Read Online Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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bayonets had pushed her in the direction of the French lines. . . . What the French soldiers saw was a young woman, clothed in a dark blue skirt, her waist torn, her bosom exposed, her hair loose upon her shoulders. She was standing bewildered in No Man's Land. Now she
46 AGAINST OUR WILL
poured forth the pealing laughter of a maniac. . . . So terrible was the scene that for the moment the Frenchman and German alike forgot all warfare! Finally a German lif ted his rifle to the shoulder, and as the girl, rising to her feet . . . screamed, "The Boche! the Boche!" his rifle cracked, and the young woman sank slowly down.
And then the clincher:
That is why the fire sparkles in the eyes of the Allied soldiers when ever you suggest peace by negotiation, or a peace without victory.
But the masterpiece of German Atrocities: Their Nature and Phi losophy was this convoluted paragraph:
THE FOUL CRIME AGAINST WOMEN
Many Americans have looked with horror upon the photograph of the mutilated bodies of women. Sacred forever the bosom of his mother, and not less sacred the body of every woman. Not content with mutilating the bodies of Allied officers, of Belgian boys, they lif ted the knife upon the loveliness of woman . . . . When the Hun joins the army . . . a few drops of blood are taken from the lef t arm, and the Wassermann blood culture is developed. If free from disease, the soldier receives a card giving him access to camp women, who are kept in the rear for the convenience of the German soldier. If, however, the Wassermann test shows that the German has syphilis . . . he must stay away from the camp women upon peril of his life . . . he will be shot like a dog. Having syphilis himself, the German will hand it on to the . camp girl, and she in turn will contaminate all the other soldiers, and that means the Kaiser would soon have no army. Therefore, the soldier that has this foul disease
. . . . has but one chance, namely to capture a Belgian or French girl; but using her means contaminating her, and she in turn will con taminate the next German using her. To save his own life, therefore, when the syphilitic German has used a French or Belgian girl, he cuts off her breast as warning to the next German soldier. The girl's life weighs less than nothing against lust or the possibility of losing his life by being charged with the contamination of his brother German.
Af ter reading this kind of emotional propaganda it might be said quite seriously that the raped women of France and Belgium, by the way in which their violation was cleverly turned to Allied advantage, played a real role in the ultimate defense of their countries. But if a reader believes that this unusual contribution far beyond the line of duty has been duly recognized in history, please be disabused of that notion. There was one further way to play with rape in World War I, and of course that happened, too. The final step was to deny that rape occurred at all.
When the war was over, a wholly predictable reaction set in. Scholars of the newly refined art of propaganda set about to un ravel its mysteries by trying to separate fact from fiction. It was inevitable that a deep bias against women ( particularly against women who say they have been raped ) would show in their en deavor. There had been some gross lies in the manufacturing of Allied propaganda and these were readily brought to light by the experts. Among the most famous of the fabricated wartime stories was the tale of German soldiers who spitefully cut the hands off Belgian children to render them unfit for fighting when they grew up. A few widely circulated atrocity photographs were shown to have been lif ted from other theaters of war. Some German Army
·excesses were indisputable, even if they had been blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes. Yes, the cathedral at Rheims had been burned, and yes, the library at Louvain had truly been vandalized. But what about the rape of all those women?
46 AGAINST OUR WILL
poured forth the pealing laughter of a maniac. . . . So terrible was the scene that for the moment the Frenchman and German alike forgot all warfare! Finally a German lif ted his rifle to the shoulder, and as the girl, rising to her feet . . . screamed, "The Boche! the Boche!" his rifle cracked, and the young woman sank slowly down.
And then the clincher:
That is why the fire sparkles in the eyes of the Allied soldiers when ever you suggest peace by negotiation, or a peace without victory.
But the masterpiece of German Atrocities: Their Nature and Phi losophy was this convoluted paragraph:
THE FOUL CRIME AGAINST WOMEN
Many Americans have looked with horror upon the photograph of the mutilated bodies of women. Sacred forever the bosom of his mother, and not less sacred the body of every woman. Not content with mutilating the bodies of Allied officers, of Belgian boys, they lif ted the knife upon the loveliness of woman . . . . When the Hun joins the army . . . a few drops of blood are taken from the lef t arm, and the Wassermann blood culture is developed. If free from disease, the soldier receives a card giving him access to camp women, who are kept in the rear for the convenience of the German soldier. If, however, the Wassermann test shows that the German has syphilis . . . he must stay away from the camp women upon peril of his life . . . he will be shot like a dog. Having syphilis himself, the German will hand it on to the . camp girl, and she in turn will contaminate all the other soldiers, and that means the Kaiser would soon have no army. Therefore, the soldier that has this foul disease
. . . . has but one chance, namely to capture a Belgian or French girl; but using her means contaminating her, and she in turn will con taminate the next German using her. To save his own life, therefore, when the syphilitic German has used a French or Belgian girl, he cuts off her breast as warning to the next German soldier. The girl's life weighs less than nothing against lust or the possibility of losing his life by being charged with the contamination of his brother German.
Af ter reading this kind of emotional propaganda it might be said quite seriously that the raped women of France and Belgium, by the way in which their violation was cleverly turned to Allied advantage, played a real role in the ultimate defense of their countries. But if a reader believes that this unusual contribution far beyond the line of duty has been duly recognized in history, please be disabused of that notion. There was one further way to play with rape in World War I, and of course that happened, too. The final step was to deny that rape occurred at all.
When the war was over, a wholly predictable reaction set in. Scholars of the newly refined art of propaganda set about to un ravel its mysteries by trying to separate fact from fiction. It was inevitable that a deep bias against women ( particularly against women who say they have been raped ) would show in their en deavor. There had been some gross lies in the manufacturing of Allied propaganda and these were readily brought to light by the experts. Among the most famous of the fabricated wartime stories was the tale of German soldiers who spitefully cut the hands off Belgian children to render them unfit for fighting when they grew up. A few widely circulated atrocity photographs were shown to have been lif ted from other theaters of war. Some German Army
·excesses were indisputable, even if they had been blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes. Yes, the cathedral at Rheims had been burned, and yes, the library at Louvain had truly been vandalized. But what about the rape of all those women?
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