The American challenge in uniform

The arrival of America’s armies in World War II and European women

Bibliographic Data

ID7770799
AuthorsDavid Ellwood (0000-0003-4512-6443)
Year2012
Volume7
Issue2
Publication date2012-03-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/ejas.9577
OpenAlexW1976911474
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited2

A vast body of material exists – memoirs, diaries, films, plays, novels, official records – on the impact and reception of America’s armed forces armies in Europe after 1942. Britain, Italy, France, Austria and of course Germany all offer relevant evidence. The popular British phrase about the GI’s being ‘over-paid, over-sexed and over here’ brilliantly sums up many of the tensions the encounter threw up: over money and life-styles, courtship rituals and the treatment of local women, over sovereignty and the American impulse to requisition every local resource they could get their hands on. Local men thought ‘their’ women were being requisitioned. The Americans had not come to do ‘nation-building’, and yet their presence left memories, changed attitudes and altered prospects on the future, especially among women. Afterwards American experts claimed that their armed forces had set off a ‘revolution of rising expectations’. Although a contradictory, complex encounter, there is enough evidence to suggest they might have been right

Economic history · Memoir · Political science · Requisition · Sociology · Sovereignty · World War II · European history and politics · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact · History · Law

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