Stalin- "responsible" for mass rape?

[ComradeMan]

Does Stalinism stand to be accused of mass rape?

Soviet Union

A wave of rapes and sexual violence occurred in Central Europe in 1944–45, as the Western Allies and the Red Army battered their way into the Third Reich. The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers range from tens of thousands to 2 million.[ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-ElizabethHeineman-6)

In many cases women were the victims or repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. Around 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports,[9] with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. According to Natalya Gesse, "the Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty." Soviet and Jewish women were raped also.

After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution. The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“ completely separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany

[Havet]

You know what german women used to say: 'Its better to have a russian in our pants than an american in the sky'

or something like that. Can't exactly remmember that particular history channel sentence

[L.A.P.]

Joseph Stalin was also personally responsible for eating each first born male baby not because he thought they were counterrevolutionary reactionaries, and not because they were Liberals, but because he felt like it.

[Ele'ill]

You know what german women used to say: 'Its better to have a russian in our pants than an american in the sky'

or something like that. Can't exactly remmember that particular history channel sentence

But what about their pants on a russian in the sky?

[Havet]

But what about their pants on a russian in the sky?

lol what

[Bright Banana Beard]

So the perpetrator is actually Stalin and not the soldiers? Stalin didn't win the war single handily, the proletarians who stand with Stalin actually does that.

[ComradeOm]

Did the rapes take place?
Yes

Were they ordered by Stalin or other high Soviet authorities?
No

Were they the product of Stalinist policies?
Debatable. The Soviet propaganda organs were, for obvious and understandable reasons, rather rabidly anti-German in outlook. This line had been reversed however shortly before the invasion of Prussia with an emphasis placed on being good occupiers and respecting civilians. May have been a case of too little too late, may have been irrelevant given that the soldiers had marched across the smouldering remains of European Russia

Could the Soviet authorities have done more to prevent the rapes?
Possibly. Lower level discipline in the Red Army was truly atrocious with officers often struggling to exert control. There is more than one case of officers being murdered while attempting to do so. This was particularly true of the unruly second-echelon and support troops who were responsible for most of the war crimes

[ComradeMan]

You know what german women used to say: 'Its better to have a russian in our pants than an american in the sky'

or something like that. Can't exactly remmember that particular history channel sentence

Look, I posted this because it's something that came up recently and there is also that Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Berlin:_The_Downfall_1945) by a British historian (not without criticism) that gets cited a lot.

Now the word "responsible" was put between inverted commas for a reason, however commanders take responsibility for the actions of their units ultimately. I doubt Admiral Doenitz ever personally torpedoed a ship... all the same he was tried and executed as a war criminal.

Whatever the reason, the rape of perhaps two million women by Red Army soldiers is not funny and you can keep your bad taste jokes.

[Havet]

Whatever the reason, the rape of perhaps two million women by Red Army soldiers is not funny and you can keep your bad taste jokes.

Of course its not funny. All i'm saying is that, during ww2 at least, german women didnt mind soviet rape that much, as the alternative would be american bombings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II), which were technically more life wrecking.

[ComradeMan]

Of course its not funny. All i'm saying is that, during ww2 at least, german women didnt mind soviet rape that much, as the alternative would be american bombings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II), which were technically more life wrecking.

That is a really sick thing to say.

Did you read the bit about the women who committed suicide? I suppose they didn't mind it too much either....

Before you build up the strawman argument of the allied bombings, yeah, but we aren't talking about the allied bombings, what the Nazis also did and the price of fish in Tokyo at the time, we are talking about what the Red Army did.

[Ele'ill]

Of course its not funny. All i'm saying is that, during ww2 at least, german women didnt mind soviet rape that much, as the alternative would be american bombings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II), which were technically more life wrecking.


I think the wit in the saying points towards the extension past the original extreme.

[Havet]

That is a really sick thing to say.

Did you read the bit about the women who committed suicide? I suppose they didn't mind it too much either....

Before you build up the strawman argument of the allied bombings, yeah, but we aren't talking about the allied bombings, what the Nazis also did and the price of fish in Tokyo at the time, we are talking about what the Red Army did.

According to 'THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS OF WWII: MASCULINITIES AND RAPE IN BERLIN', 1945, by James W. Messerschmidt (University of Southern Maine) (http://www.usm.maine.edu/crm/faculty/jim/raphael.htm), "it is estimated that some 130,000 (because so many girls and women suffered repeated and gang rapes, the actual number is ostensibly higher) Berlin girls and women were brutally raped by Soviet soldiers, —ten percent of the rape victims having committed suicide."

10% of 130 000 is 13 000

On the other hand, according to Landeshauptstadt Dresden historikerkommission Erklärung der Dresdner zur Ermittlung der Opferzahlen der Luftangriffe auf die Stadt Dresden am 13./14. Februar 1945 (http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/presseamt/Erklaerung_Historikerkommission.pdf), "an independent investigation commissioned by the city council in 2010 reported a minimum of 22,700 victims with a maximum total number of fatalities of 25,000"

So we can presume more women died from the bombings than from the actual rape. The question here is what is worse: being forced into a sexual act against your will or being killed. Neither you or I have any credibility into talking about this matter.

Anyway, i distinctly remmember seeing a documentary in which a german women actually claimed most of them feared the americans more than the russians precisely for the reasons above. I'm trying to find a reliable source at the moment. Will check back later.

[Havet]

I have found the video supporting my argument. It is from the famous ww2 coloured documentary 'Apocalypse: The Second World War"

Here is the link:

http://natgeotv.com/asia/apocalypse-the-second-world-war/videos/berlin-1945-and-1932

See precisely at 2:04, and keep on watching. The narrator is reading a sentence from the book "A women in Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_in_Berlin)". You can also watch a bit earlier for more context


But then we'd say: better to have a russian on your belly, than an american over your head

I want to be clear and re-state that I do not find this matter humorous in anyway. Perhaps my first post was misinterpreted, precisely because I didnt place any source, so I might have come off as joking. This was not my purpose. Now I have proof. I hope this matter is finally cleared

[Nolan]

Accusing Stalin of being a despot otherwise is one thing, but this has to be the strangest charge I've seen yet.

I do not have the source after my computer went belly up a while back, but this was also a problem in Korea so I don't know how much of it you could actually attribute to anti-German sentiment among the soldiers.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I remember an anecdote about this in European history post-1945 class in college: one teenage girl was repeatedly gang-raped by Soviet soldiers. Afterwards her father gave her a rope and told her to go hang herself, which she did.

I thought that story was really disturbing at the time, probably why I remember it.

[#FF0000]

I don't think you can blame it on Stalin or "Stalinist policy/propaganda". I think it has more to do with just how brutal the Eastern Front was in general, and probably a lack of discipline and training.

[hatzel]

Or, of course...well, this always seems to happen. Whenever there's a war, people end up getting raped. Just look across Africa today, and the common charge in inter-tribal warfare that people start marauding through villages raping everybody. I can't give an exact reason, but I think we can summarise by pointing out that war acts as a lubricant, to make people commit evil acts they may never have thought of committing otherwise. As I'm not a psychologist, I can't really explain why war has this effect on the human psyche, but I think we can agree on this. And I'm sure that if the inter-tribal warfare we see in the Congo today, for instance, was magnified to include millions of people storming in huge cities, rather than small bands in isolated villages, then I think the numerical results would be as bad, if not even worse, than those seen in the occupied Soviet territory. With or without a Stalin in charge.

[ComradeMan]

Or, of course...well, this always seems to happen. Whenever there's a war, people end up getting raped. Just look across Africa today, and the common charge in inter-tribal warfare that people start marauding through villages raping everybody. I can't give an exact reason, but I think we can summarise by pointing out that war acts as a lubricant, to make people commit evil acts they may never have thought of committing otherwise. As I'm not a psychologist, I can't really explain why war has this effect on the human psyche, but I think we can agree on this. And I'm sure that if the inter-tribal warfare we see in the Congo today, for instance, was magnified to include millions of people storming in huge cities, rather than small bands in isolated villages, then I think the numerical results would be as bad, if not even worse, than those seen in the occupied Soviet territory. With or without a Stalin in charge.

This is something that gets airbrushed out of a lot of history books and of course Soviet history books.

[hatzel]

Well everything gets airbrushed out of Soviet history books...:rolleyes:

[Red Future]

Look, I posted this because it's something that came up recently and there is also that Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Berlin:_The_Downfall_1945) by a British historian (not without criticism) that gets cited a lot.

Now the word "responsible" was put between inverted commas for a reason, however commanders take responsibility for the actions of their units ultimately. I doubt Admiral Doenitz ever personally torpedoed a ship... all the same he was tried and executed as a war criminal.

Whatever the reason, the rape of perhaps two million women by Red Army soldiers is not funny and you can keep your bad taste jokes.

That the Book by Max Hastings??

[ComradeMan]

That the Book by Max Hastings??

No, Antony Beevor. However I am aware of the criticism against him from the Russian side yet he defended himself saying his sources were NKVD/Soviet.

But the whole issue of Soviet war crimes is frought with difficulty.

[Bud Struggle]

Well, again a story--my Parents came over from Poland in the 30s my they still had family there and my mom told me that there were lots of rapes by Soviet soldiers of Polish women as the Red Army marched through. Hearsay of course, but it is another reason for the Polish extreme dislike of the Russians and through them Communism.

FWIW: If Communism wasn't so closely assoiated with Russia it might have had a fighting chance in Poland.

[ComradeMan]

Well, again a story--my Parents came over from Poland in the 30s my they still had family there and my mom told me that there were lots of rapes by Soviet soldiers of Polish women as the Red Army marched through. Hearsay of course, but it is another reason for the Polish extreme dislike of the Russians and through them Communism.

FWIW: If Communism wasn't so closely assoiated with Russia it might have had a fighting chance in Poland.

The carving up of Poland, a nation sacrificed on the altar of the ambitions of two dictators. Yeah, you're right on this one.

[ComradeMan]

Well, again a story--my Parents came over from Poland in the 30s my they still had family there and my mom told me that there were lots of rapes by Soviet soldiers of Polish women as the Red Army marched through. Hearsay of course, but it is another reason for the Polish extreme dislike of the Russians and through them Communism.

FWIW: If Communism wasn't so closely assoiated with Russia it might have had a fighting chance in Poland.

Here's a Polish point of view...

5UB1hlbDLuo

[Dimentio]

Does Stalinism stand to be accused of mass rape?

Soviet Union

A wave of rapes and sexual violence occurred in Central Europe in 1944–45, as the Western Allies and the Red Army battered their way into the Third Reich. The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers range from tens of thousands to 2 million.[ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-ElizabethHeineman-6)

In many cases women were the victims or repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. Around 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports,[9] with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. According to Natalya Gesse, "the Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty." Soviet and Jewish women were raped also.

After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution. The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“ completely separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany

Even Beevor is admitting that the official policy was to punish rapists. While horrible, and while Stalin in no way is an example to be honoured, to claim that Stalin was responsible for all rapes conducted by the soldiers of the Red Army is like claiming that Stalin was a sort of Demiurg who had personal control even over bad weather.

"Why did you hit that girl with a baseball bat?"

"Ooh dure teacher, Im'sa sorry, duuh Duuhvil forced me too"

Soon, they would probably claim that Stalin was responsible for floods, droughts and locusts too.

On the other hand, the Wehrmacht committed war crimes in the occupied areas, especially in the Soviet Union, which were sanctioned and ordered from Rastenberg, to confiscate all food, burn what couldn't be left and engineer mass starvation in occupied lands. Hitler's official goal was to reduce the Slavic population with 30 millions after the war and force the remainder to live as serfs for the German colonists.

There are stories that when Soviet soldiers entered Germany, they even attacked the trees - for being "enemy trees". So deep-seated was the hatred for the Germans amongst the average Red Army soldiers.

Imagine if Mexico invaded the United States, besieged Los Angeles for 900 days and starved 2 million people to death in that city alone, while constantly bombing it. Imagine if they systematically destroyed livestock and farms in occupied territories, forced the civilian population to do slave labour, if they did unproportional massacres on civilians and filled wells and water tanks with dead bodies to pollute the water.

Given the well-known US tendency to overreact against slight injuries due to being shielded from the grim realities of the world, I am pretty sure that the Mexicans after the inevitable US victory would have been quite much destoyed.

Actually, the United States secretary of armanents, Henry Morgenthau, had a plan to deindustrialise Germany and deprive it from food supplies, as well as the sterilisation of most German males. It would have meant a genocide.

And then, the Germans hadn't done anything worse against the USA than sinking a few cargo vessels before December 1941.

[Bud Struggle]

^^^^that's true. And my Mom hated the Germans, too.

[ComradeMan]

^^^^^^^^ Poor Poland, caught between Hitler and Stalin, but let's not forget the Ribbentrop-Molotov thing too. Polish people I have met have told me some pretty horrible things that went on from both sides. The thing is that the Germans/Nazi forces are vilified without question but the Soviets seem to get "mentioned" in passing. No Soviet was ever processed in an international court as a war criminal.

[ComradeOm]

The criticism levelled at Beevor is typically less about specific allegations as it is concerning the degree that he (supposedly) propagated the myth that the Red Army soldiers were some barbaric 'Asiatic' horde at the gates of Western civilisation. I've never been convinced by criticism - conveying the attitudes of German observers is not the same as agreeing with them


No Soviet was ever processed in an international court as a war criminal.That's because the Soviets were sitting as judges in those courts

[Dimentio]

^^^^^^^^ Poor Poland, caught between Hitler and Stalin, but let's not forget the Ribbentrop-Molotov thing too. Polish people I have met have told me some pretty horrible things that went on from both sides. The thing is that the Germans/Nazi forces are vilified without question but the Soviets seem to get "mentioned" in passing. No Soviet was ever processed in an international court as a war criminal.

Right now, it's the other way around in the historical community. Now the Soviets should be bashed down to pieces, while the Wehrmacht is "re-evaluated" (probably because the USSR has fallen while Germany is the leading power of the EU).

[Rainsborough]

Ehrensburg exhorted the Russian army to stamp out the German race.

"Kill! Kill! In the German race there is nothing but evil; not one among the living, not one among the yet unborn but is evil! Follow the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Stamp out the fascist beast once and for all in its lair! Use force and break the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your lawful booty. Kill! As you storm onward, kill, you gallant soldiers of the Red Army."

He may not have been speaking for Stalin, but neither was he pulled up by Stalin.

[ComradeMan]

That's because the Soviets were sitting as judges in those courts

Vae victis...

However in the case we are talking about vae victae.

[Dimentio]

Ehrensburg exhorted the Russian army to stamp out the German race.

"Kill! Kill! In the German race there is nothing but evil; not one among the living, not one among the yet unborn but is evil! Follow the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Stamp out the fascist beast once and for all in its lair! Use force and break the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your lawful booty. Kill! As you storm onward, kill, you gallant soldiers of the Red Army."

He may not have been speaking for Stalin, but neither was he pulled up by Stalin.

Oh yes. That quotation from Ehrenburg is damnable, but I do not think it instigated hatred in the Soviet soldiers. Rather, it probably formulated what a lot of Soviet citizens felt.

Remember Ann Coulter's statements regarding The War In Iraq. Then imagine the American behaviour had 30 000 or 60 000 Americans perished.

The Soviet Union lost 30+ million people in the Great Patriotic War (perhaps to some degree due to Stalin's initial alliance with Hitler). I am sure that if the United States ever is attacked by an adversary who is killing off 30 million Americans, the land of that adversary would be turned into a scorched desert.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

khad wrote this;


Beevor's work isn't worth the paper it's written on. There are serious methodological issues with audacious numbers such as the 2 million supposedly raped. Such a figure was extrapolated from postwar abortion records, but it's a funny thing when you look at the case files.

As historian Erich Kuby noted in his study of the occupation, there were very few reports of people using rape by the western allies as a rationale for abortion, and pretty much zero reports for rape by German men. Did all German-born rapists just go on vacation or something? It was no secret that the claim of being raped by a bestial Asiatic was a fast track to a no-questions-asked abortion.

Regarding the claims made in that telegraph article, yes, there were rapes, but coming from a hack pop historian like Beevor, I wonder how much of that is sensationalized garbage. That shitfuck never leaves notes of any sufficient detail to allow a perspicacious reader to track down and clarify his sources.

in this thread; http://www.revleft.com/vb/ivans-war-and-t139377/index.html?t=139377

[Dimentio]

Regarding rapes by the German army, there were quite few, mostly since the Germans had their "joy division" of female sex slaves to accompany the Wehrmacht. The Germans did not so much rape women in occupied countries, as hanging them or shooting them by squad.

Apparently, the amount of rapes in occupied France during the German occupation by German soldiers against French women was around two thousand. The Englishmen raped as many women when they stormed into Hamburg in 1945.

[Bud Struggle]

And all this is a good expmple of why wars never end. People's ethnic memories are long and hatred of past injuries remain for hundreds of years always ready to flair up.

As long as peopleprimarily identify themselves with their nationality or ethnicity as we are going to have war.

[Dimentio]

Nah. As long as there are conflicts about resources, we will have wars. Ethnicity/neotribalism is actually only one of the causes for war.

[Quail]

Nah. As long as there are conflicts about resources, we will have wars. Ethnicity/neotribalism is actually only one of the causes for war.
Nationalism does have an effect on general support for wars though, and is a huge barrier to tolerence of other people.

[Dimentio]

Nationalism does have an effect on general support for wars though, and is a huge barrier to tolerence of other people.

Yes. If it wasn't for nationalism though, the ruling class would find other casus belli's to rouse the people in support for war. The particular thing about ethnic/cultural identities though is that they could start mechanisms which are triggering warfare by their own logic.

[Quail]

Yes. If it wasn't for nationalism though, the ruling class would find other casus belli's to rouse the people in support for war. The particular thing about ethnic/cultural identities though is that they could start mechanisms which are triggering warfare by their own logic.
Yeah, of course. I wasn't denying that.

[ComradeMan]

khad wrote this;
in this thread; http://www.revleft.com/vb/ivans-war-and-t139377/index.html?t=139377

From a basic Wikisource (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Beevor#cite_note-7)

Beevor has responded to Russian claims. He states that he was accused by the Russian media of being the "chief slanderer of the Red Army" for describing repeated and relentless rape by the Red Army of young women taken from the Soviet Union by the Nazis for slave labor. Beevor states that he used excerpts from the report of General Tsigankov, the chief of the political department of the 1st Ukrainian Front, to cite the incident. He responded to Rzheshevsky by saying, "Professor O.A. Rzheshevsky even accused me of repeating Nazi propaganda, when in fact the bulk of the evidence on the subject came from Soviet sources, especially the NKVD reports in GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), and a wide range of reliable personal accounts." Beevor hopes Russian historians will take a more objective approach to material in their own archives which are at odds to the heroic myth of the Red Army as "liberators" in 1945.
"Other historians such as Richard Overy, a historian from King's College London, have criticised Russian "outrage" at the book and defended Beevor. Overy accused the Russians of refusing to acknowledge Soviet war crimes, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."
This criticism centres on the book's discussion of atrocities committed by the Red Army against German civilians – in particular, the extremely widespread rape of German women and female Russian forced labourers, both before and after the end of the war. Beevor stated however that German women were part of a society that supported Hitler and thus can't be seen as victims in the same way than Jews, Poles and Russians.
<LI id=cite_note-4>^ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_ref-4) Grigory, Karasin (2002-01-25). "Lies and insinuations" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/01/25/dt2506.xml). London, UK: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/01/25/dt2506.xml. Retrieved 2009-03-04. <LI id=cite_note-5>^ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_ref-5) Review of Berlin: 1945 (http://gpw.tellur.ru/page.html?r=books&s=beevor) (In Russian). <LI id=cite_note-RedArmy-6>^ a (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_ref-RedArmy_6-0) b (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_ref-RedArmy_6-1) Summers, Chris (29 April 2002). "Red Army rapists exposed" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1939174.stm). BBC News Online (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/BBC_News_Online). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1939174.stm. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
^ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_ref-7) Von Maier, Robert; Glantz, David M. (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/David_M._Glantz) (1 November 2008), "Questions and Answers: Antony Beevor" (http://www.antonybeevor.com/biography/WWII_Quarterly_(5.1)%5B1%5D.pdf), World War II Quarterly 5 (1): 50, ISSN (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_Number) 1559-8012 (http://www.worldcat.org/issn/1559-8012), http://www.antonybeevor.com/biography/WWII_Quarterly_(5.1)%5B1%5D.pdf
I have found no reference to British serviceman whatsoever, American, French and Polish yes- equally as wrong but dwarfed in number. The French Moroccan "Goumiers" were however well-known for this in Italy.