Regina Mühlhäuser. Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict

Regina Mühlhäuser (Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture, Germany). Sexual violence in armed conflict: opportunistic acts by individual soldiers or military strategy? The example of the German Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union

Presentation at 27th Bathhouse Readings (May 23, 2021): https://www.nlobooks.ru/events/konferentsii/27th-bathhouse-readings-anthropology-of-violence-state-society-culture/

Sexual violence by German troops was widespread and included coerced disrobement, sexual torture, sexual assault, sexual blackmail, rape and sexual enslavement. Sometimes, dead bodies were mistreated and mutilated in sexual ways. German soldiers also frequently visited local prostitutes and official military brothels, and they exploited women who traded sex for protection, food or other scarce goods.

We can assume that most of the direct perpetrators of sexual violence had no explicit war-tactical or strategic motives in their minds when they raped a woman, they rather took advantage of opportunities that arose at a given moment and acted according to what they assumed was acceptable. High and mid-level Wehrmacht commanders, however, anticipated the sexually violent behavior of the individual men in the field. However, they rarely prosecuted the offenders. In certain situations, the Wehrmacht Command even more or less openly encouraged sexually violent behavior. As a consequence, they largely gave their men permission to perpetrate sexual violence. exploited it for military aims.

Similar mechanisms have been observed in other situations of war and armed conflict. The fact that rape is pervasive in many civil societies, and the continuing widespread lack of awareness that this form of violence constitutes a crime, creates conditions in which sexual violence in times of armed conflict is deemed normal and acceptable behaviour. As long as military commanders do not take active and strict measures to curtail this form of violence, they are utilising this knowledge in their tactical and strategic thinking—even if rape is not openly communicated, let alone ordered. In this sense, wartime sexual violence is always a military weapon.

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