Crimes Unspoken

The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War

Miriam Gebhardt, Nick Somers

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781509541669
  9781509511204
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781509511235
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The soldiers who occupied Germany after the Second World War were not only liberators: they also brought with them a new threat, as women throughout the country became victims of sexual violence. In this disturbing and carefully researched book, the historian Miriam Gebhardt reveals for the first time the scale of this human tragedy, which continued long after the hostilities had ended.

Discussion in recent years of the rape of German women committed at the end of the war has focused almost exclusively on the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, but Gebhardt shows that this picture is misleading. Crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies – American, French and British – as by the members of the Red Army. Nor was the suffering limited to the immediate aftermath of the war. Gebhardt powerfully recounts how raped women continued to be the victims of doctors, who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions, welfare workers, who put pregnant women in homes, and wider society, which even today prefers to ignore these crimes.

Crimes Unspoken is the first historical account to expose the true extent of sexual violence in Germany at the end of the war, offering valuable new insight into a key period of 20th century history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Seventy years too late
• 2 Berlin and the East – chronicle of a calamity foretold
• 3 South Germany – who will protect us from the Americans?
• 4 Pregnant, sick, ostracized – approaches to the victims
• 5 The long shadow
• Sources and selected literature
• Index
• End User License Agreement