THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN

Other scholars have examined the abuse of children by German soldiers; however, they have not examined in detail the ways in which male and female children were conceived of by the German military and Nazi regime, nor have they analyzed the ways in which abusers were discussed.32

Although the law against the sexual abuse of children, §176 section 3,329 gives the age of consent as 14, which means all sexual contact with a child under that age was to be legally punished, what the documents indicate is if the judges or accused believed the child looked over 14, charges of child abuse were not lodged, or could be dismissed. Furthermore, the judges believed female children could entice soldiers into sexual activity; they were held responsible for the sexual abuse, although that belief was counter to the law. Moreover, determinations of punishment were not based on whether a standard of evidence had been met, on whether the soldier had sexually abused a minor, but rather on the perceived effect of that abuse. Mitigating circumstances could be offered if the judge believed the girl to be un-traumatized by the abuse and if the judge believed the girl had not been morally damaged; there is never an explanation of how a female child should have behaved to demonstrate trauma, nor is there an explanation of how moral damage was gauged.330

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By contrast, those men believed to be good soldiers, to have adhered to norms of military, German, and Nazi masculinity were often favored with excuses that could result in a lesser punishment. In cases of child abuse, parallel mitigating factors were available for men who abused female children and female children were subject to gendered evaluations of behavior. If female children were found to have acted in some way contrary to expectations, or if they were physically developed beyond their age, according to the judge, they were frequently blamed for having instigated the sexual contact; the judges also believed that they were, as sexually experienced individuals, less traumatized by sexual violence

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Rape was not a concern for the Nazi party, nor was the prosecution of incest, and after an initial spike in rates of criminality for the abuse of children, there was a decline in the late 1930s. The decline in prosecution of cases in which women and children were the primary victims—rape, incest, and violations of §176 section 3—suggest to Dickinson, that “[d]espite their rhetoric, the Nazis were not in truth terribly committed to the family.”3

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