Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller Page A
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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impor tance of rape, and kept their painful records.
Not until World War I was documentation of rape in warfare ever again preserved so faithfully.
WORLD WAR I
When the Germans invaded Belgium in August, i914, rape was suddenly catapulted into prominence as the international metaphor of Belgian humiliation. This unprecedented attention
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'·
I
I
I .
I !'·
WAR I 41
had little to do with an understanding of the rights of women. It had a lot to do with the evolution of a new form of battle-the scientific use of propaganda.
We are indebted for our most complete and factual knowl edge of rape in World War I to the distinguished British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who was a young Thucydides scholar at Oxford when the war broke out. Toynbee published two small volumes in 1917, one devoted to the early months of the war in Belgium and a second to the war in France. Both books were basically compendiums of German Army atrocities, gathered by Allied commissions of investigation and cross-checked against available German documents. As Toynbee and his contemporaries saw it, the German General Staff deliberately mounted a campaign of terror in the first three months of the war.*
From Liege to Louvain, as Toynbee wrote it, the German Army cut a swath of horror. Houses were burned, villages were plundered, civilians were bayonetted, and women were raped. "A number of women" were raped at Tremeloo. At Rotselaer "a girl who was raped by five Germans went out of her mind." In Capelle au-Bois a woman told how "the German soldiers had held her down by force while other soldiers had violated her daughter succes sively in an adjoining room." At Corbeek-Loo "a girl of sixteen was violated by six soldiers and bayonetted in five places for offering resistance." An eyewitness who survived the siege of Louvain re ported, "The women and children were separated. . . . Some Ger man soldiers came up to me sniggering and said that all the women were going to be raped . . . . They explained themselves by gestures."
That was a sample of August in Belgium. The pattern held for September in France. Jouy-sur-Morin: "Two Germans came into a house carrying looted bottles of champagne, and violated a girl of eighteen-the mother was kept off with the bayonet by each sol-
* In The Guns of August Barbara Tuchman attributes the German campaign of terror to the influence of Clausewitz, the nineteenth-century military theorist. She may have taken Clausewitz too literally, but then again, so may have the Germans. More to the point, Tuchman does not bother to include rape among her many examples of terror. In this omission I believe she was unduly influenced by those who sought to unravel and debunk Allied propa ganda af ter the war.
42 I AGAINST OUR WILL
Marne. It was the same story in Flanders and along the Franco Belgian border. A British professor of constitutional law named J.
H. Morgan examined the sworn statements of thirty women who were raped at Bailleu} during eight days of occupation. Because he was a cautious lawyer he also
Not until World War I was documentation of rape in warfare ever again preserved so faithfully.
WORLD WAR I
When the Germans invaded Belgium in August, i914, rape was suddenly catapulted into prominence as the international metaphor of Belgian humiliation. This unprecedented attention
. .
l
L
\
'·
I
I
I .
I !'·
WAR I 41
had little to do with an understanding of the rights of women. It had a lot to do with the evolution of a new form of battle-the scientific use of propaganda.
We are indebted for our most complete and factual knowl edge of rape in World War I to the distinguished British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who was a young Thucydides scholar at Oxford when the war broke out. Toynbee published two small volumes in 1917, one devoted to the early months of the war in Belgium and a second to the war in France. Both books were basically compendiums of German Army atrocities, gathered by Allied commissions of investigation and cross-checked against available German documents. As Toynbee and his contemporaries saw it, the German General Staff deliberately mounted a campaign of terror in the first three months of the war.*
From Liege to Louvain, as Toynbee wrote it, the German Army cut a swath of horror. Houses were burned, villages were plundered, civilians were bayonetted, and women were raped. "A number of women" were raped at Tremeloo. At Rotselaer "a girl who was raped by five Germans went out of her mind." In Capelle au-Bois a woman told how "the German soldiers had held her down by force while other soldiers had violated her daughter succes sively in an adjoining room." At Corbeek-Loo "a girl of sixteen was violated by six soldiers and bayonetted in five places for offering resistance." An eyewitness who survived the siege of Louvain re ported, "The women and children were separated. . . . Some Ger man soldiers came up to me sniggering and said that all the women were going to be raped . . . . They explained themselves by gestures."
That was a sample of August in Belgium. The pattern held for September in France. Jouy-sur-Morin: "Two Germans came into a house carrying looted bottles of champagne, and violated a girl of eighteen-the mother was kept off with the bayonet by each sol-
* In The Guns of August Barbara Tuchman attributes the German campaign of terror to the influence of Clausewitz, the nineteenth-century military theorist. She may have taken Clausewitz too literally, but then again, so may have the Germans. More to the point, Tuchman does not bother to include rape among her many examples of terror. In this omission I believe she was unduly influenced by those who sought to unravel and debunk Allied propa ganda af ter the war.
42 I AGAINST OUR WILL
Marne. It was the same story in Flanders and along the Franco Belgian border. A British professor of constitutional law named J.
H. Morgan examined the sworn statements of thirty women who were raped at Bailleu} during eight days of occupation. Because he was a cautious lawyer he also
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