german and soviet propaganda suggested that most of the rapes were being conducted by germans disguised as soviet soldiers, including werwolf battalions. aleksandr solzhenitsyn took part in the invasion of germany and wrote a poem about it, "prussian nights". parts of the poem read, "twenty-two hoeringstrasse. it's not been burned, just looted, rifled. a moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother's wounded, half alive. the little daughter's on the mattress, dead. how many have been on it? a platoon, a company perhaps? a girl's been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse.... the mother begs, 'soldier, kill me!'" records of sexual violence were found in works of other soviet authors, mostly in the form of war memoirs mentioning particular incidents witnessed by the authors, such as lev kopelev, vladimir gelfand, mikhail koryakov, eugenii plimak, david samoilow, boris slutskii, nikolay nikulin, grigorii pomerants, leonid ryabichev and vassily grossman. vera dubina and oleg budnitskii were among those few historians who investigated the subject more systematically. in popular culture as most women recoiled from their experiences and had no desire to recount them, most biographies and depictions of the period, like the 2004 german film downfall, alluded to mass rape by the red army but stopped shy of mentioning it explicitly. as time has progressed, more works have been produced that have directly addressed the issue, such as the books the 158-pound marriage and my story (1961) by gemma laguardia gluck , or the 2006 films joy division and the good german. the topic is the subject of much feminist discourse. the first autobiographical work depicting the events was the groundbreaking 1954 book a woman in berlin, which was made into a 2008 feature film. it was widely rejected in germany after its initial publication but has seen a new acceptance, and many women have found inspiration to come forward with their own stories. u.s. troops in taken by force, j. robert lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by u.s. servicemen in germany to be 11,040. however, extensive research by german historian miriam gebhardt suggests a number as high as 190,000 (or roughly 5% of the estimated post-war births in germany) due to rape by american soldiers. the historian r.m. douglas has analyzed the police side of the story, those efforts by the u.s. army's military police to investigate allegations and initiate military courts martial against identified perpetrators. the u.s. army in germany received 1301 reports of rape on german women between january and july 1945. accounts from the time period point to years of sexual violence in both east and west germany. the violence targeted girls as young as 7 and women as old as 69. stories such as eine frau in berlin include firsthand accounts of german women volunteering to coerced relationships with allied soldiers in exchange for protection from other soldiers. as in the case of the american occupation of france after the d-day invasion, many of the american rapes in germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint. more than a quarter of the reported rapes from january to july 1945 were multiple-victim rapes. although policies against fraternization were instituted for the americans in germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternization" was used as a motto by united states army troops. the journalist osmar white, a war correspondent from australia who served with the american troops during the war, wrote: after the fighting moved on to german soil, there was a good deal of rape by combat troops and those immediately following them. the incidence varied between unit and unit according to the attitude of the commanding officer. in some cases offenders were identified, tried by court martial, and punished. the army legal branch was reticent, but admitted that for brutal or perverted sexual offences against german women, some soldiers had been shot – particularly if they happened to be negroes. yet i know for a fact that many women were raped by white americans. no action was taken against the culprits. in one sector a report went round that a certain very distinguished army commander made the wisecrack, 'copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternisation.' a typical victimization with sexual assault by drunken american personnel marching through occupied territory involved threatening a german family with weapons, forcing one or more women to engage in sex, and putting the entire family out on the street afterward. as in the eastern sector of the occupation, the number of rapes peaked in 1945, but a high rate of violence against the german and austrian populations by the americans lasted at least into the first half of 1946, with five cases of dead german women found in american barracks in may and june 1946 alone. carol huntington wrote that the american soldiers who raped german women and then left gifts of food for them may have permitted themselves to view the act as prostitution rather than rape. citing the work of a japanese historian alongside that suggestion, huntington writes that japanese women who begged for food "were raped and soldiers sometimes left food for those they raped." white american soldiers in germany were responsible for mass rapes, but the black soldiers of america's segregated occupation force were both more likely to be charged with rape and severely punished. heide fehrenbach writes that while the american black soldiers were in fact by no means free from indiscipline, the point, rather, is that american officials exhibited an explicit interest in a soldier's race, and then only if he were black, when reporting behavior they feared would undermine either the status or the political aims of the u.s. military government in germany. meanwhile, the historian r.m. douglas, analyzing the victim statements in u.s. army military police files, noted that between january and july 1945, where the victims identified the race of their attacker, 6% of the attacks involving multiple perpetrators involved more than one race being identified, and 41% of the accounts that identified race identified the assailants as white. in 2015, the german news magazine der spiegel reported that german historian miriam gebhardt "believes that members of the us military raped as many as 190,000 german women by the time west germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the us invasion of nazi germany. the author bases her claims in large part on reports kept by bavarian priests in the summer of 1945." however the author of the der spiegel article concluded her total "is an extrapolation" which "hardly seems plausible" and is "unlikely". british troops sean longden states that while not on the scale of the red army in the soviet zone, the british military police regularly investigated reports of rape. however the numbers were small compared to the number of desertions: the question of how they should respond to the few soldiers who committed serious criminal acts, such as rape and murder, was of little concern to the military authorities. it made good sense to arrest such trouble makers, bring them to trial and dispose of them in military prisons. such men were easily dispensable and best kept locked away. dealing with the army's largest group of offenders, the deserters, was rather less simple. longden mentions that some rapes were carried out by soldiers either suffering from post traumatic stress or who were drunk, but that these were not considered as serious as the less common premeditated crimes. longden mentions that on 16 april 1945, three women in neustadt am rübenberge were raped, however he does not make clear if this was one incident or three separate ones. he also does not make clear if they were spontaneous or premeditated. he gives an example of a premeditated rape: in the village of oyle, near nienburg, an attempted rape of two local girls at gunpoint by two soldiers ended in the death of one of the girls when, whether intentionally or not, one of the soldiers shot her. in a third example, longden highlights that not all british officers were willing to punish their men. when a german woman reported a rape to a british army medic, two british soldiers were identified by the woman in a line up as the perpetrators, but their commanding officer declined to take any action because "they were going on leave". clive emsley quotes a senior british army chaplain as reporting that there was "a good deal of rape going on, those who suffer have probably deserved it". however, he adds that probably referred to attacks by former slave labourers (displaced persons) seeking revenge. longden also mentions such incidents and highlights that for a time hanover, in the british zone, was in a state of anarchy with displaced persons raping and murdering german civilians. initially, when german family members approached the overstretched british authorities about murders they were told "we only have time for living people here". french troops french troops took part in the invasion of germany, and france was assigned an occupation zone in germany. perry biddiscombe quotes the original survey estimates that the french for instance committed "385 rapes in the constance area; 600 in bruchsal; and 500 in freudenstadt." french army soldiers were alleged to have committed widespread rape in the höfingen district near leonberg. katz and kaiser, though they mention rape, found no specific occurrences in either höfingen or leonberg compared to other towns. according to norman naimark, french moroccan troops matched the behaviour of soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of baden and württemberg, provided the numbers are correct. german academic historians at jena and magdeburg contend that only france supported the children of her occupying armies resulted from the mass rape of german women. in the four occupied zones, however, many children of german mothers were ignored their entire lives. children of french troops were regarded as french citizens. at least 1,500 children in france and her colonies were given up for adoption. others never overcame the apparent flaw, while some "occupation children" gradually made their way in the divided society of germany. discourse it has been frequently repeated that the wartime rapes were surrounded by decades of silence or, until relatively recently, ignored by academics, with the prevailing attitude being that the germans were the perpetrators of war crimes, soviet writings speaking only of russian liberators and german guilt and western historians focusing on specific elements of the holocaust. in postwar germany, especially in west germany, the wartime rape stories became an essential part of political discourse and that the rape of german women, along with the expulsion of germans from the east and the allied occupation, had been universalized in an attempt to situate the german population on the whole as victims. however, it has been argued that it was not a "universal" story of women being raped by men but of german women being abused and violated by an army, which fought nazi germany and liberated death camps.