Read Online Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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the unimaginative Germans never stood a chance. "The Rape of the Hun" became an instant byword in this country. It came to symbolize the criminal violation of innocent Belgium. It dramatized the plight of La Belle France. It charged up national pa triotism and spurred the drive for Liberty Loans by adding needed authenticity to the manufactured per sona of an unprincipled barbarian with pointed helmet and syphi litic lust who gleefully destroyed cathedrals, set fire to libraries, and hacked and maimed and spitted babies on the tip of his bayonet. As propaganda, rape was remarkably effective, more effective than the original German terror. It helped to lay the emotional ground
work that led us into the war.
In his 1927 study, Propaganda Technique in the World War, the pioneer work in propaganda analysis, Harold D. Lasswell wrote, "A handy rule for arousing hate is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity." As for the propaganda value of rape, Lasswell specu lated, "These stories yield a crop of indignation against the fiendish perpetrators . . . and satisf y certain powerful, hidden impulses. A young woman, ravished by the enemy, yields a secret satisfaction to a host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the border."
Lasswell's Freudian analysis is a revealing glimpse of the male mentality. ( It could hardly apply to the reactions of women.) It is even more revealing when we realize that he wrote those lines to leave the reader with doubt as to whether or not women actua1Iy were raped in any great number in Belgium and France. His next and final words on the subject were "Hence, perhaps, the popu larity and ubiquity of such stories." But Lasswell's theory certainly does apply to the lustful, rape-mongering prose that was cheerily ground out by Allied propaganda mills once they moved into full swing.
German Atrocities: Their Nature and Philosophy by one Newell Dwight Hillis, a volu.me that was simultaneously published in Great Britain, the United States and Canada in 1918, is a vintage example. The author, a popular Brooklyn clergyman in his day, lovingly built his own amazing construct as to why German
WAR j 4)
soldiers committed rape. None of it had anything to do with hostility toward women, naturally.
Should the average American return home at night to find that his wife and children had been massacred and mutilated in his ab sence, he would not go to the office on the following morning . . . and weeks would pass before he could steel his hand to the accus tomed task. Now the German war staff fully realized the true value of the atrocity as a military instrument. Their soldiers ran no risk in
. . . raping young girls, but they hoped that when the news of their crimes reached the armed opponent, the atrocity committed upon his wife or child would break his nerve and leave him helpless to fight.
The Reverend Hillis reported the desperate cry of a French soldier:
"The Germans have been in my land for a year. . . . My little house is gone, and gone my little shop! My wife is still a young woman! My little girl-she is just a little, little girl! Why, I never thought of her as a woman! And now our priest writes me that my young wife and my little girl will have babes in two months by these brutes!"
Af ter which the author intoned,
Such devastations of the soul are why there must be no incon clusive peace. Unconditional surrender is the only word.
Hi1lis was adept at painting a graphic picture:
When the Germans ruined a village near Ham, they carried away some fif ty-four girls and women between the ages of fourteen and forty. These girls were held behind the lines among the camp women, kept for the Huns. One chilly morning last April a French boy, lying on a board on the bottom of his trench, heard the wild shrieks of a girl. Standing on tiptoe he peeped over the top. . . . One week of cruelty had driven the girl insane. The German sol diers had lif ted her out of the trench, and with their
work that led us into the war.
In his 1927 study, Propaganda Technique in the World War, the pioneer work in propaganda analysis, Harold D. Lasswell wrote, "A handy rule for arousing hate is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity." As for the propaganda value of rape, Lasswell specu lated, "These stories yield a crop of indignation against the fiendish perpetrators . . . and satisf y certain powerful, hidden impulses. A young woman, ravished by the enemy, yields a secret satisfaction to a host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the border."
Lasswell's Freudian analysis is a revealing glimpse of the male mentality. ( It could hardly apply to the reactions of women.) It is even more revealing when we realize that he wrote those lines to leave the reader with doubt as to whether or not women actua1Iy were raped in any great number in Belgium and France. His next and final words on the subject were "Hence, perhaps, the popu larity and ubiquity of such stories." But Lasswell's theory certainly does apply to the lustful, rape-mongering prose that was cheerily ground out by Allied propaganda mills once they moved into full swing.
German Atrocities: Their Nature and Philosophy by one Newell Dwight Hillis, a volu.me that was simultaneously published in Great Britain, the United States and Canada in 1918, is a vintage example. The author, a popular Brooklyn clergyman in his day, lovingly built his own amazing construct as to why German
WAR j 4)
soldiers committed rape. None of it had anything to do with hostility toward women, naturally.
Should the average American return home at night to find that his wife and children had been massacred and mutilated in his ab sence, he would not go to the office on the following morning . . . and weeks would pass before he could steel his hand to the accus tomed task. Now the German war staff fully realized the true value of the atrocity as a military instrument. Their soldiers ran no risk in
. . . raping young girls, but they hoped that when the news of their crimes reached the armed opponent, the atrocity committed upon his wife or child would break his nerve and leave him helpless to fight.
The Reverend Hillis reported the desperate cry of a French soldier:
"The Germans have been in my land for a year. . . . My little house is gone, and gone my little shop! My wife is still a young woman! My little girl-she is just a little, little girl! Why, I never thought of her as a woman! And now our priest writes me that my young wife and my little girl will have babes in two months by these brutes!"
Af ter which the author intoned,
Such devastations of the soul are why there must be no incon clusive peace. Unconditional surrender is the only word.
Hi1lis was adept at painting a graphic picture:
When the Germans ruined a village near Ham, they carried away some fif ty-four girls and women between the ages of fourteen and forty. These girls were held behind the lines among the camp women, kept for the Huns. One chilly morning last April a French boy, lying on a board on the bottom of his trench, heard the wild shrieks of a girl. Standing on tiptoe he peeped over the top. . . . One week of cruelty had driven the girl insane. The German sol diers had lif ted her out of the trench, and with their
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