A Reply to Dykstra’s “Evident Bias in ‘Crimes Committed by U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1945–1946’”

Contrary to Robert Dykstra’s contention, we do not attempt to equate Soviet and U.S. crimes. Instead, we present new quantitative evidence that indicates a higher rate of U.S.-perpetrated crime than previously thought. The result should be a re-appraisal of U.S. soldiers’ behavior that penetrates further than the popular narrative that contrasts a peaceful West with a disorderly East. Dykstra’s mistaken critique of our statistical results appears to derive from his failure to appreciate the full relationship between crime reports and crime charges and from his lack of familiarity with the complications surrounding the calculation of the “dark number.”