Sexuality and Sexual Violence

For decades after the end of the Second World War, the historiography of war and military violence, on the one hand, and that of gender and sexuality, on the other, remained disconnected. It seems as if the gendered nature of sexual violence during and after the Second World War cast a shadow far beyond the (mostly) men who inflicted it and the (mostly) women who suffered it, down to the present writing of the history of war and the military by (mostly) men and the writing of the history of gender and sexuality by (mostly) women. Historians have produced impressive tomes of war and military history, but until recently their works have remained remarkably gender- and sexuality-free. This blind spot is puzzling, for wartime soldiers were mostly young men, separated from their partners and freed from many social constraints.