Americans often think of World War II as the "good war," but historian Mary Louise Roberts says her new book might make our understanding of that conflict "more truthful and more complex. The Americans were liberators; the French were liberated. But sex created tensions and resentments that were serious, yet were utterly absent from contemporary accounts for American audiences back home. Roberts, who is professor of European history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suggests that the tensions weren't entirely accidental: "Sex was fundamental to how the U.
Army responded to rape accusations with rapid, racially charged trials. I think that initially the Normans were incredibly grateful to be liberated.
They had also suffered a lot of loss that summer, so there was some anger about the destruction of their homes and the loss of their loved ones. But in general, at least at the beginning, the French were very happy to be liberated and to greet the Americas. Le Havre was a port, really the entry and exit port for millions of American soldiers during those years. Those soldiers who had been fighting in France and Germany came back to Le Havre waiting for a boat home.
They were, as a group, exhausted and traumatized. Their lost friends crowded their dreams. They were consumed by guilt. So they took to whoring with French women as a way to keep away the demons, at least for a while.
And without a proper or regulated system of brothels, they instead took to the streets, abandoned buildings, parks and cemeteries having sex. Anybody who remembers the pinups on airplanes, Rita Hayworth, the amount to which pinups became a part of the culture of the GIs, will recognize to what extent sex became important to the war experience. I went and looked at Stars and Stripes, which is the trench journal, and what I saw there was an extension of the pinup culture.
