Scholars exploring ugly side of US 'liberators'

With crushing firepower, US-led forces stormed into a proud nation under the yoke of a murderous tyrant to cries of joy from …

With crushing firepower, US-led forces stormed into a proud nation under the yoke of a murderous tyrant to cries of joy from a liberated public. Then came the less uplifting work of running an occupation.

Iraq after the fall of Saddam in 2003? No. France from D-Day and the two years of Allied occupation that followed.

Mr Bush and other leaders gathering on the beaches of Normandy this weekend will celebrate the heroism and ingenuity of June 6th, 1944.

However, some scholars are paying closer attention to what followed as the victors settled in - black market trade, armed robbery, looting and rape.

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Only a small minority of GIs were involved, but the subject needs more study, said Prof Robert Lilly, criminology professor at Northern Kentucky University and author of The GIs' Hidden Face, not yet published in the US.

"There is a great, ugly underbelly that has not been really explored," he said.

Even before D-Day, friction between France's Gen Charles de Gaulle and his US allies was already foreshadowing future diplomatic strains, but the French public largely embraced the US troops.

"There remains a huge recognition toward the liberators; they are still heroes," said Elizabeth Coquart, journalist and author of La France des GIs (France of the GIs). "But that doesn't mean we can't judge and say, 'yes, some GIs behaved badly'."

France was a country already battered by four years of foreign domination, but it quickly had a provisional government in place.

While there were rapes by GIs in France, Prof Lilly said the number of cases "skyrocketed" when US soldiers rolled into Germany on May 8th, 1945.

He said he was inspired to examine rape by GIs from stories by his father and uncle, both second World War veterans. In his book he estimates 3,620 rapes by US soldiers in France from June 1944 to June 1945 based on military records he analysed.

Of 139 soldiers suspected of rape in the specific cases Prof Lilly turned up, 116 were convicted, his book says. He found that 70 soldiers were executed for crimes in the entire European theatre during the war.

Ms Coquart said only a "handful" of GIs were involved in misbehaviour and crime.

While some French today recall the rapes, the most enduring memories have been of the euphoria of liberation - of GIs showering the French with chocolates, clothes and food.