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Sex and the American GI in World War II France
University Of Chicago Press
May 2013
On Sale: May 10, 2013
364 pages
ISBN: 0226923096
EAN: 9780226923093
Kindle: B00CFZAPXK
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainlyβbut if youβre the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. Thatβs not the picture of the Greatest Generation that weβve been given, but itβs the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spreadβand then exploitedβthe myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaosβranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal diseaseβhorrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more usefulβand more interestingβwhen it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.
 Media BuzzCBS Sunday Morning - June 2, 2013
All Things Considered - May 31, 2013
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