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What Soldiers Do

ideals like democracy. Rather, sexual fantasies ‘seduced’ soldiers into fighting (p. 63). They ‘also unleashed a veritable tsunami of male lust’ (p. 9). Moreover, Americans – or Amerilots, as the French called them because they had lots of goods – were in a position to purchase sex, and, Roberts argues, they ‘bought an extraordinary amount’ (p. 115). In Paris, for example, the demand by GIs for sex overwhelmed the older system of regulated brothels and registered prostitutes and paved the way for an Americanized free market system. In Le Havre, a key supply port, soldiers engaged in public sex with prostitutes in parks and alleyways to the consternation of the locals. Indeed, Roberts claims, prostitutes were the most common French person with whom American soldiers interacted. Sex became a commodity and as such ‘nurtured an arrogant, even imperialist attitude among the Americans who bought it’ (p. 115). American soldiers looked down on French women who sold sex, even as they expected and pressured them to do so. They saw prostitutes as a symbol of the immoral, inferior, and subservient character of all French people. Did sexual fantasies play a more significant role in motivating soldiers in France than elsewhere in the European or Pacific theatres of war? Probably, given the assumptions about French sexuality that prevailed in the military and the lack of immigrant connections and cultural ties between Americans and France, so different from the Italian and German cases. In addition, the status of France, both occupied and collaborating, was ambiguous; it was not an enemy, but nor was it an unquestionable friend like Britain. And racism could not be mobilized as it was against Japan. But actual sexual encounters were similar to what occurred elsewhere, once the futile bans on fraternization were lifted. Take Germany, which, like France, both was and came to be perceived as a feminized nation in need of rescue and rehabilitation. American soldiers arrived with abundant commodities of all sorts and their power was not contested by any resistance movement or aspiring government. Sex was abundant and the line between romance and prostitution every bit as blurred as in France. According to Roberts, sexual encounters were most numerous among American soldiers, who also had a monopoly on violent behaviour, sexual and otherwise. Why British and Canadian soldiers behaved differently remains a puzzle. On the one hand, the opportunity for sex and sexual violence was similar for all soldiers, on the other the Allies had no reason to use sexual violence instrumentally to demoralize or punish. After all they were liberators. Was it the powerful appeal of American cigarettes, CocaCola, and chocolate? Or were there different constructions of militarized masculinity among the three allied armies and different sanctions against sexual violence? Whatever the answer – and one hopes others will research this issue – Roberts documents that American soldiers had a sense of sexual entitlement that both prefigured and helped to realize American power in a variety of realms. Reviews 273