Let's talk about the trophies of the Red Army that the Soviet victors were taking home from defeated Germany. Let's talk calmly, without emotions - just photos and facts. Then we will touch upon the delicate issue of the rape of German women and go through the facts from the life of occupied Germany.
A Soviet soldier takes a bicycle from a German woman (according to Russophobes), or a Soviet soldier helps a German woman to align the steering wheel (according to Russophiles). Berlin, August 1945. (as it was in fact, in the investigation below)
But the truth is, as always, it is in the middle, and it consists in the fact that in abandoned German houses and shops, Soviet soldiers took whatever they liked, but the Germans had quite a bit of impudent robbery. Looting, of course, happened, but for him, it happened, and was tried by a show trial of the tribunal. And none of the soldiers wanted to go through the war alive, and because of some junk and the next round of struggle for friendship with the local population, not go home as a winner, but to Siberia as a convict.
Soviet soldiers buy up on the black market in the Tiergarten garden. Berlin, summer 1945.
Junk was appreciated, though. After the Red Army entered the territory of Germany, by order of the NKO of the USSR No. 0409 of 12/26/1944. all servicemen of the active fronts were allowed to send one personal parcel to the Soviet rear once a month.
The most severe punishment was the deprivation of the right to this parcel, the weight of which was set: for privates and sergeants - 5 kg, for officers - 10 kg and for generals - 16 kg. The size of the parcel could not exceed 70 cm in each of the three dimensions, but they managed to transport home in various ways large-sized equipment, carpets, furniture, and even pianos.
During demobilization, officers and soldiers were allowed to take away everything that they could take with them on the road in their personal luggage. At the same time, large-sized things were often taken home, fastened to the roofs of the heating units, and the Poles left on the stream to pull them along the train with ropes and hooks (grandfather told me).
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Three Soviet women hijacked to Germany carry wine from an abandoned liquor store. Lippstadt, April 1945.
During the war and the first months after its end, soldiers mainly sent non-perishable provisions to the home front (the most valuable were American dry rations, consisting of canned food, biscuits, egg powder, jam, and even instant coffee). The medicinal preparations of the allies - streptomycin and penicillin - were also very much appreciated.
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American soldiers and young German women combine trading and flirting on the black market in the Tiergarten garden.
The Soviet military in the background in the market has no time for stupidity. Berlin, May 1945.
And this could only be obtained on the "black market", which instantly appeared in every German city. At flea markets, you could buy everything from cars to women, and the most common currency was tobacco and food.
The Germans needed food, and the Americans, British and French were only interested in money - Nazi Reichsmarks, the occupation marks of the winners, and foreign currencies of the Allied countries, on whose rates a lot of money was made, were circulating in Germany at that time.
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An American soldier is bargaining with a Soviet junior lieutenant. Photo LIFE dated September 10, 1945.
And the Soviet soldiers had funds. In the eyes of the Americans, they were the nicest buyers — gullible, bargaining poorly, and very wealthy. Indeed, since December 1944, Soviet servicemen in Germany began to receive double salaries both in rubles and in stamps at the exchange rate (this system of double payment will be canceled much later).
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Photos of Soviet soldiers bargaining at a flea market. Photo LIFE dated September 10, 1945.
The salary of Soviet military personnel depended on the rank and position held. So, a major, deputy military commandant, in 1945 received 1,500 rubles. per month and for the same amount in occupation stamps at the exchange rate. In addition, officers from the position of company commander and above were paid money to hire German servants.
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For an idea of prices. Certificate of purchase by a Soviet colonel from a German of a car for 2,500 marks (750 Soviet rubles)
The Soviet military received a lot of money - on the black market, an officer could buy whatever his heart desires for one of his monthly salaries. In addition, the servicemen were paid the debts for cash allowances for the past, and they had plenty of money even if they sent home a ruble certificate.
Therefore, it was simply stupid and unnecessary to risk "falling under the distribution" and be punished for looting. And although there were, of course, enough greedy marauding fools, they were more the exception than the rule.
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Soviet soldier with an SS dagger attached to his belt. Pardubicki, Czechoslovakia, May 1945.
The soldiers were different, and they also had different tastes. Some, for example, very much appreciated such German SS (or naval, flight) daggers, although there was no practical benefit from them. As a child, I held one such SS dagger in my hands (my grandfather's friend brought me from the war) - its black and silver beauty and sinister history fascinated me.
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Veteran of the Great Patriotic War Pyotr Patsienko with a trophy Admiral Solo accordion. Grodno, Belarus, May 2013
But the majority of Soviet soldiers valued ordinary clothes, accordions, watches, cameras, radios, crystal, porcelain, which, even after the war, were piled high on the shelves of Soviet thrift stores.
Many of those things have survived to this day, and do not rush to accuse their old owners of looting - no one will know the true circumstances of their acquisition, but most likely they were simply and banally bought from the Germans by the winners.
On the question of one historical falsification, or the photo "Soviet soldier takes a bicycle."
This well-known photograph is traditionally used to illustrate articles about the atrocities of Soviet soldiers in Berlin. This topic with surprising constancy from year to year rises to the Victory Day.
The picture itself is published, as a rule, with a signature "A Soviet soldier takes a bicycle from a woman in Berlin"... There are also signatures from the cycle "Looting flourished in Berlin on 1945" etc.
There are heated debates over the issue of photography itself and what is captured on it. The arguments of the opponents of the version of "looting and violence" that I have come across on the Internet, unfortunately, sound unconvincing. Of these, one can single out, firstly, calls not to make judgments on the basis of one photograph. Secondly, an indication of the posture of a German woman, a soldier and other persons caught in the frame. In particular, from the calmness of the supporting characters, it follows that this is not about violence, but about an attempt to straighten out some cycling detail.
Finally, doubts are raised that it was a Soviet soldier who was captured in the photograph: a roll over the right shoulder, the roll itself of a very strange shape, an oversized cap on the head, etc. In addition, in the background, right behind the soldier, if you look closely, you can see a soldier in a uniform that is clearly not Soviet-style.
But, I emphasize again, all these versions do not seem convincing enough to me.
In general, I decided to understand this story. The picture, I reasoned, clearly must have an author, must have the original source, the first publication, and - most likely - the original signature. Which can shed light on what is shown in the photograph.
If we take literature, as far as I remember, I came across this picture in the catalog of the Documentary Exhibition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union. The exposition itself was opened in 1991 in Berlin in the Topography of Terror hall, then, as far as I know, it was exhibited in St. Petersburg. Her catalog in Russian "The War of Germany against the Soviet Union 1941-1945" was published in 1994.
I don't have this catalog, but my colleague, fortunately, found it. Indeed, the desired photograph is published on page 257. Traditional signature: "A Soviet soldier takes a bicycle from a woman in Berlin, 1945"
Apparently, this catalog, published in 1994, became the Russian primary source of the photograph we need. At least on a number of old resources dating back to the early 2000s, I came across this picture with a reference to "Germany's war against the Soviet Union .." and with a signature familiar to us. It looks like the photograph is from there and roams the network.
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz - Photo archive of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation - is indicated in the catalog as the source of the image. The archive has a website, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not find the picture I needed.
But in the process of searching, I came across the same snapshot in the archive of Life magazine. In the Life version, it is called "Bike Fight".
Please note that here the photo is not cropped at the edges, as in the exhibition catalog. New interesting details emerge, for example, on the left, behind the backs, you can see an officer, and, as it were, not a German officer:
But the main thing is the signature!
A Russian soldier involved in a misunderstanding with a German woman in Berlin, over a bicycle he wished to buy from her.
"There was a misunderstanding between a Russian soldier and a German woman in Berlin over a bicycle he wanted to buy from her."
In general, I will not bore the reader with the nuances of further search for the keywords "misunderstanding", "German woman", "Berlin", "Soviet soldier", "Russian soldier", etc. I found the original photo and the original signature under it. The picture belongs to the American company Corbis. Here it is:
As it is not difficult to see, here the picture is complete, on the right and left there are details cut off in " Russian version"and even in the Life version. These details are very important, as they give the picture a completely different mood.
And finally, the original signature:
Russian Soldier Tries to Buy Bicycle from Woman in Berlin, 1945
A misunderstanding ensues after a Russian soldier tries to buy a bucycle from a German woman in Berlin. After giving her money for the bike, the soldier assumes the deal has been struck. However the woman doesn "t seem convinced.
A Russian soldier tries to buy a bicycle from a woman in Berlin, 1945
The misunderstanding came after a Russian soldier tried to buy a bicycle from a German woman in Berlin. After giving her the money for the bike, he believes the deal has taken place. However, the woman thinks differently.
These are the things, dear friends.
Around, wherever you dig, lies, lies, lies ...
From an article by Sergei Manukov.
Forensic science professor Robert Lilly of the United States checked the American military archives and concluded that by November 1945, the tribunals had dealt with 11,040 cases of serious sex crimes committed by American military personnel in Germany. We agree that other historians from Great Britain, France and America also "threw up their hands" with the Western allies.
For a long time, Western historians have been trying to pin the blame on Soviet soldiers with evidence that no court will accept.
The most vivid idea of them is provided by one of the main arguments of the British historian and writer Anthony Beevor, one of the most famous specialists in the history of the Second World War in the West.
He believed that Western soldiers, especially the American military, did not need to rape German women, because they had plenty of the most popular goods with which it was possible to obtain Fraulein's consent to sex: canned food, coffee, cigarettes, nylon stockings, etc. ...
Western historians believe that the overwhelming majority of sexual contacts between victors and German women were voluntary, that is, that it was the most common prostitution.
It is no coincidence that the joke was popular in those days: "It took the Americans six years to cope with the German armies, but it took a day and a bar of chocolate to conquer the German women."
However, the picture was nowhere near as rosy as Anthony Beevor and his supporters are trying to portray. Post-war society was unable to differentiate between voluntary and violent sexual contacts of women who were given because they were dying of hunger, and those who became victims of rape at gunpoint or machine gun.
The fact that this is an overly idealized picture was loudly declared by Miriam Gebhardt, professor of history at the University of Constance in southwestern Germany.
Of course, when writing a new book, she was least guided by the desire to protect and whitewash Soviet soldiers. The main motive is the establishment of truth and historical justice.
Miriam Gebhardt tracked down several victims of the "exploits" of American, British and French soldiers and interviewed them.
Here is the story of one of the women who suffered from the Americans:
Six American soldiers arrived in the village just as it was getting dark and entered the house where Katerina V. lived with her 18-year-old daughter Charlotte. The women managed to escape just before the intruders appeared, but they did not even think to give up. Obviously, this is not the first time they have done this.
The Americans began to search all the houses one by one, and in the end, at almost midnight, they found the fugitives in a neighbor's closet. They pulled them out, threw them on the bed and raped them. Instead of chocolates and nylon stockings, uniformed rapists took out pistols and machine guns.
This gang rape took place in March 1945, a month and a half before the end of the war. Charlotte, terrified, called her mother for help, but Catherine could do nothing to help her.
The book contains many such cases. All of them took place in southern Germany, in the zone of occupation of the American troops, which numbered 1.6 million people.
In the spring of 1945, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising ordered his subordinate priests to document all events related to the occupation of Bavaria. Several years ago, part of the 1945 archives were published.
Priest Michael Merksmüller from the village of Ramsau, which is located near Berchtesgaden, wrote on July 20, 1945: "Eight girls and women were raped. Some of them were right in front of their parents."
Father Andreas Weingand of Haag an der Amper, a tiny village on the site of what is now Munich Airport, wrote on July 25, 1945:
"The saddest event during the American army's offensive was three rapes. Drunken soldiers raped one married woman, one single and a girl of 16 and a half years.
“By order of the military authorities,” wrote the priest Alois Schiml from Mosburg on August 1, 1945, “on the door of every house there should be a list of all residents, indicating their age. 17 raped girls and women were admitted to the hospital. Among them there are some who are American soldiers. raped many times. "
From the reports of the priests, it followed: the youngest victim of the Yankees was 7 years old, and the oldest was 69.
When the Soldiers Came, hit bookstore shelves in early March and immediately sparked a heated debate. There is nothing surprising in this, because Frau Gebhardt dared to swing, and during a strong aggravation of relations between the West and Russia, at attempts to equalize those who unleashed the war, and those who suffered most from it.
Despite the fact that the main attention in Gebhardt's book is paid to the exploits of the Yankees, the other Western allies, of course, also performed "feats". Although in comparison with the Americans, they misled a lot less.
The Americans raped 190 thousand German women.
Best of all, according to the author of the book, British soldiers behaved in Germany in 1945, but not because of any innate nobility or, say, a gentleman's code of conduct.
More decent than their colleagues from other armies were the British officers, who not only strictly forbade their subordinates to pester the Germans, but also very closely followed them.
As for the French, they have a slightly different situation, just like in the case of our soldiers. France was occupied by the Germans, although, of course, the occupation of France and Russia, as they say, are two big differences.
In addition, most of the rapists of the French army were Africans, that is, they came from French colonies on the Black Continent. For them by and large it was all the same to whom to take revenge - the main thing was that the women were white.
Especially the French "distinguished themselves" in Stuttgart. They herded the women of Stuttgart onto the subway and staged a three-day orgy of violence. According to various sources, during this time from 2 to 4 thousand German women were raped.
Just like the allies from the east they met on the Elbe, American soldiers were horrified by the crimes committed by the Germans and embittered by their stubbornness and desire to defend their homeland to the end.
American propaganda also played a role, suggesting to them that the Germans were crazy about liberators from overseas. This further inflamed the erotic fantasies of the warriors deprived of female affection.
Miriam Gebhardt's seeds fell into the prepared soil. In the aftermath of the atrocities committed by American soldiers several years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq, and especially in the infamous Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, many Western historians have become more critical of Yankee behavior before and after the end of the war.
Researchers increasingly find documents in the archives, for example, about the plundering of churches in Italy by the Americans, the murder of civilians and German prisoners, as well as the rape of Italian women.
However, attitudes towards the American military are changing extremely slowly. The Germans continue to treat them as disciplined and decent (especially in comparison with their allies) soldiers who gave chewing gum to children and stockings to women.
Of course, the evidence provided by Miriam Gebhardt in When the Military Came in did not convince everyone. It is not surprising, given that no one kept any statistics and all calculations and figures are approximate and speculative.
Anthony Beevor and his supporters ridiculed Professor Gebhardt's calculations: “It is almost impossible to get accurate and reliable numbers, but I think that hundreds of thousands is a clear exaggeration.
Even if we take as the basis for calculations the number of children born to German women from Americans, then here it should be remembered that many of them were conceived as a result of voluntary sex, and not rape. Do not forget that German women crowded at the gates of American military camps and bases in those years from morning till night. "
Of course, one can doubt the conclusions of Miriam Gebhardt, and especially her numbers, but hardly even the most zealous defenders of American soldiers would argue with the assertion that they were not as "fluffy" and kind as most Western historians are trying to present them.
I would like to because they left a "sexual" trail not only in hostile Germany, but also in allied France. American soldiers raped thousands of French women, whom they freed from the Germans.
If in the book "When the soldiers came" the Yankees blame the professor of history from Germany, then in the book "What the soldiers did" it is done by the American Mary Roberts, professor of history from the University of Wisconsin.
"My book debunks the old myth of American soldiers who were generally considered to have always behaved well," she says. "Americans had sex everywhere and with everyone who was wearing a skirt."
Arguing with Professor Roberts is more difficult than with Gebhardt, because she presented not inferences and calculations, but only facts. Chief among them are archival documents, according to which 152 American servicemen were convicted of rape in France, and 29 of them were hanged.
The figures, of course, are scanty in comparison with neighboring Germany, even if we consider that behind each case there is a human destiny, but it should be remembered that these are only official statistics and that they represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Without much risk of being wrong, it can be assumed that only a handful of victims filed complaints about the liberators with the police. Shame often prevented them from going to the police, because in those days rape was a stigma for a woman.
In France, rapists from across the ocean had other motives. To many of them, the rape of French women seemed like amorous adventures.
The fathers of many American soldiers fought in France in World War I. Their stories must have set quite a few members of General Eisenhower's army on romantic adventures with attractive French women. Many Americans considered France to be like a huge brothel.
Military magazines such as "Stars and Stripes" also made their contribution. They printed photographs of laughing French women kissing their liberators. They also typed phrases in French that may be needed when communicating with French women: "I am not married", "You have beautiful eyes", "You are very beautiful", etc.
Journalists almost in plain text advised the soldiers to take what they liked. Not surprisingly, after the Allied landings in Normandy in the summer of 1944, northern France was swept by a "tsunami of male lust and lust."
Liberators from across the ocean in Le Havre especially distinguished themselves. The city archives preserved letters from the residents of Gavr to the mayor with complaints about "a wide variety of crimes that are committed day and night."
Most often, the inhabitants of Le Havre complained of rape, and often in front of others, although there were, of course, robberies and thefts.
The Americans behaved in France as in a conquered country. It is clear that the attitude of the French towards them was the same. Quite a few people in France considered the liberation a "second occupation". And often more cruel than the first, German.
They say that French prostitutes often remembered German clients with a kind word, because Americans were often interested in more than sex. With the Yankees, girls had to keep track of their wallets. The liberators did not disdain banal theft and robbery.
Meetings with the Americans were life-threatening. 29 American soldiers were sentenced to death for the murder of French prostitutes.
In order to cool the heated soldiers, the command distributed leaflets among the personnel condemning the rape. The military prosecutor's office was not particularly strict. Only those who could not be judged were tried. The racist sentiments prevailing at that time in America are also clearly visible: out of 152 soldiers and officers who were tribunalized, 139 were blacks.
After World War II, Germany was divided into occupation zones. About how people lived in them, today you can read and hear different opinions... Often the exact opposite.
The first task that the Allies set themselves after the defeat of Germany was the denazification of the German population. The entire adult population of the country underwent a survey prepared by the "Control Council for Germany". There were 131 questions in the Erhebungsformular MG / PS / G / 9a questionnaire. The survey was voluntary and compulsory.
The refuseniks were deprived of ration cards.
Based on the survey, all Germans are divided into “not involved”, “acquitted”, “fellow travelers”, “guilty” and “highly guilty”. Citizens from the last three groups were brought before the court, which determined the measure of guilt and punishment. The "guilty" and the "supremely guilty" were sent to internment camps, the "fellow travelers" could atone for their guilt with a fine or property.
It is clear that this technique was imperfect. The mutual responsibility, corruption and insincerity of the respondents made denazification ineffective. Hundreds of thousands of Nazis managed to escape the trial using forged documents on the so-called "rat paths".
The Allies also carried out a large-scale campaign in Germany to reeducate the Germans. Films about the atrocities of the Nazis were continuously shown in cinemas. Inhabitants of Germany also had to attend the sessions without fail. Otherwise, they could lose all the same ration cards. Also, the Germans were taken on excursions to former concentration camps and involved in the work carried out there. For most of the civilian population, the information received was shocking. Goebbels' propaganda during the war years told them about a completely different Nazism.
According to the decision of the Potsdam Conference, demilitarization was to take place in Germany, including the dismantling of military factories.
The Western allies adopted the principles of demilitarization in their own way: in their zones of occupation, not only were in no hurry to dismantle factories, but also actively restored them, while trying to increase the quota of metal smelting and wanting to preserve the military potential of Western Germany.
By 1947, more than 450 military factories were hidden from the register in the British and American zones.
The Soviet Union was more honest in this respect. According to historian Mikhail Semiryaga, in one year after March 1945, the highest authorities of the Soviet Union made about a thousand decisions related to the dismantling of 4,389 enterprises from Germany, Austria, Hungary and other European countries. However, even this number cannot be compared with the number of facilities destroyed by the war in the USSR.
The number of German enterprises dismantled by the USSR was less than 14% of the pre-war number of factories. According to Nikolai Voznesensky, the then chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee, supplies of captured equipment from Germany covered only 0.6% of the direct damage to the USSR.
The topic of looting and violence against civilians in post-war Germany is still controversial.
A lot of documents have survived, indicating that the Western Allies were literally taking out property from defeated Germany by ships.
Marshal Zhukov also distinguished himself in collecting trophies.
When in 1948 he fell out of favor, the investigators began to "dispossession" of him. The confiscation resulted in 194 pieces of furniture, 44 carpets and tapestries, 7 boxes of crystal, 55 museum paintings and much more. All this was taken out of Germany.
As for the soldiers and officers of the Red Army, there were not many cases of looting according to the available documents. The victorious Soviet soldiers were more likely to be engaged in applied "hoarseness", that is, they were engaged in the collection of ownerless property. When the Soviet command allowed sending parcels home, boxes with sewing needles, cuttings of fabrics, and working tools were sent to the Union. At the same time, our soldiers had a rather squeamish attitude to all these things. In letters to their relatives, they made excuses for all this "junk".
The most problematic topic is the topic of violence against civilians, especially against German women. Until perestroika, the number of German women subjected to violence was small: from 20 to 150 thousand throughout Germany.
In 1992, a book by two feminists, Helke Sander and Barbara Jor, "Liberators and the Liberated" was published in Germany, where another figure appeared: 2 million.
These figures were "pulled" and were based on the statistics of only one German clinic, multiplied by the hypothetical number of women. In 2002, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published, where this figure also appeared. In 2004, this book was published in Russia, giving rise to the myth of the brutality of Soviet soldiers in occupied Germany.
In fact, according to the documents, such facts were considered "emergencies and immoral phenomena." Violence against the civilian population of Germany was fought at all levels, and looters and rapists fell under the tribunal. There are still no exact figures on this issue, not all documents have yet been declassified, but in the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Of the Belorussian front on unlawful actions against the civilian population for the period from April 22 to May 5, 1945, there are the following figures: in seven front armies for 908.5 thousand people, 124 crimes were recorded, of which 72 were rapes. 72 cases per 908.5 thousand. What two million can we talk about?
Looting and violence against the civilian population also took place in the western occupation zones. The mortarman Naum Orlov wrote in his memoirs: "The British guarding us rolled chewing gum between their teeth - which was new to us - and boasted to each other about their trophies, throwing up their hands, humiliated by a wristwatch ...".
Osmar Uyat, an Australian war correspondent who can hardly be suspected of partiality towards Soviet soldiers, wrote in 1945: “Severe discipline reigns in the Red Army. There are no more robberies, rapes and bullying here than in any other zone of occupation. Wild stories of atrocities emerge from exaggerations and distortions of individual cases under the influence of nervousness caused by the immoderate manner of Russian soldiers and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most of the tales of Russian atrocities that made her hair stand on end was eventually forced to admit that the only evidence she saw with her own eyes was how drunken Russian officers fired pistols into the air and bottles ... ".
O. Kazarinov "Unknown Faces of War". Chapter 5. Violence breeds violence (continued)Forensic psychologists have long established that rape, as a rule, is explained not by the desire for sexual satisfaction, but by the desire for power, the desire to emphasize their superiority over the weaker way of humiliation, a sense of revenge.
What if not war contributes to the manifestation of all these base feelings?
On September 7, 1941, at a rally in Moscow, the appeal of Soviet women was adopted, which said: “It is impossible to convey in words what the fascist villains are doing with a woman in the regions of the Soviet country temporarily captured by them. There is no limit to their sadism. These dastardly cowards drive women, children and old people ahead of themselves to hide from the fire of the Red Army. They rip open the stomachs of the victims they raped, cut out their breasts, they crush them with cars, tear them apart with tanks ... "
What state can a woman be in when she is exposed to violence, defenseless, crushed by the feeling of her own defilement, shame?
A stupor arises in the mind from the murders happening around. Thoughts are paralyzed. Shock. Another's uniforms, someone else's speech, someone else's smells. They are not even perceived as male rapists. These are some monstrous creatures from another world.
And they mercilessly destroy all the concepts of chastity, decency, modesty brought up over the years. They get to what has always been hidden from prying eyes, the exposure of which has always been considered indecent, what they whispered about in the gateways, that they trust only the most beloved people and doctors ...
Helplessness, despair, humiliation, fear, disgust, pain - everything is intertwined in one tangle, tearing from the inside, destroying human dignity. This tangle breaks the will, burns the soul, kills the personality. Drinks life ... Tear off clothes ... And there is no way to resist it. THIS will happen anyway.
I think thousands and thousands of women cursed at such moments the nature, by the will of which they were born as women.
Let us turn to documents that are more revealing than any literary description. Documents collected only in 1941.
“... It happened in the apartment of a young teacher, Elena K. In broad daylight, a group of drunken German officers burst in here. At this time, the teacher was studying with three girls, her students. Having closed the door with a key, the bandits ordered Elena K. to undress. The young woman resolutely refused to comply with this impudent demand. Then the Nazis tore off her clothes and raped her in front of children. The girls tried to protect the teacher, but the scoundrels also brutally abused them. The teacher's five-year-old son remained in the room. Not daring to scream, the child looked at what was happening with eyes wide open in horror. A fascist officer approached him and cut him in two with a saber blow. "
From the testimony of Lydia N., Rostov:
“Yesterday I heard a strong knock on the door. When I approached the door, they beat on it with rifle butts, trying to break it down. The apartment was burst into 5 German soldiers... They kicked my father, mother and little brother out of the apartment. Then I found my brother's body in the stairwell. A German soldier threw him from the third floor of our house, as eyewitnesses told me. His head was broken. Mother and father were shot dead at the entrance of our house. I myself was subjected to gang violence. I was unconscious. When I woke up, I heard the hysterical screams of women in the neighboring apartments. That evening all the apartments in our house were defiled by the Germans. They raped all women. " Spooky document! The experienced fear of this woman is involuntarily conveyed in a few stingy lines. Butt blows on the door. Five monsters. Fear for oneself, for relatives taken away in an unknown direction: “Why? So they don't see what will happen? Arrested? Killed? " Doomed to vile torture that deprived of consciousness. The nightmare of the "hysterical screams of women in the neighboring apartments" amplified many times over, as if the whole house was groaning. Unreality…
A statement from Maria Tarantseva, a resident of the village of Novo-Ivanovka: "Having burst into my house, four German soldiers brutally raped my daughters Vera and Pelageya."
"On the very first evening in the city of Luga, the Nazis caught 8 girls on the streets and raped them."
“In the mountains. In Tikhvin, Leningrad Region, 15-year-old M. Kolodetskaya, wounded by a shrapnel, was brought to a hospital (formerly a monastery) where the wounded German soldiers were kept. Despite her injury, Kolodetskaya was raped by a group of German soldiers, which was the cause of her death. "
Every time you shudder when you think about what is hidden behind the dry text of the document. The girl is bleeding, it hurts from the wound received. Why did this war start! And finally, the hospital. Smell of iodine, bandages. People. Even if they are not Russians. They will help her. After all, in hospitals, people are treated. And suddenly, instead of this - a new pain, a cry, an animal melancholy, driving you to madness ... And consciousness slowly fades away. Forever.
“In the Belarusian town of Shatsk, the Nazis gathered all the young girls, raped them, and then kicked them naked onto the square and forced them to dance. Those who resisted were shot on the spot by the fascist monsters. This kind of violence and abuse by the invaders was widespread and widespread. "
“On the very first day in the village of Basmanovo, Smolensk Region, the fascist monsters drove into the fields more than 200 schoolchildren and schoolgirls who had come to the village to harvest, surrounded them and shot them. They took the schoolgirls to their rear “for gentlemen officers”. I am strong and I cannot imagine these girls who came to the village with a noisy group of classmates, with their adolescent love and experiences, with the carefree and cheerfulness inherent in this age. The girls, who then immediately, at once, saw the bloody corpses of their boys and, not having time to comprehend, refusing to believe what had happened, ended up in a hell created by adults.
“On the very first day the Germans arrived in Krasnaya Polyana, two fascists appeared to Alexandra Yakovlevna (Demyanova). They saw in the room Demyanova's daughter - 14-year-old Nyura - a frail and frail health girl. A German officer grabbed the teenager and raped her in front of her mother. On December 10, the doctor of the local gynecological hospital, having examined the girl, stated that this Hitlerite bandit had infected her with syphilis. In a neighboring apartment, fascist cattle raped another 14-year-old girl, Tonya I.
On December 9, 1941, the corpse of a Finnish officer was found in Krasnaya Polyana. A collection of 37 female buttons was found in a pocket, an account of rape. And in Krasnaya Polyana he raped Margarita K. and also tore off a button from her blouse. "
The killed soldiers often found "trophies" in the form of buttons, stockings, curls of women's hair. They found photographs of scenes of violence, letters and diaries in which they described their "exploits".
“In their letters, the Nazis share their adventures with cynical frankness and boasting. Corporal Felix Kapdels sends a letter to his friend: “Having rummaged in the chests and organized a good supper, we began to have fun. The girl was caught angry, but we organized her too. It doesn't matter that the whole department ... "
Corporal Georg Pfaler does not hesitate to write to his mother (!) In Sappenfeld: “We stayed in a small town for three days ... You can imagine how much we ate in three days. And how many chests and cupboards have been dug, how many young ladies have been ruined ... Our life is now merry, not like in the trenches ... "
In the diary of the murdered chief corporal there is the following entry: “October 12th. Today I took part in cleaning the camp from suspicious ones. They shot 82. Among them was beautiful woman... We, me and Karl, took her to the operating room, she bit and howled. After 40 minutes she was shot. Memory - a few minutes of pleasure "".
With the prisoners who did not manage to get rid of such incriminating documents, the conversation was short: they took them aside and - a bullet in the back of the head.
A woman in a military uniform aroused particular hatred among enemies. She is not only a woman - she is also a soldier at war with you! And if the captured male soldiers were broken morally and physically with barbaric torture, then the female soldiers - with rape. (They also resorted to him during interrogations. The Germans raped the girls from the Young Guard, and threw one naked on a hot stove.)
The paramedics who fell into their hands were raped without exception.
“Two kilometers south of the village of Akimovka (Melitopolshchina), the Germans attacked the car in which there were two wounded Red Army soldiers and a female paramedic accompanying them. They dragged the woman into sunflowers, raped her, and then shot her. At the wounded Red Army men, these animals twisted their arms and also shot them ... "
“In the village of Voronki, Ukraine, the Germans placed 40 wounded Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war and nurses in a former hospital. The nurses were raped and shot, and guards were set up near the wounded ... "
“In Krasnaya Polyana, the wounded soldiers and the wounded nurse were not given 4 days of water and 7 days of food, and then they gave them salt water. The nurse began to agonize. The dying girl was raped by the Nazis in front of the wounded Red Army men. "
The perverse logic of war requires the rapist to exercise FULL power. This means that humiliation of the victim alone is not enough. And then unthinkable mockery is committed over the victim, and in conclusion, her life is taken away, as a manifestation of the SUPERIOR power. Otherwise, what good, she will think that she gave you pleasure! And you can look weak in her eyes, since you did not control your sexual desire. Hence the sadistic treatment and murder.
“Hitler's robbers in one village seized a fifteen-year-old girl and brutally raped her. Sixteen animals tortured this girl. She resisted, she called her mother, she screamed. They gouged out her eyes and threw her, torn to pieces, spattered on the street ... It was in the Belarusian town of Chernin. "
“In the city of Lvov, 32 female workers of a Lviv garment factory were raped and then killed by German stormtroopers. Drunken German soldiers dragged Lviv girls and young women into Kosciuszko Park and brutally raped them. The old priest V.L. Pomaznev, who, with a cross in his hands, tried to prevent violence against girls, the Nazis beat him, tore off his cassock, burned his beard and stabbed him with a bayonet. "
“The streets of the village of K., where the Germans were rampaging for some time, were strewn with the corpses of women, old people, and children. The surviving villagers told the Red Army soldiers that the Nazis drove all the girls into the hospital building and raped them. Then they locked the doors and set the building on fire. "
"In the Begoml region, the wife of a Soviet worker was raped and then put on a bayonet."
“In Dnepropetrovsk, on Bolshaya Bazarnaya Street, drunken soldiers detained three women. Having tied them to pillars, the Germans wildly outraged them, and then killed them. "
“In the village of Milyutino, the Germans arrested 24 collective farmers and took them to a neighboring village. Among those arrested was thirteen-year-old Anastasia Davydova. Having thrown the peasants into a dark barn, the Nazis began to torture them, demanding information about the partisans. All were silent. Then the Germans took the girl out of the barn and asked in which direction the collective farm cattle were driven. The young patriot refused to answer. The fascist scoundrels raped the girl and then shot them. "
“The Germans have rushed to us! Their officers dragged two 16-year-old girls to the cemetery and abused them. Then the soldiers were ordered to hang them in the trees. The soldiers obeyed the order and hung them upside down. In the same place, the soldiers outraged 9 elderly women. " (Collective farmer Petrova from the collective farm "Plowman".)
“We were in the village of Bolshoye Pankratovo. It was Monday, the 21st, at four o'clock in the morning. The fascist officer walked through the village, entered all the houses, took money and things from the peasants, threatened that he would shoot all the inhabitants. Then we came to the house at the hospital. The doctor and the girl were there. He told the girl: "Follow me to the commandant's office, I must check your documents." I saw her hiding her passport on her chest. He took her into a garden near the hospital and raped her there. Then the girl threw herself into the field, she shouted, it was clear that she had lost her mind. He caught up with her and soon showed me a passport covered in blood ... "
“The Nazis broke into the sanatorium of the People's Commissariat for Health in Augustow. (…) German fascists raped all the women who were in this sanatorium. And then the disfigured, beaten sufferers were shot. "
Historical literature has repeatedly noted that “during the investigation of war crimes, many documents and evidence were found about the rape of young pregnant women, who then had their throats cut and their breasts pierced with bayonets. Obviously hate for female breast in the blood of the Germans. "
I will cite several such documents and testimonies.
“In the village of Semyonovskoye, Kalinin Region, the Germans raped 25-year-old Olga Tikhonova, the wife of a Red Army soldier, mother of three children, who was in the last stage of pregnancy, and tied her hands with twine. After the rape, the Germans cut her throat, pierced both breasts and sadistically drilled them out.
“In Belarus, near the town of Borisov, 75 women and girls who fled when German troops approached fell into the hands of the Nazis. The Germans raped, then brutally killed 36 women and girls. 16-year-old girl L.I. By order of the German officer Hummer, the soldiers took Melchukova into the forest, where they raped her. After some time, other women, also taken to the forest, saw that there were boards near the trees, and Melchukova, dying, was pinned to the boards with bayonets, in whom the Germans were in front of other women, in particular V.I. Alperenko and V.M. Bereznikova, they cut off their breasts ... "
(For all my rich imagination, I cannot imagine what an inhuman scream accompanying the torment of women should have stood over this Belarusian place, over this forest. It seems that you hear this even in the distance, and you can't stand it, you plug your ears with both hands and run away because you know it's PEOPLE SCREAMING.)
“In the village of Zh., On the road, we saw the mutilated, undressed corpse of old man Timofey Vasilyevich Globa. It is all strewn with ramrods, riddled with bullets. Not far off in the garden lay a dead naked girl. Her eyes were gouged out, her right breast was cut off, and a bayonet stuck out in the left. This is the daughter of old man Globa - Galya.
When the Nazis broke into the village, the girl hid in the garden, where she spent three days. By the morning of the fourth day, Galya decided to make her way to the hut, hoping to get something to eat. Here she was overtaken by a German officer. A sick Globa ran out to her daughter's cry and hit the rapist with a crutch. Two more bandit officers jumped out of the hut, called the soldiers, seized Galya and her father. The girl was stripped, raped and brutally mocked at her, and her father was held so that he could see everything. They gouged out her eyes, cut off her right breast, and inserted a bayonet into the left. Then they undressed Timofey Globa, put him on the body of his daughter (!) And beat him with ramrods. And when he, having gathered the rest of his strength, tried to escape, he was overtaken on the road, shot and stabbed with bayonets. "
It was considered to be some special “prowess” to rape and torture women in front of people close to them: husbands, parents, children. Perhaps the audience was necessary to demonstrate their "strength" in front of them and emphasize their humiliating helplessness?
"Everywhere brutalized German bandits break into houses, rape women and girls in front of their relatives and their children, mock the raped and brutally deal with their victims right there."
“Collective farmer Ivan Gavrilovich Teryokhin walked through the village of Puchki with his wife Polina Borisovna. Several German soldiers grabbed Polina, dragged her aside, pushed her into the snow and, in front of her husband, began to rape her in turn. The woman screamed, resisted with all her might.
Then the fascist rapist shot her point-blank. Polina Terekhova thrashed in agony. Her husband escaped from the hands of the rapists and rushed to the dying woman. But the Germans caught up with him and stuck 6 bullets in his back. "
“On the Apnas farm, drunken German soldiers raped a 16-year-old girl and threw her into a well. They also threw her mother there, who was trying to prevent the rapists. "
Vasily Vishnichenko from the Generalskoye village showed: “The German soldiers seized me and took me to the headquarters. One of the fascists at this time dragged my wife into the cellar. When I returned, I saw that my wife was lying in the cellar, her dress was torn and she was already dead. The villains raped her and killed her with one bullet in the head and another in the heart.
During the occupation in Germany, Soviet troops committed mass rapes of local women.
“According to the estimates of the two main Berlin hospitals, the number of victims of rape by Soviet soldiers ranges from ninety-five to one hundred and thirty thousand people. One doctor concluded that approximately one hundred thousand women had been raped in Berlin alone. Moreover, about ten thousand of them died mainly as a result of suicide "
Senyavskaya Elena Spartakovna
The last months of the war were tragic for Germany. The story of the last defenders of Reich, killed by the Russian avengers, is very sad, but the fate of the German women who fell into the hands of the victorious Russian soldiers is more sad. The mass rapes were methodical ... with hatred and cruelty. On the this topic rarely said, because it is a stain on the heroic image of the heroes of the persecutors of the Second World War.
Catherine merridale
And here is what the famous Soviet playwright Zakhar Agranenko, who was serving as a Marine Corps officer in East Prussia at that time, writes in his diary:
"I do not believe in individual intimate relationship between soldiers and German women ... Nine, ten ... twelve people at the same time, it had the character of gang rapes ... "
A 21-year-old girl from the Agranenko reconnaissance detachment said: "Our soldiers behave with the Germans, especially with German women, absolutely right." To some, this seemed curious. For example, some German women remember that Soviet women watched as they were raped and laughed. But some were deeply shocked by what they saw in Germany. Natalia Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, was a war correspondent. She later recalled: "Russian soldiers raped all German women between the ages of 8 and 80. It was an army of rapists."
When the raped residents of Konigsberg begged their tormentors to kill them, the Red Army men considered themselves insulted. They answered: "Russian soldiers do not shoot women. Only Germans do this." The Red Army has convinced itself that, since it has assumed the role of liberating Europe from fascism, its soldiers have every right to behave as they please.
The rape of Soviet women nullifies attempts to explain the behavior of the Red Army as revenge for German atrocities on the territory of the Soviet Union. On March 29, 1945, the Central Committee of the Komsomol notified Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. General Tsygankov reported: "On the night of February 24, a group of 35 soldiers and the commander of their battalion entered the women's hostel in the village of Gryutenberg and raped everyone."
Many women were forced to "surrender" to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others. Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, tried to hide in a closet, but was pulled out of there by a young soldier. Central Asia... He was so turned on by the opportunity to make love to a beautiful young blonde that he came ahead of time. Magda tried to explain to him that she agreed to become his girlfriend if he protected her from other Russian soldiers, but he told his comrades about her, and one soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, Magda's Jewish friend, was also raped. When the Germans tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and that she was being persecuted, they got the answer: "Frau ist Frau" (A woman is a woman - approx. Trans.).
On January 3, my son came on vacation from the front. He served in SS units. My son told me several times that SS units in Russia were doing incredible things. If the Russians come here, they will not pour rose oil on you. It turned out differently .. When the Russians came, I decided to open the veins of my children and commit suicide. But I felt sorry for the children, I hid in the basement, where we sat hungry for several days. Suddenly four Red Army men entered there. They did not touch us, and little Werner was even given a piece of bread and a packet of cookies. I couldn't believe my eyes. After that we decided to go outside. Nobody touched us with the children ...
Elisabeth Schmeer
Well, at least someone was not touched.)))
Of course, there were no millions of victims, I personally do not believe in it .. But when the first time we went to visit home .. one of my veteran grandfathers was still alive .. and to my question: did they rape German women in 1945? replied: Well, no, but women ... while stating that there were enough of his pretty nurses ... if you consider that in the 45th he was 23 years old and with a height of 185, broad shoulders ... he was also a handsome man .. then I believe that the nurses did not refuse. But someone was denied ... and someone just took revenge ... anything is possible. But MASSIVE .. this is too much.
Do you even believe what this person is saying? Somehow I have big doubts.
March 29th, 2015, 09:49 pm
I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the documents carefully selected in the materials about "Atrocities of the Liberators" .
We have no moral right to honor the army, which completely dishonored itself by the total rape of children in front of their parents, massacres and the torture of innocent civilians, robbery and legalized looting.
The "liberators" began to engage in atrocities against the population (rape and torture with the subsequent murder of civilians) back in the Crimea. Thus, the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front, General of the Army Petrov, in order No. 074 of June 8, 1944, denounced the "outrageous antics" of the soldiers of his front on the Soviet territory of Crimea, "even reaching the level of armed robberies and the murder of local residents."
In Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the atrocities of the "liberators" grew, even more - in the Baltic countries, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia, where acts of violence against the local population took on appalling proportions. But complete terror came on the territory of Poland. There, mass rapes of Polish women and girls began, and the leadership of the troops, which had a negative attitude towards the Poles, turned a blind eye to this.
Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to explain these atrocities by "revenge against the Germans for the occupation." The Poles did not participate in this occupation, but they were raped almost to the same extent as the Germans. Therefore, the explanation must be sought elsewhere.
Sexual crimes (and not only in Germany, but even earlier in Poland) have stained themselves not only by soldiers and officers, but also by the highest composition of the Soviet army - the generals. Many Soviet “liberator” generals raped local girls. A typical example: Major General Berestov, commander of the 331st Infantry Division, on February 2, 1945 in Petershagen near Preussisch Eiley, with one of the officers accompanying him, raped the daughter of a local peasant woman whom he forced to serve as his servant, as well as a Polish girl (p. 349 in the book cited).
In general, almost all Soviet generals in East Germany were involved in sex crimes in an especially serious form: rape of children, rape with violence and mutilation (cutting off breasts, torturing female genitals with all sorts of objects, gouging out eyes, cutting off the tongue, nailing nails, etc.) - and the subsequent murder of victims. Johaim Hoffman, on the basis of documents, names the names of the main persons guilty of or involved in such crimes: this is Marshal Zhukov, generals: Telegin, Kazakov, Rudenko, Malinin, Chernyakhovsky, Khokhlov, Razbiytsev, Glagolev, Karpenkov, Lakhtarin, Ryapasov, Andreev, Yastrebov , Tymchik, Okorokov, Berestov, Papchenko, Zaretsky, etc.
All of them either personally raped Germans and Poles, or participated in this, allowing and encouraging the troops with their instructions and covering up these sexual crimes, which is a criminal offense and under the Criminal Code of the USSR there is a firing article.
According to the most minimal estimates of the current studies of the Federal Republic of Germany, in the winter of 1944 and the spring of 1945, Soviet soldiers and officers killed 120,000 civilians in their occupied territory (usually with the rape of women and children, with torture) (these are not those killed during the hostilities!). Another 200,000 innocent civilians died in Soviet camps, and more than 250,000 died during the deportation to Soviet labor slavery, which began on February 3, 1945. Plus, infinitely many died from the occupation policy of "blockade - as revenge for the blockade of Leningrad" (in Konigsberg alone, 90,000 people died of starvation and inhuman conditions of the "artificial blockade" during the six months of occupation).
Let me remind you that since October 1944, Stalin allowed servicemen to send trophies home (generals - 16 kg, officers - 10 kg, sergeants and privates - 5 kg). As letters from the front prove, this was taken to mean that "looting was unambiguously authorized by the top leadership."
At the same time, the leadership allowed the soldiers to rape all women. So, the commander of the 153rd Infantry Division Eliseev announced to the troops in early October 1944:
“We are going to East Prussia. The Red Army and officers are granted the following rights: 1) To destroy any German. 2) Seizure of property. 3) Rape of women. 4) Robbery. 5) ROA soldiers are not taken prisoner. Not a single round is worth wasting on them. They are beaten or trampled underfoot. " (BA-MA, RH 2/2684, 11/18/1944)
The main marauder in the Soviet army was Marshal G.K. Zhukov, who accepted the surrender of the German Wehrmacht. When he fell into disgrace with Stalin and was transferred to the post of commander of the Odessa military district, Deputy Defense Minister Bulganin, in a letter to Stalin in August 1946, reported that the customs authorities had detained 7 railway cars “with a total of 85 boxes of furniture from Albin May "from Germany", which were to be transported to Odessa for Zhukov's personal needs. In another report to Stalin in January 1948, Colonel-General of State Security Abakumov reported that during a "secret search" at Zhukov's Moscow apartment and at his dacha, a large amount of looted property was found. Specifically, among other things were listed: 24 pieces of gold watches, 15 gold necklaces with pendants, gold rings and other jewelry, 4000 m of woolen and silk fabrics, more than 300 sable, fox and astrakhan skins, 44 valuable carpets and tapestries, partly from Potsdam and others locks, 55 expensive paintings, as well as boxes of china, 2 boxes of silverware and 20 hunting rifles.
Zhukov on January 12, 1948, in a letter to a member of the Politburo Zhdanov, admitted this looting, but for some reason forgot to write about it in his memoirs "Memories and Reflections."
Sometimes the sadism of the "liberators" seems generally difficult to understand. For example, here is just one of the episodes listed below. As soon as on October 26, 1944, Soviet units invaded German territory, they began to commit incomprehensible atrocities there. Soldiers and officers of the 93rd Rifle Corps of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front in one estate nailed 5 children by their tongues to a large table and left them in this position to die. What for? Which of the "liberators" came up with such a sadistic execution of children? And were these "liberators" generally mentally normal, and not sadistic-psychotic?
An excerpt from the book of Joachim Hoffmann "Stalin's War of Destruction" (M., AST, 2006. pp. 321-347).
Encouraged by Soviet military propaganda and the command structures of the Red Army, soldiers of the 16th Guards Rifle Division of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the 11th Guards Army in the last decade of October 1944 began to massacre the peasant population in the ledge south of Gumbinnen. In this place, the Germans, having recaptured it, were able, as an exception, to conduct more detailed investigations. In Nemmersdorf alone, at least 72 men, women and children were killed, women and even girls were raped before, several women were nailed to the barn gates. Not far from there, a large number of Germans and French prisoners of war, who were still in German captivity, fell from the hands of Soviet assassins. Everywhere in the surrounding settlements, the bodies of brutally murdered residents were found - for example, in Banfeld, the Teichhoff estate, Alt Wusterwitz (there, in the stable, the remains of several people burned alive were also found) and in other places. “Near the road and in the courtyards of houses, the corpses of civilians lay in masses ... - said Chief Lieutenant Dr. Amberger, - in particular, I saw many women who were ... also killed children. "
Gunner Erich Cherkus of the 121st Artillery Regiment reported about his observations in Schillmeischen near Heidekrug in the Memel region, where units of the 93rd Rifle Corps of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front invaded on October 26, 1944. the following: “I found my father by the barn, face to the ground with a bullet hole in the back of his head ... In one room lay a man and a woman, their hands were tied behind their backs and both were tied to each other with the same cord ... saw 5 children with tongues nailed to a large table. Despite an intense search, I did not find a trace of my mother ... On the way, we saw 5 girls tied with one cord, their clothes were almost completely removed, their backs were widely ripped open. It looked like the girls were being dragged quite far on the ground. In addition, we saw several completely crushed carts by the road. "
It is impossible to strive to display all the terrible details or, even more so, to present a complete picture of what happened. So let a number of selected examples give an idea of the actions of the Red Army in the eastern provinces even after the resumption of the offensive in January 1945. The Federal Archives, in its report on "expulsion and crimes in exile" of May 28, 1974, published the exact data from the so-called summary sheets about atrocities in two selected districts, namely in the East Prussian border district of Johannisburg and in the Silesian border district of Oppeln [now Opole, Poland]. According to these official investigations, in the Johannisburg district, in the sector of the 50th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front, along with countless other killings, the murder of 120 (according to other sources - 97) civilians, as well as several German soldiers, was singled out on January 24, 1945 and French prisoners of war from the refugee column along the Nickelsberg-Herzogdorf road south of Arys [now Ozhisz, Poland]. On the Stollendorf - Arys road, 32 refugees were shot, and on the Arys - Drigelsdorf road near Schlagakrug on February 1, by order of a Soviet officer, about 50 people, mostly children and young people, were snatched from their parents and loved ones in refugee carts. Near Gross Rosen (Gross Rosenko), the Soviets at the end of January 1945 burned about 30 people alive in a field barn. One witness saw how “one corpse after another” was lying by the road to Arys. In Arys itself, "a large number of executions" were carried out, apparently at the assembly point, and in the torture basement of the NKVD - "torture of the most cruel kind" up to death.
In the Silesian district of Oppeln, servicemen of the 32nd and 34th Guards Rifle Corps of the 5th Guards Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front killed at least 1,264 German civilians by the end of January 1945. The Russian ostarbeiters, most of whom were forcibly deported to work in Germany, and Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity, did not partly escape their fate either. In Oppeln they were rounded up in a public place and, after a brief propaganda speech, they were killed. The same is attested about the Kruppamüle Ostarbeiter camp at the Malapane [Mala-Panev] river in Upper Silesia. On January 20, 1945, after the Soviet tanks reached the camp, several hundred Russian men, women and children were called here and, as "traitors" and "accomplices of the fascists," they were shot from machine guns or ground with tank tracks. In Gottesdorf, Soviet soldiers on 23 January shot about 270 residents, including young children and 20-40 members of the Marian Brotherhood. In Karlsruhe [now Pokuy, Poland] 110 residents were shot, including the inhabitants of the Anninsky orphanage, in Kupp - 60-70 residents, including residents of a nursing home and a priest who wanted to protect women from rape, etc. in other places ... But Johannisburg and Oppeln were only two of the many districts in the eastern provinces of the German Reich that were occupied by the Red Army in 1945.
Based on the reports of the field command services, the Department of the "Foreign Armies of the East" of the General Staff of the Ground Forces compiled several lists "on violations of international law and atrocities committed by the Red Army in the occupied German territories" many Soviet atrocities with a certain degree of reliability. For example, Army Group A reported on January 20, 1945 that all residents of the newly occupied settlements Reichtal [Rychtal] and Glaushe near Namslau [now Namyslaw, Poland] were shot by Soviet soldiers of the 9th Mechanized Corps of the 3rd Guards Tank army. January 22, 1945, according to a report from Army Group Center, near Grünhain in the Velau district [now. Znamensk, Russia] tanks of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps "overtook, fired at tank shells and machine-gun bursts" a column of refugees 4 kilometers long, "mostly women and children", and "the rest were laid down by submachine gunners." A similar thing happened on the same day not far from there, near Gertlauken, where 50 people from a column of refugees were killed by Soviet soldiers, partially by shots in the back of the head.
In West Prussia, in an unspecified settlement, at the end of January, a long train of refugees was also overtaken by advanced Soviet tank detachments. According to several surviving women, tankmen (of the 5th Guards Tank Army) poured gasoline on the horses and carts and set them on fire: “Part of the civilians, mostly women and children, jumped off the carts and tried to escape, some of them already looking like living torches. After that, the Bolsheviks opened fire. Only a few managed to escape. " Likewise, in Plonen at the end of January 1945, tanks of the 5th Guards Tank Army attacked and shot down a refugee column. All women from 13 to 60 years old from this settlement, located near Elbing [now Elblag, Poland], were continuously raped by the Red Army "in the most cruel way." German soldiers from a tank reconnaissance company found one woman with a ripped bayonet bottom belly, and another young woman on wooden planks with a smashed face. Destroyed and plundered refugee convoys on both sides of the road, the corpses of passengers lying nearby in a roadside ditch were also found in Maislatein near Elbing.
The deliberate destruction or shelling of refugee convoys that were everywhere along the roads and were well recognized as such were reported from the eastern provinces everywhere, for example, from the area of operations of the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army. In the Waldrode district on January 18 and 19, 1945, in several places, such columns were stopped, attacked and partially destroyed, "the women and children who were falling were shot or crushed" or, as another report says, "most women and children were killed." Soviet tanks fired at a German hospital transport from guns and machine guns near Waldrode, as a result of which "only 80 of the 1,000 wounded were saved." In addition, there are reports of attacks by Soviet tanks on refugee columns from Showerkirch, Gombin, where “apprx. 800 women and children ”, from Dietfurt-Filene and other localities. Several of these convoys were overtaken on January 19, 1945 and near Brest, south of Thorn [now Brzesz Kujawski and Torun, Poland, respectively], in what was then Warthegau, passengers, mainly women and children, were shot. According to a report dated February 1, 1945, in this area within three days "out of about 8000 persons, approximately 4500 women and children were killed, the rest are completely scattered, it can be assumed that most of them were destroyed in a similar way."
SILESIA
Near the border of the Reich, west of Wieluni, Soviet soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front poured gasoline on the carts of the refugee convoy and burned them along with the passengers. On the roads lay countless bodies of German men, women and children, partially in a mutilated state - with a slit throat, a cut tongue, a ripped belly. Also west of Wielun, 25 employees (front-line workers) of the Todt Organization were shot by tank crews of the 3rd Guards Tank Army. All men were shot in Heinersdorf, women were raped by Soviet soldiers, and near Kuntzendorf 25-30 men from Volkssturm were shot in the back of the head. In the same way, in Glausch near Namslau, 18 people died at the hands of assassins, servicemen of the 59th Army, "including men from the Volkssturm and nurses." In Beatengof near Olau [now Olawa, Poland], after its reoccupation, all the men were found killed by shots to the back of the head. The criminals were servicemen of the 5th Guards Army.
In Grunberg [now Zielona Gora, Poland] 8 families were killed by the 9th Guards Tank Corps. The arena of terrible crimes was the Tannenfeld estate near Grottkau [now Grodkow, Poland]. There, Red Army men from the 229th Rifle Division raped two girls and then killed them, mocking them. One man's eyes were gouged out and his tongue was cut off. The same thing happened with a 43-year-old Polish woman who was then tortured to death.
In Alt-Grottkau, soldiers of the same division killed 14 prisoners of war, cut off their heads, gouged out their eyes and crushed them with tanks. The Red Army men of the same rifle division were also responsible for the atrocities in Schwarzengrund near Grottkau. They raped women, including the monastery sisters, shot the peasant Kalert, ripped open the stomach of his wife, chopped off her hands, and shot the peasant Christoph and his son, as well as a young girl. On the Eisdorf estate near Merzdorf, Soviet soldiers from the 5th Guards Army gouged out the eyes of an elderly man and an elderly woman, apparently a married couple, and cut off their noses and fingers. Nearby, 11 wounded Luftwaffe soldiers were found brutally killed. Likewise, 21 German prisoners of war, killed by Red Army men from the 4th Panzer Army, were discovered in Güterstadt near Glogau [now Pugów, Poland]. In the village of Heslicht near Strigau [now Strzeg, Poland] all the women were “raped one after the other” by the Red Army from the 9th Mechanized Corps. Maria Heinke found her husband, still showing faint signs of life, dying in a Soviet guardhouse. A medical examination revealed that his eyes were gouged out, his tongue was cut off, his arm was broken several times and his skull was smashed.
Soldiers of the 7th Guards Tank Corps in Ossig near Strigau raped women, killed 6-7 girls, shot 12 peasants and committed similar grave crimes in Hertwisswaldau near Jauer [now Javor, Poland]. In Liegnica [now Legnica, Poland], the bodies of numerous civilians shot by Soviet soldiers from the 6th Army were found. In the town of Kostenblut near Neimarkt [now Sroda Slaska, Poland], captured by units of the 7th Guards Tank Corps, women and girls were raped, including the mother of 8 children who was being demolished. A brother who tried to intercede for her was shot. All foreign prisoners of war were shot, as well as 6 men and 3 women. The sisters from the Catholic hospital did not escape the mass rape.
Pilgramsdorf near Goldberg [now Zlotoryja, Poland] was the scene of numerous killings, rapes and arson by the soldiers of the 23rd Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. In Beralsdorf, on the outskirts of Lauban [now Luban, Poland], 39 still remaining women were dishonored "in the lowest way" by Soviet soldiers from the 7th Guards Tank Corps, one woman was shot in the lower jaw, she was locked in a cellar and a few days later when she was seriously ill with a fever, three Red Army soldiers one after another "raped her, threatening with a pistol, in the most cruel way."
BRANDENBURG (predominantly Neimark and Sternberger Land)
A general idea of the treatment of the population in the eastern parts of the province of Brandenburg is given by the report of the Russian agents Danilov and Chirshin, sent by the 103rd Front Intelligence Division from February 24 to March 1, 1945. According to him, all Germans aged 12 years and older were mercilessly used on the construction of fortifications, the unused part of the population was sent to the East, and the old people were doomed to starvation. In Zorau [now Zhary, Poland] Danilov and Chirshin saw "a mass of bodies of women and men ... killed (stabbed) and shot (gunshots in the back of the head and in the heart), lying in the streets, in courtyards and in houses." According to one Soviet officer, who himself was outraged by the scale of the terror, "all women and girls, regardless of age, were mercilessly raped." And in Skamp near Züllichau (now Skompe and Sulechow, Poland, respectively), Soviet soldiers from the 33rd Army unleashed a “terrible bloody terror.” In almost all houses there were “strangled bodies of women, children and old people.” Not far behind Skamp, by the road to Renchen [Benchen, now Zbonshin, Poland], the corpses of a man and a woman were found. The woman's belly was ripped open, the fetus was ripped out, and the hole in the belly was filled with sewage and straw. Nearby were the corpses of three hanged men from Volkssturm.
In Kai, near Züllichau, servicemen of the same army shot in the back of the head the wounded, as well as women and children from the same convoy. The town of Neu Benchen [now Zbonšicek, Poland] was plundered by the Red Army and then deliberately set on fire. Near the Schwibus [now Swiebodzin, Poland] - Frankfurt road, Red Army men from the 69th Army shot at civilians, including women and children, so that the corpses lay "on top of each other." Near Alt-Drewitz near Kalenzig, servicemen of the 1st Guards Tank Army shot a major of the medical service, a major and medical orderlies and at the same time opened fire on American prisoners of war who were being returned from the Alt-Drewitz base camp, wounding 20-30 of them and killing unknown number... By the road in front of Gross-Blumberg (on the Oder) in groups of 5-10 lay the bodies of about 40 German soldiers, killed by shots in the head or in the back of the head and then robbed. In Reppen, all the men from a passing refugee train were shot by Soviet soldiers from the 19th Army, and the women were raped. In Gassin near Sommerfeld [now Yasen and Lubsko, respectively, Poland] tanks of the 6th Guards Mechanized Corps opened fire indiscriminately on civilians. In Massina near Landsberg [now Gorzow Wielkopolski, Poland], soldiers of the 5th Shock Army shot an unknown number of residents, raped women and minors, and removed looted property. In an unknown village near Landsberg, servicemen of the 331st Infantry Division shot 8 male civilians after robbing them.
When units of the Soviet 11th Panzer Corps and 4th Guards Rifle Corps in early February suddenly burst into the city of Lebus, located west of the Oder, robberies immediately began, on the occasion of which they were shot a certain number civilians. The Red Army men raped women and girls, two of whom were nailed with rifle butts. Unexpected breakthrough Soviet troops to the Oder and in places beyond the Oder became a nightmare for countless residents and German soldiers. In Gross-Neuendorf (on the Oder), 10 German prisoners of war were locked in a barn and killed with machine guns by Soviet soldiers (apparently, of the 1st Guards Tank Army). In Raitwein and Trettin, servicemen (apparently of the 8th Guards Army) shot all German soldiers, police officers and other "fascists", as well as entire families, in whose houses the Wehrmacht servicemen may have found refuge. In Wiesenau, near Frankfurt, two women aged 65 and 55 were found dying after hours of rape. In Tseden [now Tsedynia, Poland], a Soviet woman in an officer's uniform from the 5th Guards Tank Corps shot and killed a merchant couple. And in Genshmar, Soviet soldiers killed the landowner who manages the estate and three workers.
The shock group of the Vlasov army, led by Colonel of the ROA Sakharov, on February 9, 1945, with the support of the Germans, again occupied the settlements of Neulevin and Kerstenbruch located in the bend of the Oder. According to the German report of March 15, 1945, the population of both points "was subjected to the most terrible outrages" and after that "under the terrible impression of bloody Soviet terror." In Neulevin, the burgomaster and a Wehrmacht soldier on vacation were found shot dead. In one shed lay the corpses of three desecrated and murdered women, two of whom had their legs tied. One German woman lay shot at the door of her house. An elderly couple was strangled to death. As the criminals, as in the nearby village of Neubarnim, servicemen of the 9th Guards Tank Corps were identified. In Neubarnim, 19 residents were found dead. The body of the innkeeper was mutilated, her legs tied with wire. Here, as in other localities, women and girls were desecrated, and in Kerstenbruch - even a 71-year-old woman with amputated legs. The picture of the violent crimes of the Soviet troops in these villages of the Oder bend, as well as everywhere in the German eastern territories, complement the robbery and deliberate destruction.
MEASUREMENTS
There were only relatively few reports from Pomerania in February 1945, as the breakthrough fights here did not really begin until the end of the month. But the report of the Georgian lieutenant Berakashvili, who, being sent by the Georgian liaison headquarters to the cadet school in Posen [now Poznan, Poland], together with other officers of the volunteer units participated in the defense of the fortress and made his way in the direction of Stettin [now Szczecin, Poland], nevertheless conveys some impressions of the area southeast of Stettin. ... The roads were often lined with soldiers and civilians killed by a shot in the back of the head, "always half-naked and, in any case, without boots." Lieutenant Berakashvili witnessed the cruel rape of a peasant's wife in the presence of screaming children near Schwarzenberg and everywhere he found traces of looting and destruction. The town of Ban [now Banje, Poland] was “terribly destroyed”, with “many corpses of civilians” lying on its streets, which, as the Red Army men explained, were killed by them “in retaliation”.
The situation in the settlements around Piritz [now Pyrice, Poland] fully confirmed these observations. In Billerbeck, they shot the owner of the estate, as well as old and sick people, raped women and girls from the age of 10, robbed apartments, drove away the remaining residents. In the Brederlov estate, the Red Army men desecrated women and girls, one of whom was then shot, like the wife of an escaped Wehrmacht vacationer. In Köselitz, the district chief, a peasant, a lieutenant on leave, was killed, in Eichelshagen, the leader of the lower level of the NSDAP and a peasant family of 6 people. The perpetrators in all cases were members of the 61st Army. A similar thing happened in the villages around Greifenhagen [now Gryfino, Poland], south of Stettin. So, in Edersdorf, servicemen of the 2nd Guards Tank Army shot 10 evacuated women and a 15-year-old boy, finished off the still living victims with bayonets and pistol shots, and also “cut out” entire families with small children.
In Rorsdorf, Soviet soldiers shot many residents, including a wounded military vacationer. Women and girls were desecrated and then partially killed as well. In Gross-Silber near Kallis, Red Army men from the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps raped a young woman with a broomstick, cut off her left chest and smashed her skull. In Preussisch-Friedland, Soviet soldiers from the 52nd Guards Rifle Division shot 8 men and 2 women, raped 34 women and girls. The terrible event was reported by the commander of the German engineering and tank battalion of the 7th Panzer Division. At the end of February 1945, Soviet officers from the 1st (or 160th) rifle division north of Konitz drove several children aged 10-12 years into a minefield for reconnaissance. German soldiers heard the "pitiful cries" of children, badly wounded by exploding mines, "powerlessly bleeding from torn bodies."
EASTERN PRUSSIA
And in East Prussia, for which heavy battles were fought, in February 1945 atrocities continued with unrelenting force ... emphasis and partially cut out. In Landsberg, Soviet soldiers from the 331st Infantry Division drove the stunned population, including women and children, into basements, set fire to houses, and began shooting at people fleeing in panic. Many were burned to death. In a village near the Landsberg-Heilsberg road, servicemen of the same rifle division kept 37 women and girls locked up in a basement for 6 days and nights, there they partially chained them and, with the participation of officers, raped them many times every day. Due to desperate screams, two of these Soviet officers before everyone's eyes, the tongues of two women were cut out with a "semicircular knife." The other two women had their folded hands nailed to the floor with a bayonet. German tank soldiers ultimately managed to free only a few of the unfortunate, 20 women died of abuse.
In Hanshagen near Preussisch-Eylau [now Bagrationovsk, Russia], Red Army men from the 331st Infantry Division shot two mothers who opposed the rape of their daughters, and a father, whose daughter at the same time was pulled out of the kitchen and raped by a Soviet officer. Further, they were killed: a married couple of teachers with 3 children, an unknown refugee girl, an innkeeper and a farmer, whose 21-year-old daughter was raped. In Petershagen, near Preussisch-Eylau, soldiers of this division killed two men and a 16-year-old boy named Richard von Hoffmann, subjecting women and girls to brutal violence.
May 6th, 2002
(Antony Beevor), " " , Great Britain.
"The soldiers of the Red Army do not believe in" individual ties "with German women, - wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary, which he kept during the war in East Prussia. - Nine, ten, twelve at once - they rape them collectively."
The long columns of Soviet troops that entered East Prussia in January 1945 were an unusual mixture of modernity and the Middle Ages: tankers in black leather helmets, on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, Lend-Lease Doji and Studebakers for followed by the second echelon, which consisted of carts. The variety of weapons was fully consistent with the variety of characters of the soldiers themselves, among whom were both outright bandits, drunkards and rapists, as well as idealist communists and representatives of the intelligentsia, who were shocked by the behavior of their comrades.
In Moscow, they knew very well what was happening from detailed reports, one of which said: "Many Germans believe that all the Germans who remained in East Prussia were raped by soldiers of the Red Army."
There were numerous examples of gang rapes "of both minors and old women".
Issued order number 006 in order to send "feelings to the battlefield." It got nowhere. There have been several arbitrary attempts to restore order. The commander of one of the rifle regiments allegedly "personally shot the lieutenant, who was lining up his soldiers in front of a German woman who was knocked to the ground." But in most cases, either the officers themselves participated in the atrocities or the lack of discipline among drunken soldiers armed with machine guns made it impossible to restore order.
Calls to avenge the affected Homeland were understood as permission to be cruel. Even young women, soldiers and paramedics, were not opposed. A 21-year-old girl from the Agranenko reconnaissance detachment said: "Our soldiers behave with the Germans, especially with German women, absolutely right." To some, this seemed curious. For example, some German women remember that Soviet women watched as they were raped and laughed. But some were deeply shocked by what they saw in Germany. Natalia Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, was a war correspondent. She later recalled: "Russian soldiers raped all German women between the ages of 8 and 80. It was an army of rapists."
Booze, including dangerous chemicals stolen from laboratories, played a significant role in this violence. It seems that Soviet soldiers could attack a woman only after getting drunk for courage. But at the same time, they too often drank to such a state that they could not complete intercourse and used bottles - some of the victims were disfigured in this way.
The topic of mass atrocities of the Red Army in Germany was banned in Russia for so long that even now veterans deny that they took place. Only a few spoke about it openly, but without any regrets. The commander of the tank unit recalled: "They all raised their skirts and lay down on the bed." He even boasted that "two million of our children were born in Germany."
The ability of Soviet officers to convince themselves that most of the victims were either pleased or agreed that this was a fair price for the Germans' actions in Russia is amazing. A Soviet major told an English journalist at the time: "Our comrades were so hungry for female affection that they often raped sixty, seventy, and even eighty, to their sheer surprise, if not to say pleasure."
One can only outline the psychological contradictions. When the raped residents of Konigsberg begged their tormentors to kill them, they considered themselves insulted. They answered: "Russian soldiers do not shoot women. Only Germans do this." The Red Army has convinced itself that, since it has assumed the role of liberating Europe from fascism, its soldiers have every right to behave as they please.
A sense of superiority and humiliation characterized the behavior of most of the soldiers towards women in East Prussia. The victims not only paid for the crimes of the Wehrmacht, but also symbolized the atavistic object of aggression - as old as the war itself. As historian and feminist Susan Brownmiller has noted, rape, as a conqueror's right, is directed "against the women of the enemy" to emphasize victory. True, after the initial frenzy of January 1945, sadism became less and less common. When the Red Army reached 3 months later, the soldiers were already viewing German women through the prism of the usual "victor's right". The feeling of superiority certainly survived, but it was, perhaps, an indirect consequence of the humiliation that the soldiers themselves endured from their commanders and the Soviet leadership as a whole.
Several other factors also played a role. Sexual freedom was widely discussed in the 1920s within the Communist Party, but in the next decade, Stalin did everything to make Soviet society virtually asexual. It had nothing to do with puritanical views. Soviet people- the fact is that love and sex did not fit into the concept of "deindividualization" of the personality. Natural desires had to be suppressed. Freud was banned, divorce and adultery were frowned upon by the CCP. Homosexuality has become a criminal offense. The new doctrine completely prohibited sex education... In art, the image of a woman's breasts, even covered with clothes, was considered the height of eroticism: it had to be covered by a work overalls. The regime demanded that any expression of passion be sublimated into love for the party and for comrade Stalin personally.
The Red Army men, for the most part, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women. Thus, attempts Soviet state suppressing the libido of its citizens led to what one Russian writer called "barrack erotica", which was much more primitive and cruel than any of the most violent pornography. All this was mixed with the influence of modern propaganda, which deprives man of his essence, and atavistic primitive impulses indicated by fear and suffering.
Writer Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent for the advancing Red Army, soon discovered that the victims of rape were not only Germans. Among them were Polish women, as well as young Russians, Ukrainian women and Belarusians who ended up in Germany as a displaced work force... He noted: "The liberated Soviet women often complain that our soldiers are raping them. One girl said to me in tears:" It was an old man, older than my father. "
The rape of Soviet women nullifies attempts to explain the behavior of the Red Army as revenge for German atrocities on the territory of the Soviet Union. On March 29, 1945, the Central Committee of the Komsomol notified Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. General Tsygankov reported: "On the night of February 24, a group of 35 soldiers and the commander of their battalion entered the women's hostel in the village of Gryutenberg and raped everyone."
In Berlin, despite, many women were simply unprepared for the horrors of Russian revenge. Many have tried to convince themselves that although the danger must be great in the countryside, mass rape cannot take place in the city in full view.
In Dahlem, Soviet officers visited Sister Kunigunda, the abbess of the nunnery that housed the orphanage and maternity hospital. The officers and soldiers behaved impeccably. They even warned that reinforcements were following them. Their prediction came true: nuns, girls, old women, pregnant women and those who had just given birth were all raped without pity.
Within a few days, it became a custom among the soldiers to choose their victims by shining torches in their faces. The very process of choice, instead of indiscriminate violence, indicates a certain change. By this time, Soviet soldiers began to view German women not as responsible for the crimes of the Wehrmacht, but as spoils of war.
Rape is often defined as violence that has little to do with sexual desire itself. But this definition is from the point of view of the victims. To understand a crime, you need to see it from the point of view of the aggressor, especially in the later stages, when “just” rape has replaced the endless rampage of January and February.
Many women were forced to "surrender" to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others. Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, tried to hide in a closet, but was pulled out of there by a young soldier from Central Asia. He was so turned on by the opportunity to make love to a beautiful young blonde that he came ahead of time. Magda tried to explain to him that she agreed to become his girlfriend if he protected her from other Russian soldiers, but he told his comrades about her, and one soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, Magda's Jewish friend, was also raped. When the Germans tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and that she was persecuted, they received in response: "Frau ist Frau" ( A woman is a woman - approx. lane.).
The women soon learned to hide during their evening hunting hours. Young daughters were hidden in attics for several days. Mothers went out to fetch water only in the early morning, so as not to fall under the arm of Soviet soldiers sleeping off after drinking. Sometimes the greatest danger came from neighbors, who gave away the places where the girls were hiding, thus trying to save their own daughters. Old Berliners still remember screaming at night. It was impossible not to hear them, since all the windows were smashed.
According to data from two city hospitals, 95,000-130,000 women were rape victims. One doctor estimated that out of 100,000 people who were raped, about 10,000 later died, mostly by committing suicide. The death rate among the 1.4 million raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia was even higher. Although at least 2 million German women have been raped, a significant proportion, if not most, have been gang raped.
If anyone tried to protect a woman from a Soviet rapist, it was either a father trying to protect his daughter, or a son trying to protect his mother. "13-year-old Dieter Sahl," neighbors wrote in a letter shortly after the event, "rushed with fists at a Russian who raped his mother right in front of him. He only got shot."
After the second stage, when women offered themselves to one soldier to protect themselves from the rest, the next stage - post-war famine - as Suzanne Brownmiller noted, "a thin line separating military rape from military prostitution." Ursula von Kardorf notes that shortly after the surrender of Berlin, the city was filled with women trading themselves for food or an alternative currency, cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German filmmaker who has thoroughly researched this issue, writes of "a mixture of outright violence, blackmail, calculation and real affection."
The fourth stage was the strange form of cohabitation of the officers of the Red Army with the German "occupation wives". Soviet officials went berserk when several Soviet officers deserted from the army when it was time to return home to stay with their German mistresses.
Even if the feminist definition of rape as a purely violent act seems simplistic, there is no justification for male complacency. The events of 1945 clearly show us how subtle a touch of civilization can be if there is no fear of retaliation. They also remind us that there is a dark side to male sexuality that we would rather not be reminded of.
____________________________________
("Daily Mail", UK)
("Pravda", USSR)
("The New York Times", USA)
("The Guardian", UK)
("The New York Times", USA)
("The New York Times", USA)
("The Sunday Times", UK)
("The Daily Telegraph", UK)
("The Times", UK)
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