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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Greatest Generation: Maybe Not Quite So Great?
WW2. France. Liberation by Americans. Mythology. Narrative. Manipulation.
What can I say?
From yesterday' s NYT>
>>>>The soldiers who landed in Normandy on D-Day were greeted as liberators, but by the time American G.I.s were headed back home in late 1945, many French citizens viewed them in a very different light.
In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault a regime of terror, as one put it, imposed by bandits in uniform.
This isnt the greatest generation as it has come to be depicted in popular histories. But in What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American G.I. in World War II France, the historian Mary Louise Roberts draws on French archives, American military records, wartime propaganda and other sources to advance a provocative argument: The liberation of France was sold to soldiers not as a battle for freedom but as an erotic adventure among oversexed Frenchwomen, stirring up a tsunami of male lust that a battered and mistrustful population often saw as a second assault on its sovereignty and dignity.
I could not believe what I was reading, Ms. Roberts, a professor of French history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, recalled of the moment she came across the citizen complaints in an obscure archive in Le Havre.>>> The rest: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/books/rape-by-american-soldiers-in-world-war-ii-france.html
Earth_First
(14,910 posts)Celldweller
(186 posts)The French in WW2 were an interesting lot. You had socialists, avid anti-Bolsheviks, pro-Nazi sympathizers and anti-US groups. I'm not surprised at all to see some of these reports.
Regarding the whole "sex" tie-in I think that's silly. Isolated reports sure, but widespread "Soviet-style" debauchery... no.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)...they're over-sexed, over-paid, and over here.
I'm guessing that WW2 soldiers were just like 18-22 year old men at any time and any place. I'm surprised their behavior wasn't worse than the article says.
Lithos
(26,403 posts)The *Greatest Generation* refers to the overall achievements of this generation who rose from the great lows of the Great Depression to serve in large numbers in the largest war this planet has seen to achieving the post-war miracle of industry and accomplishment.
This in no way lowers this achievement. No one said they were not human - especially 20 something men away from home for the first time. I'm sure the stories of the women at home would be equally lascivious if well reported.
L-
msongs
(67,420 posts)mwrguy
(3,245 posts)Yeah, they had a few problems.