Posted on 03/02/2015 10:36:33 PM PST by Olog-hai
In the popular imagination, American GIs in postwar Germany were well-liked and well-behaved. But a new book claims that US soldiers raped up to 190,000 women at the end of World War II. Is there any truth to the controversial claim? […]
… German historian Miriam Gebhardt, well known in Germany for her book about leading feminist Alice Schwarzer and the feminist movement, has now published a new volume casting doubt on the accepted version of America’s role in German postwar history.
The work, which came out in German on Monday, takes a closer look at the rape of German women by all four victorious powers at the end of World War II. In particular, though, her views on the behavior of American GIs are likely to raise eyebrows. Gebhardt believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany.
The author bases her claims in large part on reports kept by Bavarian priests in the summer of 1945. The Archbishop of Munich and Freising had asked Catholic clergy to keep records on the allied advance and the Archdiocese published excerpts from its archive a few years ago. …
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
How, then, did the historian arrive at her shocking figure of 190,000 rapes?
The total is not the result of deep research in archives across the country. Rather, it is an extrapolation. Gebhardt makes the assumption that 5 percent of the "war children" born to unmarried women in West Germany and West Berlin by the mid-1950s were the product of rape. That makes for a total of 1,900 children of American fathers. Gebhardt further assumes that on average, there are 100 incidents of rape for each birth. The result she arrives at is thus 190,000 victims.
Such a total, though, hardly seems plausible. Were the number really that high, it is almost certain that there would be more reports on rape in the files of hospitals or health authorities, or that there would be more eyewitness reports.
Nothing to see here. Move on.
Why would a US GI have to rape a german woman when they could be bought for some rations?
Lame.
I personally knew a few Older GI’s (since passed) who married german woman after the war...
Some of our guys felt guilty that they had killed off all the men...
We called them “war brides”
Just imagine how far you could have gotten with a case of Klondike bars...
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"Footage showing surrendering troops to US Army. southern Bohemia, Czechoslovakia 1945."
I’m guessing they’d been better off if we weren’t there....
Maybe Obama should schedule another apology tour.
Sophia Loren was in a movie called Two Woman about a woman and her teenage daughter being raped by Americans in Italy at the end of the war...
I’m sure there were more than a few fräuleins that got pregnant out of wedlock from fooling-around and then claimed they were raped to save face.
If we weren’t there then, Obama and many of us might not exist now.
Sophia Loren was in a movie called Two Woman about a woman and her teenage daughter being raped by Americans in Italy at the end of the war...
I saw the movie and those were not Americans.
We wouldn’t be texting in The Queen’s English, anyway...
From the movie plot:
Cesira decides to return to Rome once the Allied troops end German occupation. On the way home, Cesira and Rosetta are gang-raped inside a church by a group of Goumier — Moroccan soldiers of the French Army.
Two Women (1960)
The film is adapted from an Alberto Moravia novel of 1957 “La Ciocara”, based on true events of mass rapes by the Moroccan Gourmiers in the Ciocara region after the battle of Monte Cassino in World War II. Monte Cassino was captured by the Allies on 18 May 1944, and on the following night, thousands of Goumiers and other colonial troops scoured the the hills surrounding the towns and the villages of Ciociaria. Over 60,000 women, ranging in age from 11 to 86, suffered from violence, when village after village came under control of the Goumiers. Civilian men who tried to protect their wives and daughters were murdered.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054749/trivia?item=tr2267400i
Historical revisionism seems to be all the rage lately.
She probably counted these acts as "rape through coercion" when tallying her 190,000 number.
Just imagine how far you could have gotten with a case of Klondike bars...
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My father was an inspector for Marshall Plan goods based out of the Brooklyn army base... he spent most of the 1950’s in Europe ... YOU ARE 100% CORRECT ,,, with basically ANY trade goods , particularly food items you could have ANYTHING you wanted... a canned ham would be like a ticket to the Playboy mansion... and don’t forget this was after WW2 ,, there was a man shortage in England and Germany,,, in England at least (unofficially) it was not uncommon to have multiple wives ...
wrong.I know that movie,one of my favorites,inside out.It’s great,and I’ve seen it 4 times.The rapists of Loren and her daughter were depicted as a Moroccan force allied with the French.The rape scene was a masterful minute of filmmaking,andI’ll never forget it.The rapists looked like Somalis,and weren’t even dressed like American soldiers;as I remember, they more resembled Bedouins,with long robes.
Just remember, You can’t rape the willing!
No, they were NOT “raped by American soldiers”; they were raped by MOROCCAN SOLDIERS, who were with the French Army.
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