Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller Page A
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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risen at last like a great bear from slumber, turned around and raped German women on the road to Berlin with a ferociousness that matched those "fornicating Fritzes."
The German actress Hildegard Knef described the fall of Berlin from a woman's perspective in her fiercely written autobiog raphy, The Gif t Horse. As Knef stood in a doorway watching truckloads of women and children rattle past, refugees from Frank furt-on-Oder, Strausberg and Spindlersfeld, the women shouted, "Clear out, the Russians'll rape you." Knef dressed herself in a German Army uniform, she tells us, to avoid assault. Later, crouched in a makeshif t bunker with her male comrades she heard
screams, dreadful heartrending screams, high thin shrill. I call out softly to the next hole: Are you there?
Yes.
What's that screaming?
Russians are in that house over there started on the women shitshitohshitohshit.
When the actress was eventually captured, she had a remark able exchange with her Russian interrogator. "What you do in German army?" he asked repeatedly in halting German. She coolly answered, "I didn't want to be raped." Furious with her response, the Soviet officer could only bellow, "Russian soldiers not rape! German swine rape!"
But Russian soldiers did rape. Cornelius Ryan, author of The Last Battle, a well-researched narrative of the fall of Berlin, was one of the few historians to write of rape in war in its proper perspective. "The fear of sexual attack lay over the city like a pall," Ryan wrote at the start of his story, for six years into World War II Berlin was very nearly a city of women. Refugees who fled the advancing Soviet troops knowledgeably told Berliners what to ex pect: front-line Red Army men were disciplined and well behaved; they did not rape-but the second wave was close to a disorganized rabble, and it was they who committed the atrocities. (This makes supreme sense. The front-line troops, some of whom were veterans
i i
of Stalingrad, had an important, heroic job of retribution to do for their country. Those bringing up the rear had missed out on the most emotional and satisfying moment of the war-to be among he first Russians to march on German soil-and they would thus have been more inclined to take out their vengeance on persons and property. )
Rumor turned to reality when, in Ryan's words, "hordes of Russian troops coming up behind the disciplined front-line vet erans . . . demanded the rights due the conquerors: the women of the conquered." Ryan conducted his research in Berlin in the early sixties, aided by a team of interviewers. Although no function ing administration capable of documenting the extent of the ram page existed in Berlin in i945, the trail was not quite cold and the historian managed to obtain firsthand accounts.
Ursula Koster was sleeping in a basement shelter with her parents and her three children when four Russian soldiers beat in the door with their rifles. They searched the cellar, confiscated some canned goods and watches, and then held her parents and children at gunpoint while, one af ter another, all four assaulted her. At dawn two more soldiers found their way to the cellar; they, too, raped her.
Anneliese Antz was dragged screaming out of a bed she shared with her mother and was raped by a Soviet officer. When he was finished he stroked her hair, murmured, "Good German," and asked her not to tell anyone an officer had raped her. A food parcel for her was dropped off the following day. Anneliese's older sister, Ilse, was raped by a trooper who entered their cellar with a pistol in each hand. As he ripped off her sweaters and ski pants he stopped to· inquire, "Are you a German soldier?" Ilse told her interviewer, "I was not surprised. I was so thin from hunger I hardly looked like a woman." Af ter the act her attacker told Ilse, "That's what the Germans did in Russia." He lef t, but returned to spend the rest of the night with her-to guard her from other soldiers. Ilse Antz's
The German actress Hildegard Knef described the fall of Berlin from a woman's perspective in her fiercely written autobiog raphy, The Gif t Horse. As Knef stood in a doorway watching truckloads of women and children rattle past, refugees from Frank furt-on-Oder, Strausberg and Spindlersfeld, the women shouted, "Clear out, the Russians'll rape you." Knef dressed herself in a German Army uniform, she tells us, to avoid assault. Later, crouched in a makeshif t bunker with her male comrades she heard
screams, dreadful heartrending screams, high thin shrill. I call out softly to the next hole: Are you there?
Yes.
What's that screaming?
Russians are in that house over there started on the women shitshitohshitohshit.
When the actress was eventually captured, she had a remark able exchange with her Russian interrogator. "What you do in German army?" he asked repeatedly in halting German. She coolly answered, "I didn't want to be raped." Furious with her response, the Soviet officer could only bellow, "Russian soldiers not rape! German swine rape!"
But Russian soldiers did rape. Cornelius Ryan, author of The Last Battle, a well-researched narrative of the fall of Berlin, was one of the few historians to write of rape in war in its proper perspective. "The fear of sexual attack lay over the city like a pall," Ryan wrote at the start of his story, for six years into World War II Berlin was very nearly a city of women. Refugees who fled the advancing Soviet troops knowledgeably told Berliners what to ex pect: front-line Red Army men were disciplined and well behaved; they did not rape-but the second wave was close to a disorganized rabble, and it was they who committed the atrocities. (This makes supreme sense. The front-line troops, some of whom were veterans
i i
of Stalingrad, had an important, heroic job of retribution to do for their country. Those bringing up the rear had missed out on the most emotional and satisfying moment of the war-to be among he first Russians to march on German soil-and they would thus have been more inclined to take out their vengeance on persons and property. )
Rumor turned to reality when, in Ryan's words, "hordes of Russian troops coming up behind the disciplined front-line vet erans . . . demanded the rights due the conquerors: the women of the conquered." Ryan conducted his research in Berlin in the early sixties, aided by a team of interviewers. Although no function ing administration capable of documenting the extent of the ram page existed in Berlin in i945, the trail was not quite cold and the historian managed to obtain firsthand accounts.
Ursula Koster was sleeping in a basement shelter with her parents and her three children when four Russian soldiers beat in the door with their rifles. They searched the cellar, confiscated some canned goods and watches, and then held her parents and children at gunpoint while, one af ter another, all four assaulted her. At dawn two more soldiers found their way to the cellar; they, too, raped her.
Anneliese Antz was dragged screaming out of a bed she shared with her mother and was raped by a Soviet officer. When he was finished he stroked her hair, murmured, "Good German," and asked her not to tell anyone an officer had raped her. A food parcel for her was dropped off the following day. Anneliese's older sister, Ilse, was raped by a trooper who entered their cellar with a pistol in each hand. As he ripped off her sweaters and ski pants he stopped to· inquire, "Are you a German soldier?" Ilse told her interviewer, "I was not surprised. I was so thin from hunger I hardly looked like a woman." Af ter the act her attacker told Ilse, "That's what the Germans did in Russia." He lef t, but returned to spend the rest of the night with her-to guard her from other soldiers. Ilse Antz's
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