Two heartless Germans smiling on as a woman is hung in the background. German troops used mass rape as a means of terrorizing the local populace

Two heartless Germans smiling on as a woman is hung in the background. German troops used mass rape as a means of terrorizing the local populace


The way women were treated by the German armed forces during the second World War hinged on a variety of factors, ranging from the specific unit involved, to the location and time period. The behaviour which members of the German armed forces exhibited towards women was quite varied, ranging from kind and humane, to downright barbaric.

On the Eastern Front, rape was (at least officially) discouraged. Army High Command feared outbreaks of venereal disease (due to poor sanitary conditions) as well as violating Nazi racial policy (it was illegal for an Aryan to have sex with a “lesser” Slav). This did not mean that rape didn’t happen. On the contrary, instances of brutal sexual assault were shockingly common.

Jewish women and girls were subjected to sexual violence before being murdered during the invasion of Poland in 1939. In occupied parts of the Soviet Union, it is estimated that the number of rape victims and children born out of rape may very well have exceeded several million. On at least two occasions (at Smolensk and Lviv), German troops used mass rape as a means of terrorizing the local populace. Although rape was technically punishable by a lengthy prison sentence and even death, most cases of rape by German soldiers were not prosecuted, unless letting the criminal get away risked undermining discipline within the unit. In addition to sexual assault and rape, the German military forced tens of thousands of Eastern European women, many of whom were merely teenagers, to work in army brothels.

It should be noted that instances of sexual violence were more likely to be perpetrated by rear-echelon troops than by frontline soldiers.

That’s not to say that all civilian women in Eastern Europe were treated like this. Acts of kindness, such as German soldiers sharing food with starving mothers and children, were fairly common. In addition, numerous women (especially in Ukraine and the Baltic states, where the local populace had suffered under Soviet rule too) actively collaborated with their German occupiers.

On the other hand, captured female Soviet soldiers, nurses and resistance fighters would almost certainly be subjected to horrific acts of sexual violence before being murdered. For example, during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, certain SS units (the infamous Dirlewanger and RONA brigades) conducted a deliberate policy of brutally raping both captured female resistance fighters as well as female civilians. In addition, members of SS Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union would often rape female victims before mass executions. Members of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, the ethnic German militia, did pretty much the same thing in Poland, assisted by the regular German army at time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

German women were raped by all armies at the end of the second world war From the archive, 17 June 1955: Berlin woman's memoir of mass rape reviewed

Image
  German women were raped by all armies at the end of the second world war From the archive, 17 June 1955: Berlin woman's memoir of mass rape reviewed Controversial book suggests many Berlin women were raped by drunken Red Army soldiers during the second world war Observer, 19 June 2005: When rape was a spoil of war Two years after the end of the war Berlin still smelled of death. Each street contained dozens of ruins and every ruin, especially after rain had fallen and there was still a dampness in the air, retained the same sickly smell. It may have been, as some Germans honestly believed, corpses buried beneath them, or it may have been the state of the drains. It may simply have been the projection of a short but stormy past into the greyness of that particularly uninviting present. A Woman in Berlin (Secker and Warburg, pp. 284, 15s) tells the story of a single German woman of middle-class family, living in the Neu-Kölln district of Berlin. This district has not
Read more

he Tragic Story Of Evelyn McHale, The Woman In The Infamous ‘Most Beautiful Self slaughter

Image
The Tragic Story Of Evelyn McHale, The Woman In The Infamous ‘Most Beautiful Self slaughter  Named by Life magazine as the “The Most Beautiful Suicide”: Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the Empire State Building, 1947 “The most beautiful suicide” – Evelyn McHale, 1947. This powerful photo taken by Robert C. Wiles was published as a full-page image in the 12 May 1947 issue of Life Magazine. It ran with the caption: “ At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car “. Evelyn McHale is probably the most famous Empire State Building suicide victim. The young and pretty Evelyn leaped from the 86th-floor observatory in 1947 and landed on the roof of a United Nations limousine parked on the street Her calmly elegant demeanor, her legs crossed at the ankles, the way the car’s metal folded like sheets and framed her head and arms—perhaps t
Read more

Terrible! "Wooden Horse Or Spanish Donkey" Method Of Punishment

Image
The wooden horse, or Spanish donkey, was an extremely painful and gruesome medieval torture device.  It was first used by the Holy Inquisition in France and then in Spain and Germany, and then migrated to the Americas, gaining prominence during the colonial period.  The main design was the same wherever it was used.  It was a triangular wooden box with a very sharp top end (ie where the horse's spine would be).  The apparatus was constructed of wood, with planks nailed together to form a long, tapered ridge, which would serve as the horse's back.  These were supported by four legs attached to a bracket, about 6 or 7 feet (1.8 to 2.1 metres) high, with wheels fitted to the bottom of the legs so that the entire device could roll across the ground.  A head and tail would be attached to make the torture device look like an almost “fun” huge wooden horse.  The defendant would be mounted on the horse, with ankle weights and hands tied behind his ba
Read more