Originally posted by The
[email protected] 3 2006, 05:19 PM
There is even a big lie that soviet troops raped women in places they occupy
Mass-rapes though I find hard to believe were committed.
This said, I'm convinced that the political comissars and higher ranking officers of the Red Army did what was in their power to prevent this.
The german population feared the approaching Red Army to the extent that they committed suicide in large numbers, but the retaliation was never as extensive as they had feared.
Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed them from camps
THE Red Army's orgy of rape in the dying days of Nazi Germany was conducted on a much greater scale than previously suspected, according to a new book by the military historian Anthony Beevor.
Beevor, the author of the best-selling Stalingrad, says advancing Soviet troops raped large numbers of Russian and Polish women held in concentration camps, as well as millions of Germans.
Against this horrific background, Stalin and his commanders condoned or even justified rape, not only against Germans but also their allies in Hungary, Romania and Croatia. When the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas protested to Stalin, the dictator exploded: "Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?"
And when German Communists warned him that the rapes were turning the population against them, Stalin fumed: "I will not allow anyone to drag the reputation of the Red Army in the mud."
The rapes had begun as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944. In many towns and villages every female, aged from 10 to 80, was raped. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who was then a young officer, described the horror in his narrative poem Prussian Nights: "The little daughter's on the mattress,/Dead. How many have been on it/A platoon, a company perhaps?"
But Solzhenitsyn was rare: most of his comrades regarded rape as legitimate. As the offensive struck deep into Germany, the orders of Marshal Zhukov, their commander, stated: "Woe to the land of the murderers. We will get a terrible revenge for everything."
Soviet soldiers saw rape, often carried out in front of a woman's husband and family, as an appropriate way of humiliating the Germans, who had treated Slavs as an inferior race with whom sexual relations were discouraged. Russia's patriarchal society and the habit of binge-drinking were also factors, but more important was resentment at the discovery of Germany's comparative wealth.
The rape of Germany left a bitter legacy. It contributed to the unpopularity of the East German communist regime and its consequent reliance on the Stasi secret police. The victims themselves were permanently traumatised: women of the wartime generation still refer to the Red Army war memorial in Berlin as "the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist".
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...24/ixworld.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/24/wbeev24.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/01/24/ixworld.html)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, then a Soviet captain, wrote, "All of us knew very well that if the girls were German they could be raped and then shot.
Nearly all of the females, including eight to twelve year olds, as well as eighty year olds, were raped (often gang-raped), and then usually shot.
As the Red Army swept to the Oder, its armies proceeded to rape and loot on a grand scale (25). In many areas, the first Soviet wave came from the Tank Armies. Usually, Soviet tankists did not have a lot of time to stop and rape, but due to their carrying capacity, they were some of the most effective looters of the war, packing their tanks with the loot (26). The Soviet tankists still managed to get in their fair share of revenge, however, by firing on refugee trains.....
The second wave was made up of Soviet riflemen, who beared the brunt of the Soviet war effort. Due to their trauma, the riflemen often drank any possible alcoholic liquid nearby (28), many taking it too far. In their drunken rage, the riflemen would set of for women. All types of women were raped. German nuns, young children (who often were not aware what was happening to them), old grandmothers, pregnant women (29), and nurses (30). Many times, these acts took place in front of the eye's of their family, in some cases, children had to hold the flashlight while their mothers were raped. In one case, after an elderly woman died due to the endless rapes, her body was still repeatedly violated (31). Men, such as brothers or fathers, who defended the women from such horror were often shot (32).
In other cases, whole groups of women were brought into Red Army barracks and were raped, often gang-raped, for days (33). Even local Poles (34), and Soviet women, recently liberated from Nazi camps, were raped (35). Nearly one and a half million Germans were raped in the areas of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia (36). In Berlin, up to one hundred and thirty thousand were raped, with several thousand committing suicide soon after (37). Former Allied prisoners of war witnessed these actions as well (38).
Source: http://www.historic-battles.com/Articles/C.../Encounters.htm (http://www.historic-battles.com/Articles/Competition2004/Encounters.htm)
------------------------------------------------------------------
War is Hell.