No other form of violence targets a person's gender identity as much as sexual violence. What are the effects of victimization and exposure to sexual violence on individuals' understanding of their gender roles? How lasting are these effects? And how are they transmitted across generations? We investigate these questions by comparing two of the most extreme cases of known mass wartime sexual violence in Europe: the mass rapes that followed the Soviet occupation of Germany after World War II, and the systematic use of sexual violence during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the 1990s. Using original data collected among 5,000 individuals spanning up to three postwar generations, we examine outcomes in the dimensions of household decision-making, militarized masculinity, and gendered political preferences and participation. Our analyses combine regression analysis, list experiments, and an instrumental variable strategy that exploits variation in the location of Soviet outposts in postwar Germany and of prisoner camps in BiH.