In the common collective imagination, a woman’s place in war is often on the sidelines, outside the battlefield. Whether it be at home, writing letters to their loved ones over at the trenches, or even in captivity, waiting to be saved by a charming knight. History, however, has proven that reality can be somewhat different, and more complex. Throughout the great wars of the XXth century, women have blurred the lines separating actors and spectators, perpetrators and victims, dominants and dominated.
War as a heightening factor to gender inequality
The great wars are, above anything else, laboratories for the ultimate demonstrations of inhuman and extreme violence. When reading about the First World War trenches, or the Second World War concentration camps, one might be forced to redefine what qualifies as humanity, and wonder to what extent the common person can abandon its consideration of “others”. Total wars deeply influence social relations, and particularly gender relations, through violent acts women were forced to endure.
Mass rape: the Sino-Japanese war
Among them stands rape. While the phenomena was common during the first war, the second witnessed a far more intense multiplication.
During the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), as Japan strives to take over one portion of the Chinese territory, Japanese military forces’ behavior is unlike any other ever witnessed.
Numerous massacres take place, outside of the battlefield, targeting essentially civilians. From December 1937, to February 1938, Nankin is a victim of these violences. From the arrival of Japanese groups, soldiers targeted first and foremost women and children. According to the military international court for the Far East, the number of rape victims teaches 20 000, among them are little girls. Some of them are raped repeatedly.
Other alternatives are implemented to assure the physical and psychological well-being of soldiers. During the IIWW, numerous brothels are created. Inside, soldiers could dispose of comfort women, in other words: sexual slavery victims, often minors (found through false recruiting or kidnapping), from various nationalities but mostly Chinese or Korean. Should they fail to satisfy a soldier’s needs, she could be beaten of killed.
Germany’s Lebensborn or a Handmaid’s tale
While Hitler’s purification plan is essentially known for the extermination of “non pure races”, the role assigned to women is often left out. On December 12th 1935, H. Himmler designed a project: that of forced reproduction centers. Through strong propaganda, the SS’s Lebensborn* recruited several women to be a part of the “pure Arian race”’s reproduction. In the northern countries (often considered to be the “purest”), such as Germany, Norway, Austria, or Denmark, women were chosen to conceive a child with either their husbands or SS members. After the child was born, she would be taken away from the mother, and injected into education centers. Later on, they would be trusted to selected German families. An awfully familiar story for those who have read or watched Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Purging our sins through women’s punishment: France’s post-war purification and women’s shearing
After being the German occupation, France decided the best way to enter this new era was through a purification of collaborators. Among them, women underwent a significant portion of the assigned punishments. Unsurprisingly, they were to be punished, first and foremost, for their daring sensuality, for their role as temptresses, for their bodies. Any woman accused of having collaborated with German troops, in other words, to have had sexual intercourse with German soldiers, were to be sheared out in the public square, humiliated and shamed for all to see. Whether it was true or not, consensual or not, the act was to be consider no less than national treason. A rather different approach than that of Japanese groups.
In the post-war period, women’s bodies served as a scapegoat, changed by the war. When sheared, women lost a symbol of femininity.
Pure evil or a heightened reflexion of common violence?
War ethics, if we may name them such, often prohibit the attack and massacres of civilians. Beyond the trenches and the combat lines, the territory is often considered to be a no-man’s land of violence, spared from the horrors of war. Whether the twentieth century conflicts changed this common value or not, it would appear that rape and sexual violences are no strangers to war. What to make of the Japanese soldiers’ actions upon women and children? What to make of such an extreme display of voluntary horror? Pure evil? A brutalized society who lost touch with its supposed humanity? Or is it just an intensification of an already banal phenomenon?
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