Mass executions alone weren’t the only opportunities to perpetrate sexual violence. The same also applied to more everyday situations such as women being forced to strip naked for interrogations at which multiple male soldiers were present.320 There were also “theater groups.” These consisted above all, in Angrick’s description, of “pretty Russian women and girls who wanted better food rations… After performances, the girls danced and drank with [SS men], and agreements were eventually reached. Outside of town, the commando leadership would arrange get-togethers of this sort in occupied houses and named ‘custodians’ who were to ‘watch over’ the buildings. There were also suggestions of other sorts of sexual amusements—love affairs with the daughters of the local mayor, ‘song evenings’ with alleged Russian singers, village festivals and nights of excessive drinking.”321 Willy Peter Reese wrote:
[We] became melancholy, shared our romantic longings and homesickness and kept on laughing and drinking. We stumbled across railroad tracks, danced in rail cars and fired shots into the night. We had a female Russian captive perform striptease dances and smeared her breasts with shoe polish, getting her as drunk in the process as we were ourselves.322
Medicinal statistics document the level of sexual activity among soldiers. At a field hospital in Kiev, for example, doctors spent most of their time treating skin and venereal diseases. After inspecting the facility, the SS doctor Karl Gebhardt acidly remarked that “the emphasis no longer lay on clinical and surgical procedure.”323
The surveillance protocols are full of references to sexually transmitted disease. For example, a navy lieutenant proclaimed:
GEHLEN*: They once made a raid in our area and discovered that 70% of all German soldiers whom they found with girls in the so-called bunks were suffering from venereal diseases.324
That percentage does not seem to have been exceptionally high. In cities like Minsk and Riga, so-called sanitary salons were set up. Soldiers were supposed to visit them after having sex in order to ward off potential infections. An account from Mühlhäuser’s study describes them as follows: “The ‘sanitization’ consisted of being washed with soap and water and cleansed with sublimate solution whereupon a small disinfecting rod was inserted into the urethra. A balm was used to combat potential syphilis. Afterward, the physician would record the treatment in his ‘troop sanitization book’ and issue the soldier a receipt, proving he had done his duty.”325
The mere fact that such institutions existed, together with a whole bureaucracy concerning venereal disease, shows how widespread and well known soldiers’ sexual activity was. Other than the “racial crime” of having sex with Jewish women, little was kept secret. Some soldiers even boasted about the number of venereal diseases they had contracted.326 The sanitary services in any case had their hands full trying to prevent infections and keep soldiers fit for battle.
Nonetheless, since neither disciplinary measures nor appeals to soldiers’ sense of duty could prevent rampant excess, the Wehrmacht hit upon the idea of running their own brothels. An official announcement from the Security Service in the occupied Soviet Union read: “For the purpose of restricting the spread of sexual diseases, the possibility for enemy agent activity in the everyday interactions between German and Russian persons and the resultant eradication of the necessary distance to persons within the Russian arena, it is being considered whether or not to establish Wehrmacht bordellos in a variety of cities.”327
The history of how these institutions were set up and how “racially suitable” prostitutes were identified and coerced would demand a chapter of its own. In any case, those details did not concern the POWs in the surveillance protocols. They simply told of their experiences in bordellos:
