Sexual exploitation, violation and victimization of women is an evil that comes with every war and it spares no army or land, and whether it is friend or foe’s territory. It is worth reading interview what took place in France during WWII. Current news of sexual harassment of women in our army should not be a surprise. ( F. Sheikh )

Some excerpts;

Americans often think of World War II as the “good war,” but historian Mary Louise Roberts says her new book might make our understanding of that conflict “more truthful and more complex.” The book, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, tells the story of relations between American men and French women in Normandy and elsewhere.

The Americans were liberators; the French were liberated. But sex created tensions and resentments that were serious, yet were utterly absent from contemporary accounts for American audiences back home. Roberts, who is professor of European history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suggests that the tensions weren’t entirely accidental: “Sex was fundamental to how the U.S. military framed, fought and won the war in Europe,” she writes in her book.

Roberts joins NPR’s Robert Siegel to talk about prostitutes in parks and cemeteries, pinups on planes and how the U.S. Army responded to rape accusations with rapid, racially charged trials.

“Then you report complaints by, say, the mayor of Le Havre who’s complaining about American GIs having sex in public with French prostitutes so much so that a family can’t take children out for a walk anymore.”

“They( soldiers) were consumed by guilt. So they took to whoring with French women as a way to keep away the demons, at least for a while. And without a proper or regulated system of brothels, they instead took to the streets, abandoned buildings, parks and cemeteries having sex.”

“Photojournalism in particular was used to portray the French woman as ready to be rescued, ready to greet the American soldier and ready to congratulate and thank him through a kiss or even more.”

SIEGEL: The other issue you address is rape. In the summer of 1944, you write, there was in Normandy a wave or rape accusations by French women against American soldiers. And the U.S. Army’s response, as you recount it, was to frame it essentially as a race problem. I want you to describe what happened.

ROBERTS: What happened was the American Army and the juridical system attached to the Army, the JAG office, disproportionately blamed African-American soldiers. Seventy-seven percent of the court-martial prosecutions in the European theater were for African-Americans. They were only 10 percent of the troops.

Read full interview by clicking on link below;

http://www.nhpr.org/post/sex-overseas-what-soldiers-do-complicates-wwii-history