime on the same level as murder and other forms of torture of civilians, not as a supposedly excusable “victor’s right” to revenge, war booty or psychological release.

*Selected quotations by Ilya Ehrenburg reproduced in the source:

“We do not want to laugh at the tears of Martha or Annie, but we see these lines, these neat Gothic strokes: ‘Send us presents from Russia.’ We see the greedy, slobbering muzzle of the German hyena and we shall say briefly: ‘Madam, you waited for the presents; you received what you deserved. Cry, if tears can whiten your black conscience.’” (German Christmas, 25 December 1941)

“...where the wives of Oberscharführers or Geheimrats, finishing the last bottles of champagne and giving Gapa, Oksana or Masha one final whipping, say: ‘That is the wind from the East, a terrible wind. Put on the fur coat your husband brought you from Kyiv or you will catch cold...’” (On the Same Subject, 10 January 1945)

“One German woman complains to her husband about a minor misfortune: ‘I sent Aunt Gerda’s dress to be dyed. When I brought it home and put it on, everyone was delighted—it reminded us of the very best times. But now everything here is Ersatz, and imagine, within a week the blue dress became blotchy, and worst of all it came apart, so that in broad daylight I was almost naked...’” (To Berlin!, 15 January 1945)

“I kept a letter from a German woman in Tilsit. A certain Gertrud wrote to her husband in 1943: ‘I like the Russian servant girl because she is so undemanding—you need not give that girl anything to eat, literally nothing; she picks up something for herself, and she sleeps in the stable...’ We are in Tilsit. We are in Gertrud’s house. Naturally the German woman fled, but one can flee only so far: she will not get out of Germany. She rejoiced at the ‘unpretentiousness’ of a lonely and helpless Russian girl. Now Gertrud and the others will become acquainted with the demands of justice. We are in Prussian and Silesian towns, in the homes of commercial councillors and Obersturmführers, in the homes of Gauleiters and slave owners. What happiness!” (At Their Place!, 22 January 1945)

“The girls look ingratiatingly and wantonly at the passing soldiers, as though they were not the daughters of burghers but waitresses in a night cabaret... Here a German woman in trousers climbs up the façade of a house to remove an emblem with a swastika. Nobody ordered her to do it; she is sweating and pleased—she thinks she has rehabilitated herself before history. Just do not think of asking how she tormented the girl Galya...” (Retribution, 1 March 1945) [19]

Sources cited in the article

[1] O. I. Kazarinov, Unknown Faces of War. Between Life and Death. Moscow: Veche, 2005, 416 pp.

[2] E. Yu. Meshcherkina, “Mass Rape as Part of the Military Ethos,” Gender Studies, 2001, No. 6, pp. 255–258.

[3] Yu. A. Nikiforov, “On the ‘Strangeness’ of the Memory of the Second World War.”

[4] “Rape as a Method of Warfare in Eastern Congo.”

[5] “In Somalia African Union Soldiers Rape Women and Girls Who Come to Their Bases for Humanitarian Aid.”

[6] “In South Sudan Soldiers Were Allowed to Rape Women as Payment for Service.”

[7] UN, Progress of the World’s Women 2011–2012.

[8] Documents on German Atrocities in 1914–1918, Directorate of State Archives of the NKVD of the USSR. Moscow: OGIZ/Gospolitizdat, 1942, 80 pp.

[9] Sofya Rozhanskaya, interview with G. Pomerants.

[10] G. B. Polubanov, I Remember: Memoirs of Veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

[11] V. N. Gelfand, Diaries 1941–1946, Samizdat journal, 2004; W. Gelfand, Tagebuch 1941–1946. Baden-Baden: Battert Verlag, 2002.

[12] Marta Hillers, A Woman in Berlin. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2003, 99 pp.

[13] Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France.

[14] S. Ya. Lavrenov and I. M. Popov, The Collapse of the Third Reich. Moscow: AST, 2000, 608 pp.

[15] Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Russian translation by Yu. F. Mikhailov. Moscow: AST/Tranzitkniga, 2004, 622 pp.

[16] Viktoria Baranets, “Can a Virgin Be a Sniper?”

[17] Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Reader of Feminist Texts, ed. E. A. Zdravomyslova and A. A. Temkina. St. Petersburg: Dm. Bulanin, 2000, 303 pp.

[18] Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War. Moscow: Vremya, 2008, 414 pp.

[19] I. G. Ehrenburg, War, 1941–1945. Moscow: KRPA Olimp/Astrel/AST, 2004, 796 pp.

Illustration: Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea.

© FIONA 2013

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