J. Lilly. Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
“A disturbing and brave book by a distinguished American criminologist. It lifts a painful lid on rape by American GIs in Europe during World War II. J. Robert Lilly asks troubling questions like why were most of the GIs executed for rape black? Why were there large numbers of executions of GIs for raping French and British women and girls, but none for raping Germans, when the German rapes tended to be more bestial? Those of us who hold the World War II generation in such affection, who had fathers who fought so bravely in it for just cause, may want to look the other way. But
Taken by Force is a tour de force we must look at. Hundreds of thousands of German women and girls were raped in World War II, much more by Russian than American troops. They, and countless others from Japan to China to France, are forgotten victims of World War II, whose memory this book finally honors with serious research attention.”
Anonymous. A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary. Picador, 2006.
“Anonymous, then a 34-year-old journalist, started this eight-week diary in April 1945, when the Russians were invading Berlin and the city's mostly female population was heading to its cellars to wait out the bombing. Anyone who was able looted abandoned buildings for food of any kind. Soon the Russians were everywhere; liquored-up Russian soldiers raped women indiscriminately. After being raped herself, Anonymous decided to "find a single wolf to keep away the pack." Thanks to a small series of Russian officers, she was better fed and better protected at night. Her story illustrates the horror war brings to the lives of women when the battles are waged near a home front (rather than a traditional battlefield). In retrospect, she advises women victimized by mass rape to talk to each other about it. Once the war was officially over, the real starvation began; by the time the author's soldier boyfriend returned to Berlin, she was too hungry and hurt to deal with him. When the radio reported concentration camp horrors, she was pained but unable to quite take it in. The author, who died in 2001, has a fierce, uncompromising voice, and her book should become a classic of war literature. First published in 1954, it was probably too dark for postwar readers, German or Allied. Now, after witnessing Bosnia and Darfur, maybe we are finally ready.”
