Review: Miriam Gebhardt. Als die Soldaten kamen. Die Vergewaltigung deutscher Frauen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:

Miriam Gebhardt’s work bravely and expertly reorients the discourse concerning rape committed against German women at the end and in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Like many of her predecessors, Gebhardt attempts to uncover why so many women fell prey to the occupational forces. Refreshingly, she does not repeat Helke Sander’s and Erich Kuby’s oft-cited scholarship on the subject, choosing to innovate upon it instead. For Gebhardt, rape is not simply an unfortunate byproduct of war, caused by hatred and revenge against the enemy Other. Rather, it is a symptom of the early twentieth century’s gender insecurities. Traditional gender hierarchies were at stake as the West opened up to alternative lifestyles for men and women, and as the East established a state-decreed gender equality law. Many soldiers were threatened by the collapse of the old order when they entered the war, which, according to Gebhardt, abetted sexual violence in Germany. The author believes that mass rape might be the persecutors’ subtle wish for a clear-cut gender hierarchy, in which the supposedly masculinized strong overpower the feminized weak. Gebhardt’s unique argument is perfectly in line with the overall progressive tone of her work. In her five chapters, she systematically dispels predominant myths that have thus far pervaded the scholarship, including the misidentification of the Red Army as the main persecutors of rape, as well as the assertion that German men repudiated children who resulted from the abuse.