A Woman In Berlin - Book Report/Review Example

The author of the diaries in the autobiographical novel describes how on April 24, 1945, which was the day the Russian troops entered Berlin, she and two other women arrived at a German hospital with lots of wounded soldiers intending to help out. Despite the fact their help offer is rejected, and they are ordered to immediately leave, the author feels “healthy, bold, and bright” (44). The feeling of the power is enhanced by understanding that due to the Germans’ defeat the world of Nazi men, which has excluded women, “is beginning to crumble and with it the myth of “Man” (43).

Importantly, the author acknowledges that “among many defeats of the end of this war is the defeat of the male sex” (43). This phrase illustrates what the returning German men looked like and felt like: defeated, bankrupt both psychologically and physically, and unable to perform their previously undisputed functions. Under the circumstances like these, German women not only managed to survive through the appalling time of mass rapes described by the author of the book, but they took on the roles of males: entering the workforce, building homes, providing for living, and reversing the gender roles through becoming independent from men (Soman, “Europe after 1945: Reconstruction of the German Identity after World War II”). . German men’s description as “impotent onlookers” against the background of the victorious troops from Russia (Erzenberger cited in Haley, “Rape in Berlin: Reconsidering the Criminalisation of Rape in the International Law of Armed Conflict”).

Along with harsh reality of German women’s rapes described by the author, these factors were leading determiners of the book’s publishing and selling failure in post-war years. However, being morally emptied and unable to restore their dominating position in a family and in a society, men still despised women, in particular, for surrendering too fast to Russian rapists. Maybe, by doing this they compensated for their own surrender and defeat. However, the consequences of this were bad for the society.

The friction can be described in the following way. Overwhelmed with feelings of disillusionment, morally emptied, and impotent German ex-soldiers came back home after they lost the war to the Russian Army. Despite the fact they gave in, their women did not reproach them or considered them traitors. At the same time, women that were raped lacking protection by German troops, faced barrage of criticism on the part of their husbands because of their surrender. c. According to the diary notes that form the basis of “A Woman in Berlin”, German women were repeatedly raped by the soldiers of the Russian Army.

Unprotected and humiliated, they gathered all their willpower to “instinctively find the best means of self-preservation” and learnt to take it with “gallows humour” (Beevor, xx). In other words, “grave psychological damage” of being victimized by rapists was turned into something bearable (Beevor, xx). Even more, for German women in the occupied Berlin, getting used to rape meant they were able to