Sex, Military Brothels and Gender Violence during the Italian Campaign in the USSR, 1941–3

Abstract

During the Italian occupation in the USSR, the soldiers of Italian Armed Forces often had relationships with Soviet women, opposed by the authorities for motives of politics and security. Some of the officers openly practised concubinage, in contrast to the racism expressed on that campaign. The authorities in situ also decided to open brothels for the troops, filled with local women, in order to avoid both enemy espionage and the spread of venereal disease. As for the Germans in the USSR, the organization of brothels was difficult from the start due to the absence among the civilians of a ‘prostitution outlook’ and to the inexperience of the women, who at best offered to work out of hunger. Sexual crimes were also committed then, facilitated by the conflict’s climate and often disregarded by military justice, which had other priorities. Such aspects of the Italian occupation in the USSR have been superficially studied, in part because they are at odds with the collective imagination and a national awareness based on war memoirs and military publications, often reticent on the more inconvenient aspects of the Italian presence abroad during the Second World War.