World War II is remembered by Americans and American culture in very specific ways. Films such as “Saving Private Ryan” and television programs such as “Band of Brothers” indicate that the United States played a central role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. In these narratives, American soldiers are depicted as saviors without whom Europe would have been lost. This chronicle plays heavily into notions of American exceptionalism, a cognitive astigmatism that plays into the belief that the United States is guided by a unique and enduring sense of exceptional power and virtue. While it is true that American soldiers helped European forces win World War II, in her book “What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France,” Mary Louise Roberts encourages readers to question the impact of the American occupation of France on French civilians, particularly French women. In doing so, Roberts analyzes the history of how American soldiers and military officers negotiated gender and sexuality, and the correlation of these negotiations on relationships between American soldiers and French civilians. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Unlike other studies, which analyze sex between French soldiers and women as an accompaniment to World War II, Roberts argues that sex was a central theme of the war that embodied a realignment of power between the two countries. Not only did remembered stories about the behavior of World War I soldiers increase expectations about French sex among soldiers, but so did the propaganda spread by newspapers and the media. Once in Europe, American soldiers quickly began sexual relationships with French women which Roberts identifies as a defining cultural meeting between the French and Americans. Heavily publicized romances of white, male soldiers rescuing French women portrayed the United States as powerful and generous, in contrast to the seemingly feminine and helpless French men. Such representations extended to the commodification of French women themselves, with soldiers exchanging cigarettes and chocolate for sex with French prostitutes. In this way, the American military controlled the bodies of French women as a means and symbol of American authority over France. However, contradictions in the military's enforcement of prostitution policy point to a less coherent view, particularly when it comes to rape allegations leveled against African-American soldiers. Due to systematic racial prejudice by both France and the United States that played into racial stereotypes of black men being hypersexual and predatory, African American soldiers were accused of rape at a disproportionately high rate. This provided the U.S. Army with scapegoats for the larger problem of rapes occurring against French women. Such actions and beliefs clearly indicate that the US military's priority was to protect its combat capability and safeguard its reputation; whatever happened to the French was irrelevant. In this sense, America's de facto military occupation of France appears more like another conquest than a liberation. Although Roberts does not base his argument on new historical events, his analytical lens blurs the triumphal history of European liberation and shifts attention from the war itself to the individuals most affected by the US occupation of France. Drawing on international news, propaganda materials and.