A new book came out this week in Germany....entitled: When The Soldiers Came. There's been several reviews of the book and the historical slant of the book. Basically, it covers the period after WW II in Germany and lays out a statistical analysis of rapes committed by American solders.
They arrive at a 'number', which comes from data available from the various German states. "Unmarried women" are noted as having given birth, and so a statistical number is generated into this number which attributes a percentage (five percent) as being from rapes committed by American soldiers. The mythical five percent number? It's invented.....it's not fact.
Layered into the book also points to rapes of German men and boys....although there's not a factual number that you can arrive at....it's simply a suggestion of a number. Once you suggest German men and boys were raped by American soldiers.....it draws a negative conclusion by those listening to the story.
Some German news sources have done a review of the book and question the statistical analysis done, and the percentages used to arrive at some factual information. It's simply an open-ended book with more questions left by the end, than answers. Over the next week or two, I expect several German chat forums on state-run TV to take the book.....conduct some public talks and generate some conversations out of it.
Issues?
Well....since the Americans were some pepped up on raping.....you'd expect find some great statistical data for North Africa from the 1942-1943 period. This would certainly help to portray the slant the rest of the way. But oddly, the writers of the book chose not to gather this type of data.
Americans in Italy during WW II and the decades after the war? You'd expect find some great statistical data for Italy and pregnant/raped by American women. Oddly, the writers of the book chose not to gather this type of data.
Americans in England for 1942 to 1944? You'd expect them to be raping the heck out of English women, thus providing great statistical data on rapes there on the Isle. Oddly, the writers of the book chose not to gather this type of data.
Americans in France after the 6th of June of 1944? You'd expect the book authors to gather statistical data of the French countryside and cite great statistical data on rapes there. Odd, the writers of the book chose not to gather such data.
Americans in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium? Same deal.....lots of data would be existing there, so why not use that as well.
Nothing?
So, let's be logical....where German soldiers went in Poland.....are there an increased number of rapes there as they invaded Poland? As the German advanced across the French countryside, Belgium, and the Netherlands.....statistical analysis of rapes there? No.
There's a great book here potentially. You could have gathered data from seven countries and shown a vast amount of American soldier rapes. Well.....maybe. If you slanted the numbers the right way, and simply guessed that a unmarried woman was raped by a soldier of an American variety but never of a German variety.
There's a lot of history missing from central Europe from the 1920s to 1960s.
Roughly 4.3 German men never returned from WW II, period. There's roughly 300,000 Germans who died not from Allied bombing but from Nazi justice of the 1930s and 1940s. Half a million Germans died in the allied bombing campaign from 1942 to 1945.
Over four million German men never returned home. Roughly fifteen million German men and boys served in the German army. You can figure that one out of four never made it back. Of those who did make it back....you can figure that a quarter of them as a minimum had mental and emotional issues.
There is no such thing as family life or normal living for those German women. Rebuilding a society? Nothing was reach the normal view of what existed in the 1930s.
German women surviving from 1945 on? Every single household suffered. They saw husbands who never returned, or the ones who did return....were never the same. Getting back to some norm? Impossible. Twenty thousand German women by 1949 had married American soldiers and left Germany for the US (Wiki numbers).
The ability to take an unmarried woman giving birth to a child and attributing it to some American soldier rape? Virtually impossible to reach some factual point.
So, it's a book to simply stir the pot and get emotions progressing one way or another.
No comments:
Post a Comment