Download Rape as a Weapon of War

Since the 17th and 18th Centuries, standing armies with their professional codes of
honour, hierarchical discipline, and the explicit rules for the conduct of warfare,
advocated the protection of non-combatants. The idea of the professional ‘European
battle’ represents something like our own contemporary notion of a ‘ board game’,
with engagement ideally on an open terrain, logistics, strategy, clear markers between
players and others, and recognised criteria, ‘rules,’ for surrender and the treatment of
combatants, civilians and spies.1 In this type of military engagement, the direction of
violence outside the field of engagement is clearly disallowed. However as General
Sherman protested to his Union critics after his devastation of Georgia in the
American Civil War, ‘war is hell.’ It seldom recalls a game of chess between
consenting males, the moves accepted in advance.2 The hundred years after 1900 have
been without question the bloodiest century in modern history, far more violent in
relative as well as absolute terms than any previous era. With this unprecedented rise
in violence, traditional notions of war have been jettisoned, as new weapons of war
are invented to incite fear, intimidate and ultimately defeat enemies. Post World War
I, survivors returned home suffering from a relatively new post-traumatic
phenomenon, commonly known as ‘shell-shock.’ They had experienced the ‘spiral of
violence,’ in that they had witnessed the horrors of war, suffered from it and had it
inflicted upon them. To paraphrase the words of Claudia Card, these individuals
returned home with ‘broken spirits,’ they had been humiliated in the sense that they
had been ‘tamed,’ their souls had become ‘docile, deferential and submissive.’3 From
the use of gas in World War I, torture or terrorism, weapons of war are used as they
have debilitating effects on fear. Perhaps the most taboo, concealed and indeed
ignored weapon of war is that of rape. The victims of rape have indeed had their
‘spirits broken.’ Only in recent decades have significant shifts occurred in recognising
that rape is not simply a incidental by-product of war, but often a planned, targeted
and indeed potent ‘weapon of war.’
In 1937, after full-scale war had broken out at the Marco Polo Bridge, the Japanese
had waged a blitzkrieg type assault in China. However the fighting was harder and
good deal more costly in lives and resources than Japan’s leaders had anticipated. In
1
Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997.
Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997.
3 Claudia Card, Rape as a Weapon of War, Hypatia vol.11, no.4, 1996, p6.
2
December as Japanese troops neared the Chiang Kai-sheks capital, Nanking, a
decision was made to make an example of the city, in hope of dealing a fatal blow to
Chinese resistance and brining the war to a swift conclusion. Inside the fortress-like
walls of Nanking, the Japanese found a ready made slaughter house, in the six week
period of capture, tens of thousands of young men were murdered regardless if they
were in uniform or not. Some were simply lined up in rows and machine-gunned,
others were beheaded, bayoneted or buried alive. However the most striking feature of
the attack on Nanking was the rapes. Modern estimates put the total of ‘injured
females’ somewhere between eight and twenty thousand,4 hence the adorning title: the
Rape of Nanking. The diaries of Dr Robert Wilson, a surgeon born and raised in
Nanking provide a chilling account of what happened. ‘There seems to be no stop to
the ferocity, lust and atavism of the brutes … In the University Middle School where
there are eight thousand people, the Japs came in ten times last night and raped until
they were satisfied.’5 Traditionally the Rape of Nanking has been understood as a
breakdown of military discipline, fuelled by alcohol and battle-fatigue. However the
impulse to rape was not the result of a breakdown of one of the most disciplined army
in the world. The rape of Nanking was a deliberate imperial policy, a policy employed
to humiliate and instill fear among the Chinese.
The symbolism of rape in wartime is perhaps the most compelling reason as to why
rape is used as a deliberate weapon of war. As a weapon of war, such as terrorism or
torture, rape is utilised as a method of communication, to send a symbolic message
aimed at ‘taming’ the enemy. It functions to communicate and maintain dominance,
not only as an expression of man’s power over women, but dominance over both men
and the communities that are socially connected to the victims of rape. In the article,
Rethinking: Rape as a Weapon of War, Doris Buss notes ‘that women are the
representations of the body politic,’ a representation that is heightened during
wartime, where women require protection as ‘they represent the very nation itself.’6
The 20th Century propaganda posters and cinema support this notion, as often
aggression in wartime is represented through the protection of ‘our women,’ from the
various types sexual aliens such as the ‘German Huns,’ the ‘Bolsheviks’ or the ‘Jews.’
Similarly the post-war stereotype of women in popular culture is for the liberated
4
Niall Ferguson, the War of the World, London, Penguin Books, 2007, p478.
Niall Ferguson, the War of the World, London, Penguin Books, 2007, p475.
6 Doris Buss, Rethinking: Rape as a Weapon of War, Springer Science, 2009, pp148.
5
woman to yield herself freely to her male rescuer, as witnessed in the numerous films
of the 20th Century. The underlying point is that women are cast as the symbolic
bearers of national identity. Women metaphorically embody the nation itself,
associated with peacefulness, child-giving and the need of protection.
With the symbolism of women in mind, rape in wartime is therefore not only an
attack on the womenfolk of a nation or group, but an attack on the nation itself. The
sullying of women symbolises the sullying of the nation or the homeland and above
all proves to the men that they have failed as adequate protectors.7 Therefore a
common tactic by the perpetrators of mass rape is to commit violations usually before
witnesses, before the eyes of husbands, sons and fathers as a method of humiliating
the men of an enemy. Where historians often interpret mass rape as a product of an
incidental lack of discipline, or a product man’s biological and often alcohol fuelled
desire for sexual release, or as an incidental outcome of war, the truth of the matter is
that soldiers share a visceral understanding of the power rape. Rape has the power to
communicate subliminal message between men, demonstrating vivid proof of victory
for one and loss and humiliation for the other.8
The desire to humiliate an enemy of war is strongly associated to the notion of
vengeance, an important consideration which furthermore proves that rape is a
deliberately used as a weapon of war. In 1944 as Soviet forces advanced westwards
towards Berlin, the Newspaper, Soviet Fighter, ran an essay contest on the question,
‘Why I wan to kill every German.’ The response was hundreds of soldiers submitting
essays describing in vivid detail the misfortunes that the Germans had perpetrated
against them personally.9 Their accounts underline Maria Eriksson and Maria Stern’s
‘spiral of violence,’ whereby the more violence one witnesses, suffers from, or
inflicts, the easier it is to become morally disengaged from those whom one sets out to
harm and torture.10 The Soviet soldiers were not fighting Stalin’s war, nor Russia’s
war, they were fighting their own personal wars of vengeance against an enemy that
7
Maria Eriksson, Maria Stern, Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence and Sexuality in the Armed Forces
in the Congo, International Studies Quarterly, 2009, p500.
8
Doris Buss, Rethinking: Rape as a Weapon of War, Springer Science, 2009, pp148.
9 Jeffrey Burds, Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939-195, Politics Society 2009, p53.
10 Maria Eriksson, Maria Stern, Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence and Sexuality in the Armed Forces
in the Congo, International Studies Quarterly, 2009, p498.
had caused them great personal suffering.11 Following the early months of Soviet
occupation in East Germany an estimated two million women and girls were raped.
Most of the violations were acts of gang rape, demonstrating the desire for vengeance
as well as the previously mentioned method of using rape as a method to dishonour
those men who cannot protect the sexual purity of their womenfolk. Adding a further
cruel dimension to the vengeance of the rapes was that the rapes were used as a
deliberate tactic to forcibly impregnate German women, who would conceive
Untermenshchen, mix-blooded children that would bear the unmistakeable features of
the un-Aryan rapist fathers for decades to come.12
As a weapon of war Soviet troops forcibly impregnated German women for the
purpose of revenge and humiliation more than anything else. However in BosniaHerzegovina mass rape and forcible impregnation was not only used for the purposes
of revenge and humiliation, above all it was used as a deliberate method of ‘ethnic
cleansing,’ the euphemism for genocide. During 1992 and 1995 between an estimated
twenty to fifty thousand Bosnian women were systematically enslaved and raped in a
genocidal campaign in order to change the genetic identity of future generations.13
Bosnian women survivors recount as they were raped that they were told by soldier
rapists that they would ‘make Serbian babies.’ These women were deliberately
imprisoned in ‘rape camps’ to be raped continually until they became pregnant, only
to be isolated until too late in their pregnancy for abortion to be an option.14 On the
other hand highlighting the campaign of genocide, male prisoners who were not
murdered in Serbian camps had their testicles beaten whilst soldiers mocked, ‘now
you will not be able to make any more Utasha (fascist) babies.’15 With the systematic
rape of women in detention, it is clearly evident that the mass rape was not random or
incidental, and that a policy of rape was supported and encouraged by camp
commanders and ranking officers. Borislav Herek, a Serbian soldier, admitted to
raping and shooting three unarmed women because he was under orders and if he
refused, he argued his superiors would have sent him ‘to the worst front line,’ or
11
Jeffrey Burds, Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939-195, Politics Society 2009, p50.
Jeffrey Burds, Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939-195, Politics Society 2009, p53.
13 Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997.
14
Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997.
15 Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997.
12
would have taken away the Muslim house that they had given him.16 Rape as weapon
of genocide is hardly limited to Bosnia. Estimates show that between a quarter and
half a million Tutsi women were raped in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.17
Genocidal mass rape reveals our capacity to treat other human beings as members of
an inferior species. This capacity allows traditional war to become a war of
annihilation, in which men, women, children and the elderly can be legitimately killed
and where previous notions regarding the treatment of non-combatants are
disregarded. 18 However appalling this statement appears, the origins of mass rape
have been inherently programmed within the evolution of men. Niall Ferguson, in the
War of the World, cites the views of neo-Darwinians who argue that martial and mass
rapes are inherently programmed within the male species during wartime, linked to
the basic evolutionary principles of survival and reproduction. Pre-historic tribes that
came into contact with each other were inevitably in direct competition for scare
resources, therefore conflict between tribes would either take form of plunder, the
seizure of another tribe’s means of subsistence, or of downright murder in order to
guarantee the survival of a species by eliminating sexual rivals.19 Given the
importance of the survival of ones species, it would make sense not only to
appropriate the rival tribes’ food supply, but their females as well. Hence,
evolutionary logic that constructs tribal violence also promotes martial rape as
essential construct of warring where the captured womenfolk become the sexual prize
of the dominant males.
Rape has always been an outcome of war with its immediate victims, battered women
and the disregarded children. However when rape is employed as a weapon of war it
is most corrosive and destructive. Other weapons of war such as terrorism or torture
fail in comparison in the range of effects that mass rape may induce upon a society. It
has the ability to alter the genetic identity of a community as a form of genocide
whilst at the same time throw cultural and national unity into chaos. Rape dishonours
and humiliates not only the women, but the men who failed to protect the womenfolk
16
Claudia Card, Rape as a Weapon of War, Hypatia vol.11, no.4, 1996, p10.
Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997.
18
Niall Ferguson, the War of the World, London, Penguin Books, 2007, p478.
19 Niall Ferguson, the War of the World, London, Penguin Books, 2007, pxliv.
17
and thus their homeland. As a weapon of war it is the most effective form of
communication, a vivid message of dominance, proof of victory for one and loss and
humiliation for the other.
References
Maria Eriksson, Maria Stern, Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence and
Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo, International Studies Quarterly, 2009,
p495-518.
Claudia Card, Rape as a Weapon of War, Hypatia vol.11, no.4, 1996, pp5-17.
Doris Buss, Rethinking: Rape as a Weapon of War, Springer Science, 2009, pp145163.
Jeffrey Burds, Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939-195, Politics Society
2009, pp35-53.
Roland Littlewood, Military Rape, Anthropology Today, Vol.13, no.2, 1997, pp7-17.
Niall Ferguson, the War of the World, London, Penguin Books, 2007.