Year Zero by Ian Buruma Page B

the vanguard of public opinion, was critical in its reports from the occupied zones. Their local correspondent reported in June that he had “yet to meet a soldier, whether he comes from London, the Mississippi Valley or the Alberta wheatfields, who wants the ban continued.” The same reporter revealed the absurdity of measures taken to tighten the ban. In one village in the U.S. zone, a counterintelligencedetachment was sent out to watch a security guard who was monitoring a military policeman who had been “flirting with a German girl.” 49
    On June 8, General Eisenhower lifted the ban on fraternizing with children, whereupon the common greeting from GIs or Tommies to a young woman was “Good Day, Child!” In August, Allied soldiers were allowed to speak to adults, and even, as long as they were safely out in the open air, to hold hands with grown women. On October 1, finally, the Allied Control Council, the governing body of the four powers’ military occupation, lifted the ban entirely. One of the events that nailed it was the arrival of British and U.S. troops in Berlin, where the Soviets were fraternizing quite freely. This divide became intolerable to Western troops, so in a sense the license to frat with Germans was an early consequence of Big Power rivalry. But lifting the ban came with a condition: marriage with Germans, or putting Germans up in army billets, would still be forbidden. This, too, in time became a dead letter, and tens of thousands of German women left with their new husbands to the promised good life of the United States.
    Germany had its version of the
panpan
women, the lowest and most desperate being the
Ruinenmäuschen
, the “mice in the ruins.” But, as was true in all countries under military occupation, the borderlines between romance, desire, and prostitution were not always clear. Even in the Soviet zone of Berlin, where few women, including the very young and very old, had managed to avoid sexual assault, and where raping was still a common occurrence for months after the war, sexual relations with foreign troops were not always a straightforward matter. The best and most harrowing account is
A
Woman in Berlin
, a diary kept by a journalist in her early thirties who finally escaped being serially raped by anonymous soldiers by soliciting the protection of one Russian officer. The gentle Lieutenant Anatole became her regular lover. After all, she wrote, “he’s looking more for human, feminine sympathy than for mere sexual satisfaction. And this I’m willing to offer him, even with pleasure . . .” 50
    In the Western zones, women who accepted material goods from their American boyfriends, as most of them would have, were quickly brandedas prostitutes, a reputation they would not have acquired so easily by taking gifts from German men. Of course, access to goods from the PX was a matter of survival for many. In the winter months, even the warmth of a well-heated nightclub was a welcome refuge from icy rooms, shared with many strangers, in bombed-out buildings. But those Lucky Strikes, chocolates, and silk stockings, along with the swing music and the easygoing GI manners, also represented a culture to women, and many young men, which was all the more desirable for having been forbidden in the oppressive Third Reich. People hungered for the trappings of the New World, however crude, because the Old World had collapsed in such disgrace, not just physically, but culturally, intellectually, spiritually. This was true of liberated countries, like France and Holland. It was even more true of Germany and Japan, where the postwar Americanization of culture, beginning with “fratting,” would go further than anywhere else.
    At least one woman saw all this for what it was, a dream, which was bound to disappoint in the end—but not without leaving a few traces. After Benoîte Groult has turned down her American lover Kurt’s