Crimes Unspoken[1] is a long overdue study of the rape, abuse, and assault of German women at the end of World War II and the early days of the Allied occupation by victorious British, American, Russian, and French soldiers. The book comprises five chapters: 1, "Seventy years too late"; 2, "Berlin and the East—chronicle of a calamity foretold"; 3, "South Germany—who will protect us from the Americans?"; 4, "Pregnant, sick, ostracized—approaches to the victims"; and 5, "The long shadow."

Little has been written on these subjects, for several reasons. The Germans started the war, were defeated, and then occupied. As usual, the victors wrote the histories. In addition, most people felt the Germans had gotten what they deserved; their army's crimes against humanity in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were unprecedented in human history. As you sow, so shall you reap. However, as generations pass, history is reexamined and, often, rewritten. German journalists and historians like Miriam Gebhardt[2] (Univ. of Konstanz) have started to reassess Allied actions in World War II, with particular attention to the bombing of civilians with napalm and high explosives. Gebhardt warns us that

She estimates that Soviet soldiers raped two million German women[3] during and after the war (20, 51), to the point that, in Berlin "rape was so common in spring 1945 that women are said merely to have asked one another, 'How many times have they done you?'" (13). Compounding the suffering of these victims, the men who brutalized them, even during the occupation, went unpunished. Moreover, government agencies refused the women any sort of compensation, even when their rapes produced children.

This is an important study, but it inevitably only scratches the surface, since few of the victims Gebhardt describes are still alive. That said, she has duly combed government documents and records of institutions that helped women, children, and refugees, as well as letters, memoirs, and other sources. That scrupulous research has led her to the following conclusions:

• The narrative Americans have adopted in books and films regarding US soldiers and German women needs significant revisions.
• The Allies cannot claim the moral high ground: throughout history, victorious armies have raped, pillaged, and burned, and twentieth-century Allied armies were no different.
• Even some members of the so-acclaimed "Greatest Generation" committed horrible crimes.
• White women fared no better than Asian women in occupied countries.
• The much-discussed fears of Wehrmacht soldiers in the East stemmed in part from their guilty knowledge of the atrocities they committed in the Soviet Union and the consequences they and their country would suffer if they were defeated.

Gebhardt also points out that German rape victims who became pregnant for the most part kept mixed-race babies, disproving "the thesis that rape victims seeking abortion did so mainly for racial reasons …. Even with half-caste children of African American or North African soldiers and members of the occupying authorities, the proportion of children in homes and with foster families was only slightly higher than with white children" (142).

The chief contribution of Crimes Unspoken is its recognition of victims who endured enormous physical and emotional torments, even if it comes almost too late. Most victims and perpetrators have, seventy-some years on, taken their stories to their graves. But much more remains to be written on this subject and Miriam Gebhardt has done a valuable service in leading the way.