“obscene touches which I still feel…”: Testifying to Sexual Violence during Wartime

A particular kind of atrocity propaganda emerged during the First World War emphasizing and indeed weaponizing the sexual violence that remains a feature of armed conflict. But alongside the sensationalized accounts of gender-based harm, something new also took place – participant states used their expanded bureaucratic capacities and professional investigative corps to document abuses against civilians; these findings invariably included and made public first-hand accounts of rape. This paper reconsiders some of this first-person testimony – both archival and published – to explore what it might contribute to our understanding of wartime sexual violence.    

Susan R. Grayzel is a Professor of Modern European History at Utah State University. She is the author of several books including Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War; At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids & Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz and most recently, The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War. She is a visiting researcher at the Centre for Culture and Mind at KU in Spring 2025.

Contact: Daniel Steinbach and Karen Vallgårda