Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 86

Rape in Wartime
Edited by Raphaëlle Branche and Fabrice Virgili,
Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, 237 pages, $90 (Hardback)

Joseph Miller
Joseph Miller is a Ph.D. student and a former U.S.
Army infantry officer with three deployments to Iraq. He
received a B.A. in history from North Georgia College
and State University and an M.A. in history from the
University of Maine.

T

he editors of Rape in Wartime and I share the
inability to give their impressive collection of
essays on this topic the summary it deserves.
The U.S. military’s highly publicized efforts to prevent
sexual assault within its ranks illustrate how intense
discussion of this subject can be, even in an army that
very rarely rapes civilians and enemy combatants.
There is a pressing need for substance in this increasingly emotional debate. Rape in Wartime contributes that substance in a collection of meticulously researched, carefully argued, and painstakingly translated
essays from diverse scholars who studied rape globally
and historically. It provides a brilliant combination of
military history, anthropology, and legal studies that
are perfectly balanced by a feminist perspective. This
anthology is an ideal work for commissioned and noncommissioned officers who are facing cultural reform
regarding gender roles in the military and the integration of women into combat units. Rape in Wartime is
a substantive, concise, and readable book on women in
combat and rape that occurs during wars.
The work casts some indirect criticism on the current policies of the Uniform Code of Military Justice
in multiple essays that describe German, Russian, and
Belgian military courts that treated rape as problem
of conduct, or good order and discipline, managed by
commanders. In all three cases (less so with Belgian),
rapes went widely unpunished or carried minor
internal disciplinary reprimands. It is important to

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July-August 2014  MILITARY REVIEW