Hordes of Rapists: The Instrumentalization of Sexual Violence in German Cold War Anti-Communist Discourses

Abstract

In German Cold War anti-communist discourses, the image of the Red Army as a “horde of rapists” worked as a strategy of exclusion in the construction of a national identity based on “Western values.” This paper analyzes the ideological dimension of the stereotypes of raped women and constructions of masculinity in two emblematic texts about the flight and expulsion of Germans from Eastern and Central Europe, and an anti-communist American propaganda novel. The mass rapes of German women in the context of World War II were signified as the result of “Asian barbarism” and communism. The instrumentalization of wartime rapes, by demonizing the Soviet Union, fostered the two pillars of foreign policy in the Federal Republic: European integration and the transatlantic alliance.