The "Greatest Generation" Exposed!

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Wade Hampton III
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The "Greatest Generation" Exposed!

Post by Wade Hampton III » Mon Dec 26, 2016 12:03 pm

A new book uncovers the dark side of some GIs in liberated France,
where robbing, raping and whoring were rife. The "liberators" made a
lot of noise and drank too much. They raced around in their jeeps,
fought in the streets and stole. But the worst thing was their obsession
with French women. They wanted sex -- some for free, some for money and
some by force. After four years of German occupation, the French greeted
the US soldiers landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944 as liberators. The
entire country was delirious with joy. But after only a few months, a
shadow was cast over the new masters' image among the French. By the
late summer of 1944, large numbers of women in Normandy were complaining
about rapes by US soldiers. Fear spread among the population, as did a
bitter joke: "Our men had to disguise themselves under the Germans. But
when the Americans came, we had to hide the women." With the landing on
Omaha Beach, "a veritable tsunami of male lust" washed over France, writes
Mary Louise Roberts, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin,
in her new book "What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War
II France." In it, Roberts scrapes away at the idealized picture of war
heroes. Although soldiers have had a reputation for committing rape in
many wars, American GIs have been largely excluded from this stereotype.
Historical research has paid very little attention to this dark side of
the liberation of Europe, which was long treated as a taboo subject in
both the United States and France.
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American propaganda did not sell the war to soldiers as a struggle for
freedom, writes Roberts, but as a "sexual adventure." France was "a
tremendous brothel," the magazine Life fantasized at the time, "inhabited
by 40,000,000 hedonists who spend all their time eating, drinking (and)
making love." The Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the US
armed forces, taught soldiers German phrases like: "Waffen niederlegen!"
("Throw down your arms!"). But the French phrases it recommended to
soldiers were different: "You have charming eyes," "I am not married"
and "Are your parents at home?" After their victory, the soldiers felt
it was time for a reward. And when they enjoyed themselves with French
women, they were not only validating their own masculinity, but also,
in a metaphorical sense, the new status of the United States as a
superpower, writes Roberts. The liberation of France was sold to the
American public as a love affair between US soldiers and grateful
French women. On the other hand, following their defeat by the Germans,
many French perceived the Americans' uninhibited activities in their
own country as yet another humiliation. Although the French were
officially among the victorious powers, the Americans were now in charge.
The subject of sex played a central role in the relationship between
the French and their liberators. Prostitution was the source of constant
strife between US military officials and local authorities. Some of the
most dramatic reports came from the port city of Le Havre, which was
overrun by soldiers headed home in the summer of 1945. In a letter
to a Colonel Weed, the US regional commander, then Mayor Pierre Voisin
complained that his citizens couldn't even go for a walk in the park or
visit the cemetery without encountering GIs having sex in public with
prostitutes. "Scenes contrary to decency" were unfolding in his city
day and night, Voisin wrote. It was "not only scandalous but intolerable"
that "youthful eyes are exposed to such public spectacles." The mayor
suggested that the Americans set up a brothel outside the city so that
the sexual activity would be discrete and the spread of sexually transmitted
diseases could be combated by medical personnel.
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But the Americans could not operate brothels because they feared that
stories about the soldiers' promiscuity would then make their way back
to their wives at home. Besides, writes Roberts, many American military
officials did not take the complaints seriously owing to their belief
that it was normal for the French to have sex in public. But the citizens
of Le Havre wrote letters of protest to their mayor, and not just regarding
prostitution. We are "attacked, robbed, run over both on the street and
in our houses," wrote one citizen in October 1945. "This is a regime of
terror, imposed by bandits in uniform." There were similar accounts from
all over the country, with police reports listing holdups, theft and rapes.
In Brittany, drunk soldiers destroyed bars when they ran out of cognac.
Sexual assaults were commonplace in Marseilles. In Rouen, a soldier forced
his way into a house, held up his weapon and demanded sex. The military
authorities generally took the complaints about rape seriously. However,
the soldiers who were convicted were almost exclusively African-American,
some of them apparently on the basis of false accusations, because racism
was also deeply entrenched in French society. A café owner from Le Havre
expressed the deep French disillusionment over the Americans' behavior
when he said: "We expected friends who would not make us ashamed of our
defeat. Instead, there came incomprehension, arrogance, incredibly bad
manners and the swagger of conquerors."
rapeoffrenchgirl.jpg
rapeoffrenchgirl.jpg (66.79 KiB) Viewed 1965 times
http://whiteresister.com/index.php/8-ar ... -of-europe

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Jim Mathias
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 8:48 pm

Re: The "Greatest Generation" Exposed!

Post by Jim Mathias » Thu Dec 29, 2016 3:50 am

Amazon carries it for $12.84 in paperback https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/02269 ... HWK55XCGG2
Activism materials available! ===> Contact me via PM to obtain quantities of the "Send Them Back", "NA Health Warning #1 +#2+#3" stickers, and any fliers listed in the Alliance website's flier webpage.

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