TABOO 3: THE WAR CRIMES OF THE WEST

The pillaging lasted nearly an entire week. Whole streets of houses were set ablaze. At the same time women and girls were being mercilessly pursued, as soldiers beat and raped their defenseless victims. One local doctor later revealed that she alone had treated more than 600 women who’d been raped…

It may sound like a page from the Nazis’ atrocity playbook or a report on Russian war crimes, but despite all the modern-day misconceptions, German women were not only raped by Russian soldiers. These crimes were committed by Polish, French, and American forces as well during and after World War II. The topic is highly taboo and is rarely addressed today—but the rampages of Allied forces were not isolated instances. There have been reports from Bad Reichenhall in the south of Germany to Emsland in the north—and from

hundreds of other cities where Allied soldiers had raped German civilians. There were also reports containing information that up to 15,000 women were raped in the American zone of Germany, and the violence continued even after the war was over.

So why are there so few references in the published accounts of World War II? A pair of German journalists explored that question: Maximiliane Saalfrank and Thies Marsen found that these events have been doubly stigmatized as taboo. On one hand, there is a clear reluctance to speak badly of the Western Allies, who are generally regarded as liberators. And on the other hand, in predominantly Roman Catholic southern Germany, sexuality itself remains a big taboo. Any women who had sex outside of marriage were considered floozies or whores—even if they had been the helpless victims of a forcible act.

In addition, the end of the war brought chaotic conditions in which the government and the police were no longer functioning, so rapes could not be investigated and punished. Saalfrank, who spoke with dozens of victims, remembers: “They never mentioned acts of sexual violence committed by members of the Allied armed forces. The victims and their families remained silent so that they could continue living in their villages and districts without being ostracized by their fellow citizens.” Thus Allied guilt was effectively concealed by collective amnesia and silence—and a taboo was created that continues to live on today, more than 70 years after the end of World War II.

“Acts of sexual violence were never mentioned.”

While there is ample documentation of the war crimes committed by the Red Army during World War II, little notice has been taken of the brutal misdeeds of some GIS. But facts are facts: When southern Germany was freed by U.S. troops in April 1945, historians maintain thousands of sex crimes were committed.