„Tabu“: Französische Frauen äußern sich zu Vergewaltigungen durch US-Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg

16 comments

1. >In her neat handwriting, Aimee Helaudais Honore described the events of that night. How the soldiers fired their guns in the direction of her husband, ripping holes in his cap, and how they menacingly approached her daughter Aimee. To protect her daughter, she agreed to leave the house with the GIs, she wrote. “They took me to a field and took turns raping me, four times each.””My mother sacrificed herself to protect me,” she said. “While they raped her in the night, we waited, not knowing whether she would come back alive or whether they would shoot her dead.” The events of that night were not isolated. In October 1944, after the battle for Normandy was won, US military authorities put 152 soldiers on trial for raping French women.

   Harrowing story and am grateful that all this is coming out now, though it’s very late. But deeply frustrating that so many American rapists got away with it; this injustice needs to be remembered.

   Also looking forward to the day that also Russia faces what is did to women and girls in Berlin and East Germany following WWII. All my life I’ve been told that it was a “just war,” and while it’s true that the Nazis and Imperial Japanese were the heinous agressors, still so many innocents sufffered on both sides.

   *The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million.*

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany

2. “Sex, and I mean prostitution and rape, was a way for Americans to show domination over France, dominating French men, as they had been unable to protect their country and their women from the Germans.”

   🙁

3. It’s sorta like this generation was raised not knowing what war is. Not that I approve of it.

4. This is absolutely disgusting, rape is never ever justified no matter what.
   Edit: Not me being downvoted for this😭

5. Hi russia, still working on the french I see.

6. What Soldiers Do. Sex and the American GI in World War II France. By Mary Louise Roberts

7. The “Good” War myth persists

8. War really does bring out the worst in humanity.

9. I feel like the biggest difference between the Allied and Soviet armies is that the Allies *usually* punished people who committed rape and murder.

   The Soviets actively tolerated and/or encouraged such behavior once the Red Army began marching through central Europe.

10. I know a man who did this, and he told me all about it. He was my ex-boyfriend’s father. He was in WWII and thought nothing of what he did. He laughed that the French were so poor they sold their children to the soldiers to do what they would with their daughters. He said one little girl was on a bed. All the soldiers lined up to rape her in front of her father. Them men each took their turn, then got back in line to continue the raping. He told me this was a regular thing with the US GIs in France. He laughed and said it was a good time. I was in college in the 80’s when he told me all about what he did, just gloating about it. Of course I was horrified and didn’t want to hear it. He told it as if it was a joke. I had as little interaction with him as possible. My ex-boyfriend hated his father, I could understand why. Why would you still gloat 40 years later after what you did to those poor children? He said the French father made a lot of money selling his daughter.

11. I like how the article talks about the hanged rapists like they were victims.

12. The occupation of Japan by the Americans was just as brutal and rape filled. The Japanese government opened brothels just outside of the US military bases to limit the rapes of their civilian women. When the brothels were closed down the Japanese women started getting raped again in startling numbers.

13. Not a bear

14. How somebody can do this to another human is beyond my mind, worse than animals

15. *…in a moment look to see*

    *The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand*

    *Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters*

    From Henry V- Act 3, scene 3

16. The most important fact is Rape in the American army was never condoned. Unlike other forces like the Soviets where they left to do as they pleased. In France a women was raped and a man coming to help her was killed by two Americans. They were quickly found and tried. A gallos was constructed in town so the French people would see we were not going to tolerate it. American soldiers were also ordered to watch the execution. By orders of Gen Eisenhower.