Mary Louise Roberts, professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was one of the first scholars to consult French as well as U.S. archives for her 2013 book, What Soldiers Do.
“Towards the end of the summer of 1944 there really was a problem with rape,” she says. “And the United States Army, at the highest levels of SHAEF, was concerned about it.” SHAEF was the acronym for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, commanded by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.