Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller Page B
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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demanded and received their medical certificates of injury. Professor Morgan later published his findings.
Outrages upon the honour of women by German soldiers have been so frequent that it is impossible to escape the conviction that they have been condoned and indeed encouraged by German offi cers. . . . At least five officers were guilty of such offences, and where the officers set the example the men followed. . . . In one case, the facts of which are proved by evidence that would satisfy any court of law, a young girl of nineteen was violated by one officer while the other held her mother by the throat and pointed a revol ver, af ter which the two officers exchanged their respective roles. The officers and soldiers usually hunted in couples, either entering the houses under pretense of seeking billets or forcing the doors by open violence. Frequently the victims were beaten and kicked, and invariably threatened with a loaded revolver.
Nieppe . . . Laventie . . . Lorgies . . . Armentieres . . . Es taires . . .
Toward the end of 1914 the strategy of warfare underwent a revolutionary change. Historians agree that war was "modern ized": stationary trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, gas and gas
WAR 43
masks replaced the concept of the maneuvering, marching army. From the best information available it appears that the incidence of rape and other weapons of terror employed by the German Army dramaticlly dropped off at approximately the same moment in time.
Interestingly, the young Arnold Toynbee was at great pains in 1917 to deny that the two events were related. He was convinced that the German Army abandoned rape ' and other terror tactics independent of their adoption of stationary trench warfare, and that the commission of atrocities on a grand scale during the first three months of the war was deliberate in its limits.
This has not been due to the immobility of the fronts [he ar gued], for although it is certainly true that the Germans have been unable to overrun fresh territories on the west, they have carried out greater invasions than ever in Russia and the Balkans, which have not been marked by outrages of the same specific kind. This seems to show that the systematic warfare against the civilian population in the campaigns of 1914 was the result of policy, deliberately tried and deliberately given up. This hypothesis would account for the peculiar features in the German Army's conduct . . .
The imposition of a Machiavellian scheme on German Army rape is tantalizing, but I fear when Toynbee wrote those sentences he was serving the cause of propaganda more than the cause of history. It is logical to believe that rape may have been a deliberate tactic of the German Army during the first few months of the war, or if not deliberate, certainly not discouraged, but it seems more rational to conclude that the opportunity to rape was effectively cut down by the new system of stationary trench warfare, the frequency curtailed by military stalemate, and the horror of it superseded by the staggering loss of life as the war went on.
Af ter the first three months of the war, the Allied countries no longer bothered to tally rape reports or tried to verify the rumors. There was no need. The war had given birth to a new and highly effective tool of battle: the scientific use of international propa ganda. The German Army may have temporarily seized the mili tary initiative, but in the vivid war of propaganda it was the Allied nations that swarmed the field and moved decisively. In the hands of skilled Allied manipulators, rape was successfully launched in
44 I AGAINST OUR WILL
world opinion, almost overnight, as a characteristic German crime, evidence of the "depraved Boche" penchant for warfare by atrocity. Never before in history had rape in war-the privilege of territorial conquest-boomeranged quite so spectapularly. Neutral America was the chief target of the propaganda technicians from both sides of the fence, but
Outrages upon the honour of women by German soldiers have been so frequent that it is impossible to escape the conviction that they have been condoned and indeed encouraged by German offi cers. . . . At least five officers were guilty of such offences, and where the officers set the example the men followed. . . . In one case, the facts of which are proved by evidence that would satisfy any court of law, a young girl of nineteen was violated by one officer while the other held her mother by the throat and pointed a revol ver, af ter which the two officers exchanged their respective roles. The officers and soldiers usually hunted in couples, either entering the houses under pretense of seeking billets or forcing the doors by open violence. Frequently the victims were beaten and kicked, and invariably threatened with a loaded revolver.
Nieppe . . . Laventie . . . Lorgies . . . Armentieres . . . Es taires . . .
Toward the end of 1914 the strategy of warfare underwent a revolutionary change. Historians agree that war was "modern ized": stationary trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, gas and gas
WAR 43
masks replaced the concept of the maneuvering, marching army. From the best information available it appears that the incidence of rape and other weapons of terror employed by the German Army dramaticlly dropped off at approximately the same moment in time.
Interestingly, the young Arnold Toynbee was at great pains in 1917 to deny that the two events were related. He was convinced that the German Army abandoned rape ' and other terror tactics independent of their adoption of stationary trench warfare, and that the commission of atrocities on a grand scale during the first three months of the war was deliberate in its limits.
This has not been due to the immobility of the fronts [he ar gued], for although it is certainly true that the Germans have been unable to overrun fresh territories on the west, they have carried out greater invasions than ever in Russia and the Balkans, which have not been marked by outrages of the same specific kind. This seems to show that the systematic warfare against the civilian population in the campaigns of 1914 was the result of policy, deliberately tried and deliberately given up. This hypothesis would account for the peculiar features in the German Army's conduct . . .
The imposition of a Machiavellian scheme on German Army rape is tantalizing, but I fear when Toynbee wrote those sentences he was serving the cause of propaganda more than the cause of history. It is logical to believe that rape may have been a deliberate tactic of the German Army during the first few months of the war, or if not deliberate, certainly not discouraged, but it seems more rational to conclude that the opportunity to rape was effectively cut down by the new system of stationary trench warfare, the frequency curtailed by military stalemate, and the horror of it superseded by the staggering loss of life as the war went on.
Af ter the first three months of the war, the Allied countries no longer bothered to tally rape reports or tried to verify the rumors. There was no need. The war had given birth to a new and highly effective tool of battle: the scientific use of international propa ganda. The German Army may have temporarily seized the mili tary initiative, but in the vivid war of propaganda it was the Allied nations that swarmed the field and moved decisively. In the hands of skilled Allied manipulators, rape was successfully launched in
44 I AGAINST OUR WILL
world opinion, almost overnight, as a characteristic German crime, evidence of the "depraved Boche" penchant for warfare by atrocity. Never before in history had rape in war-the privilege of territorial conquest-boomeranged quite so spectapularly. Neutral America was the chief target of the propaganda technicians from both sides of the fence, but
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