Did Allied soldiers stream across the gruesome beaches of Normandy because they hoped to ultimately win the warm embrace of a French woman?
A new book from a UW-Madison history professor, Mary Louise Roberts, covers the extent to which American military leaders propagated the fantasy of willing, “sexually experienced” women awaiting in the French countryside who would be immensely grateful for their recent liberation.
More seriously, the book also reveals how rape and prostitution festered in parts of the country during Allied control and how local authorities appealing to the U.S. military for help were routinely disappointed.
What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France came out in May.
From the cover description:
Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the U.S. military command systematically spread and then exploited the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos, ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease, horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population.
