Sexual Violence in Daily Life of Occupation and War of Extermination

Abstract

Birgit Beck uses the files of military court actions as the foundation for her analysis of the way in which the German armed forces dealt with sexual violence during the Second World War. She locates the topic on the timeline of the history of sexual violence in war from the early modern era to the present. The goal is the review of historical and social scientific assumptions about the causes of sexual violence in war. The author sees the reasons for the military court’s persecution of sexual violence—which only presents a miniscule portion of the entire proceedings—first and foremost in the extremely ordered military behavioral guidelines, which account for both the male image of the armed forces and the protection of the German “community of folk.” Clues as to a systematic deployment of sexual violence by the German armed forces cannot, according to Beck, be derived from the proceedings.