Rapes Committed by the German Army in France (1940–1944)

The rapes committed in France by the German army remain largely unknown in historiography, as well as in the memory of World War II. Shameful for the victims, and not formally qualified as war crimes at the time of the Liberation, the rapes of women were nonetheless subject to investigation by the French gendarmerie during the war, followed by the Research Service on Enemy War Crimes after Liberation. In his analysis of these archives and testimonies of victims and their family circle, Fabrice Virgili has focused on this little documented aspect of the war’s “gendered” violence and succeeded in laying out a chronology and map of these events.