[Russian] women and girls were driven" was mentioned at the Nuremberg tribunal. Similarly it was entered into evidence at the Tokyo tribunal that during the Japanese occupation of the Chinese
'· city of Kweilin, in Kwangsi Province, "They recruited women labor on the pretext . · of establishing factories; they forced the women thus recruited into prostitution with the Japanese troops."
I would like to say with conviction that a noticeable difference in attitude and behavior toward women existed on the part of the armies of liberation as opposed to the armies of conques and subjugation in World War II, and that the weight of evidence presented at Nuremberg and Tokyo condusively proves it. Patterns of German and Japanese aggression clearly included overt expres sion of contempt for women as part of an overall philosophy of the
master · race, as well as a most pragmatic means of terror. Rape fit
. well, was conceptualized even, as a fascist act of domination. Yet it is in the nature of any institution in which men are set apart from women and given the extra power of the gun that the accruing power may be used against all women, for a female victim of rape in war is chosen not because she is a representative of the enemy, but precisely because she is a woman, and therefore an enemy. An all-male army cannot help but become imbued with a sense of its own male mastery, an4 in the last analysis, the Axis war machine
merely carried the male ideology to a further degree, to an unac ceptable exaggeration.
As it happened, the right side won in 1945, and the evil that was brought forward for judgment was undeniably the ultimate evil; no one who has ever examined the holocaust literature of World War II can walk away from it without the knowledge that she or he has peered directly into the pit of hell. But those who judged at Nuremberg and Tokyo were those who had emerged from the war victorious. It was the other side that was held ac countable. No international tribunals were called to expose and condemn Allied atrocity, no war-crimes depositions were taken from "enemy" women, no incriminating top-secret documents from our side of the war were held up to merciless light. A theorist of rape must admit that the evidence has been unfairly weighted.
I am not suggesting that an equality of rape existed in World War II. I doubt that it did. But Allied soldiers did commit rape, with gusto. The sexual assault may not have been a logical weapon within a total concept of "destruction of inferior peoples," but it was just as real a humiliation for the female victims. Instead of a motive of out-and-out conquest we may substitute a motivation (or excuse) of retaliation and revenge. Logic of a sort pertains here as well. I rather suspect that Allied rape, for the rapists, was of ten joyous-a sporadic, hearty spilling over and acting out of anti female sentiment disguised within the glorious, vengeful struggle, an exuberant manifestation of the heroic fighting man who is fighting the good fight.
When llya Ehrenburg, the flinty Soviet novelist-turned-war correspondent, larded his front-line dispatches in 1942 with tales of German rape, the accounts he wrote set his ideological juices flowing.
These filthy lechers have now come to Russia. They are pol luting our houses. They are violating and infecting our women. Red Army men, in the name of our girls' honour, in the name of our women, in the name of human purity, smash these fornicating Fritzes I
Ehrenburg's job was to light a patriotic fire, and what better kindling was there than the tried-and-true "protection of our women"? These were the dark days for the Russians, before Stalin—
66 I AGAINST OUR WILL
grad, and Ehrenburg may be pardoned, I suppose, for creating the simplistic slogan, "To gain an hour is to save a Russian man from the rope and a Russian girl from dishonour." His call to arms and human purity became faintly ridiculous three years later when the glorious Red Army,
'· city of Kweilin, in Kwangsi Province, "They recruited women labor on the pretext . · of establishing factories; they forced the women thus recruited into prostitution with the Japanese troops."
I would like to say with conviction that a noticeable difference in attitude and behavior toward women existed on the part of the armies of liberation as opposed to the armies of conques and subjugation in World War II, and that the weight of evidence presented at Nuremberg and Tokyo condusively proves it. Patterns of German and Japanese aggression clearly included overt expres sion of contempt for women as part of an overall philosophy of the
master · race, as well as a most pragmatic means of terror. Rape fit
. well, was conceptualized even, as a fascist act of domination. Yet it is in the nature of any institution in which men are set apart from women and given the extra power of the gun that the accruing power may be used against all women, for a female victim of rape in war is chosen not because she is a representative of the enemy, but precisely because she is a woman, and therefore an enemy. An all-male army cannot help but become imbued with a sense of its own male mastery, an4 in the last analysis, the Axis war machine
merely carried the male ideology to a further degree, to an unac ceptable exaggeration.
As it happened, the right side won in 1945, and the evil that was brought forward for judgment was undeniably the ultimate evil; no one who has ever examined the holocaust literature of World War II can walk away from it without the knowledge that she or he has peered directly into the pit of hell. But those who judged at Nuremberg and Tokyo were those who had emerged from the war victorious. It was the other side that was held ac countable. No international tribunals were called to expose and condemn Allied atrocity, no war-crimes depositions were taken from "enemy" women, no incriminating top-secret documents from our side of the war were held up to merciless light. A theorist of rape must admit that the evidence has been unfairly weighted.
I am not suggesting that an equality of rape existed in World War II. I doubt that it did. But Allied soldiers did commit rape, with gusto. The sexual assault may not have been a logical weapon within a total concept of "destruction of inferior peoples," but it was just as real a humiliation for the female victims. Instead of a motive of out-and-out conquest we may substitute a motivation (or excuse) of retaliation and revenge. Logic of a sort pertains here as well. I rather suspect that Allied rape, for the rapists, was of ten joyous-a sporadic, hearty spilling over and acting out of anti female sentiment disguised within the glorious, vengeful struggle, an exuberant manifestation of the heroic fighting man who is fighting the good fight.
When llya Ehrenburg, the flinty Soviet novelist-turned-war correspondent, larded his front-line dispatches in 1942 with tales of German rape, the accounts he wrote set his ideological juices flowing.
These filthy lechers have now come to Russia. They are pol luting our houses. They are violating and infecting our women. Red Army men, in the name of our girls' honour, in the name of our women, in the name of human purity, smash these fornicating Fritzes I
Ehrenburg's job was to light a patriotic fire, and what better kindling was there than the tried-and-true "protection of our women"? These were the dark days for the Russians, before Stalin—
66 I AGAINST OUR WILL
grad, and Ehrenburg may be pardoned, I suppose, for creating the simplistic slogan, "To gain an hour is to save a Russian man from the rope and a Russian girl from dishonour." His call to arms and human purity became faintly ridiculous three years later when the glorious Red Army,
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