The October Issue of the American Historical Review. In “The Price of Discretion: Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and the American Military in France 1944–1946,” UW-Madison Professor Mary Louise Roberts argues that wars cannot be separated from the values and preoccupations of the peoples who fight them, and that sexuality, far from being a minor issue, operated as a site of identity formation for both the Americans and the French in WWII. “Welcome.” Postcard illustration by unknown artist, used by permission of the Lebrecht Photo Library, http://www.lebrecht.co.uk.
During the Allied campaign in Europe during the Second World War, prostitution became a point of contention between the United States and France.
The U.S. Army officially claimed to have control over GI sexual activity, barring American troops from the legal commercial sex available in French cities and even blaming French women for the soaring rates of venereal infection. At the same time, however, officers looked the other way when the GIs engaged in unrestrained promiscuity in the most public of places in full view of the locals.
The residents of those cities condemned such open displays as scandalous and disrespectful.