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A review by anniedrows
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Anonymous
4.0
A raw and unfiltered description of being conquered from the perspective of the conquered women. No surprise that it’s brutal. I was surprised by her frank description of the women’s awareness of the imminent invasion(s) and their gallows humor(?perspective?) before and in some cases during the ensuring days of “nonconsenting intercourse” - rape. The persistent sharing of rape experiences seems to be the prevailing effort at group therapy in that week+.
If I understood her logic at one point, she felt women would rather be conquered/suffer these rapes than continue to lose their men to the war/army. Though by the end of the week(s) when the mass of Russian soldiers have left Berlin and the nightly “hunt” is mostly over, and society (older women, all men, her returned fiancée) no longer condone the discussion of rape, and in the ensuing years, I wonder if her opinion changed.
The book provides a unique perspective on cultural, educational and class norms subjected to wartime pressures. It’s not hard to feel sympathy for women subjected to this, without negating the horribleness of the Nazi regime. Broadly, this diary is a view into all the thousands (& thousands) of sackings in 3+ millennia of human warfare.
If I understood her logic at one point, she felt women would rather be conquered/suffer these rapes than continue to lose their men to the war/army. Though by the end of the week(s) when the mass of Russian soldiers have left Berlin and the nightly “hunt” is mostly over, and society (older women, all men, her returned fiancée) no longer condone the discussion of rape, and in the ensuing years, I wonder if her opinion changed.
The book provides a unique perspective on cultural, educational and class norms subjected to wartime pressures. It’s not hard to feel sympathy for women subjected to this, without negating the horribleness of the Nazi regime. Broadly, this diary is a view into all the thousands (& thousands) of sackings in 3+ millennia of human warfare.